Brown ElectraPrint nightmare Machine

[Sparkie]

Here's what the alignment pin looks like.

[Sparkie]

Just when I was starting to look at a brown as my first auto....lol.

I too have an ElectraPrint, and in 3 years, zero mechanical problems. Any issue I've had has been user error, and even then, Mike and crew have been EXTREMELY helpful.

[dsh]

I'd rotate the pin 10 degrees or so just to give it a new contact surface.  A small sliver of change is amplified a lot by the time you get out to the end of the platten.  I don't know that this is the problem.  I'm just looking for reasons that might remedy the issue.  This was pointed out to me when we set up my machine.

[Sbrem]

They were nice guys up until the last service we received. Since then they've been all about us upgrading and refuse to send anyone here.

They must be idiots. They won't fix their own equipment to your satisfaction, and are trying to sell you a new one instead? To quote Barzini in Princess Bride, it's inconceivable.

Steve

[Frog]

They were nice guys up until the last service we received. Since then they've been all about us upgrading and refuse to send anyone here.

They must be idiots. They won't fix their own equipment to your satisfaction, and are trying to sell you a new one instead? To quote Barzini in Princess Bride, it's inconceivable.

Steve

It also doesn't jibe with reports of outstanding service from other users.

[cclaud3]

It took 3 presses to get mine mostly ok. They are certainly nice & kind people but with the limited technicians it can take forever to get things fixed that cannot be done on your own. By things I mean construction & installation flaws, not stuff I caused. Guess it's a compromise as their equipment usually costs less which wasn't the sole reason I went with them. I initially liked the family-based operation, quiet operation & overall less equipment and electrical required in my limited space. In the end they have upgraded components on the final machine which was nice.

[cclaud3]

As far as the problem... I've never been able to completely get rid of the lateral shifting on some of the heads/platens. My first machine would gradually creep over almost as bad as what your experiencing. With the 3rd unit they sent out it's not as bad but still there. The re-registering of the pin gates is your best bet. I would perform a full re-leveling along with it. Remember to remove or loosen the support bars that are connecting to each print head when doing the head & platen leveling.

Unless the legs are bolted to the floor they move. I've had mine move enough to mis-align the photo eye for the skip shirt sensor...even after slowing the index motor speed. Since the outer part of the screen is supported by a ledge that's attached to the legs then you can see where issues with off-contact and mis-registration can get crazy. So make sure your head support legs are up when leveling then securely tightened down after done.

Using minimal print pressure helps because there is some "slop" in the printing linkage. The print carriages slide along a greased piece of metal so the more pressure that is used, I believe, amplifies the slop. You can see some slight moving in unused heads as the press indexes. There is also shifting after the squeegee comes down to print.

It's very difficult to set even off contact on the screens due to way it has to be done and with aligning it to the ledge on the legs. It's kind of like doing it on a manual but your having to jump around from side to side and then you got to account for the tensioning of the bolt. It's just 4 bolts but takes a ton of patience. Not a big deal for simple 1 or 2 color stuff but with a few colors and tight registration you really got to work with it to make it as best as it can get.

Even a couple days after leveling the machine still settles. Sometimes it's more significant than other times. It can settle outside of their acceptable tolerance of .007-.009. I'm using their dial indicator gauges.

I've had both 6x10 & 8x10 full size 220V units. Registration was part of the problems. Severe creaking and chirping on index which could not be fixed (I have videos as proof!). I bet the smaller junior units are much easier to deal with the design style the Brown presses implement.

The press is great for simple spot jobs with loose requirements on registration. You can usually power through it's flaws with increased pressure and creative trapping in the art. They've mentioned using 3pt traps, which I think is insane. But it's a stress pit trying to do any precision printing such as under basing smallish text (no not some 6pt times roman or anything like that). I have a degree in graphic design and worked for 7 years as production manager (also doing all the pre press) for an offset and digital printing shop. I know my way around spot seps and optimal artwork techniques (obviously not everything carries over to screen printing) so I feel like I'm giving the press the best artwork setup it can get.

They did give me the upgraded squeegee & floodbar system (much nicer than the allen wrench adjusting-style), 2 extra print heads, the laser system (not really that great-very dim), and 5 pocket platens for some of the trouble.

[Sbrem]

They were nice guys up until the last service we received. Since then they've been all about us upgrading and refuse to send anyone here.

They must be idiots. They won't fix their own equipment to your satisfaction, and are trying to sell you a new one instead? To quote Barzini in Princess Bride, it's inconceivable.

Steve

It also doesn't jibe with reports of outstanding service from other users.

I guess I just can't understand them not getting the job done, when the others have had good experiences. I know our old friend Johnny in Tennessee uses one and is pretty happy with it. I looked them over, but always felt the quality wasn't there, kind of flimsy.

Steve

[TheGhost]

Wow Cclaud3, thanks for all the info. Your story is exactly why I feel like this machine is probably unfixable. I've got a dial indicator coming today and will try to run some tests later tonight to register the machine but I mean the fact that Mike B was out here last to register it and now they won't send anyone out to do anything for us tells me our machine probably has something wrong with it that is not fixable. We'll see. Fingers crossed.

Steve, their sales guy, told us that our screens would work on it when we first bought it because they would engineer it to. Guess what, they didn't. They also said they would upgrade our machine to have an automated foot pedal in the future but that never happened. I know now that we should have never expected the manual screens to work, but back then we didn't know much.

I was in high school and not exactly planning on taking up printing as my career at the time so I really can't comment on the handful of service visits we received. Steve was our service guy the majority of the times, maybe twice Hans was here too.

They're nice guys, but their business practices and quality of their machines indicate they don't care that much about their customers. The money of small shops who can't really do anything to harm their business is really all they are after if you ask me.

[Frog]

They were nice guys up until the last service we received. Since then they've been all about us upgrading and refuse to send anyone here.

They must be idiots. They won't fix their own equipment to your satisfaction, and are trying to sell you a new one instead? To quote Barzini in Princess Bride, it's inconceivable.

Steve

It also doesn't jibe with reports of outstanding service from other users.

I guess I just can't understand them not getting the job done, when the others have had good experiences. I know our old friend Johnny in Tennessee uses one and is pretty happy with it. I looked them over, but always felt the quality wasn't there, kind of flimsy.

Steve

I always had the impression that ElectraPrints were very basic, and that is actually quite appealing to some. (Which may also make this user-fixable)
It's the apparent bailing out of the support issue that doesn't fit the picture we've been given over the years.
Ten years could be a lot of impressions, but I wonder if when they said "time to upgrade", if they made any specific suggestions as to whet they felt wore out and/or if this was based at all on what the tech reported to them.

[cclaud3]

Yeah, if it's been ok for 10 years and just the last 4 months have been hell then I understand them dragging feet on sending techs. As far as them not printing before leaving I understand that as well. Friends, family, random people say how could you let them leave without it printing correctly? What are you supposed to do? Hold them up with force? The only way they have ever gotten acceptable prints is by spending significant amounts of time tweaking the press while the job is setup. Raising and lowering off contact on individual screens and such–not simple micros.

The thing that is annoying when you finally get a tech they seem to always arrive late in the day and want to work until 9-10pm. Then they want to do the test prints late and your tired because you've been helping them break the press down. Sometimes we/they can get acceptable prints within an hour or so but the press settles pretty quickly and it's hard to consistently get things to hold registration. Not even using flashes on jobs that could potential shrink the shirts or cause mis-registration. Of course they would be in for 2/2.5 days when they were replacing the presses, then rushing prints at the end. When they replaced it the second time we were doing a 3 or 4 color job on white and couldn't get it to register consistently. The tech had to leave to move on to the next stop.

Steve came out between the 2nd and 3rd press (and at least once on the first machine). Took months as I guess no one else in the area needed a visit so they were trying to minimize travel costs. Got a lot of the, "it's probably something your doing type of tone". Before he came out, I sent him the artwork for the job and gave him the option of mesh, print order, whatever he wanted so that the job couldn't be blamed for the misprints. Well he finally made it out and reset the machine from the ground up. Took him hours to get the 5 color job to register intermittently.  He admitted that it wasn't right and it would have to be replaced. Found some parts that had been drilled out to make it easier to install that were not supposed to drilled out. May or may not have effected the current issues but didn't look good. I wouldn't have known, so he was honest about finding it and telling me. A couple of months later I got the 3rd press with the extras.
 
When I purchased I thought I was basically buying an automatic press (using a lot of bolts!) with the compromise of using hand-turned knobs for everything. They really put on a good presentation and fill you with confidence that they got you covered. I don't really mind the knobs but the caps are always coming off so you resort to using wrenches. The current machine is a older smaller footprint of the 10 station machine which they felt had the least flex than the newer, wider diameter model and less chance of the movement. It looks the same, just more compact. Their painting & powdercoating treatment is also subpar. The equipment arrives with scrapes, scratches, etc. Powder coating is flaking off on most of the edges of the components. Maybe it's the stress on the small connections? They've mentioned the moisture in the South, surely I don't have the most humid print shop in the world? It's no wetter or hotter than anyone else. They have replaced some exposed steel parts that were rusting badly. I had rust on the machine a month or 2 after it was installed.

I went to the SGIA a few years ago to buy the anatol titan. The regional rep was such a jerk to me and my wife that we refused to deal with him and the company. I'm sure we were asking newbie auto owner questions and he had zero patience and was very condescending. Extremely pushy, I've been told he no longer works for them. So we were more and more into the family business of Brown and how knowledgeable they are, which they are.

Basically we just deal with it. It's been suggest to sue them. I've been involved in an (automobile) lawsuit before and it's extremely unpleasant. The machine prints, just not in a consistently precise way.

[Anatolhelp]

CClaud.....Please accept my sincere apology on the behalf of Anatol and the staff here at Anatol.  Rude, disrespectful treatment is not tolerated here anymore at Anatol. 

I understand your frustration with being treated rudely.....it should never happen.   If I can help in any way please let me know.  If you have any problems in the future please let me know.   

[jvanick]

funny how different people are treated differently by different companies.

I went to the Anatol booth at NBM Indy in 2013 and was treated really nicely, especially considering that I had no experience with auto presses at all, if I remember correctly, the midwest region sales guy at the time(?) was named Mike.

On the other hand, the guys at both the Brown and Lawson booths didn't even want to acknowledge me.

(Workhorse/TSPPS booth and M&R booth guys were both great to talk with too)

[cclaud3]

Yeah, I understand. This was the '11 SGIA show. I think this guy's name was Paul-had glasses. Spoke with some Anatol employees and they acknowledged that was his general attitude.

[Frog]

Yeah, I understand. This was the '11 SGIA show. I think this guy's name was Paul-had glasses. Spoke with some Anatol employees and they acknowledged that was his general attitude.

Wow, the only Paul I knew there was (and is) quite personable.