Tear Down Process

[ZooCity]

Some posts on Dave/bimridder's thread on screen cleaning piqued my interest in another related topic - teardown. 

As mentioned, it's considered a no-no to pull the ink off screens on press in a production environment and I can see that for sure, but we do it a lot here- waterbased inks being a big reason, not having a dedicated screen teardown zone being another.  We have no SOP for this and and it's high time to put one together.   

Here's what we do currently, why and where I'd like to get to:

We have our "dirty" washout area positioned fairly close to the presses which is somewhat unique for a 2 auto shop I imagine.  Having no SOP and the washout close, naturally our ops teardown together with one hanging at the washout to rinse all the screens and tooling while the other feeds them those screens and tooling and begins the next setup if they are ahead. If you're op3 you're probably tearing down yourself unless someone else is caught up and can help you. 

We run a lot of wb/dc/hsa.  While we do have enough sets of floods/blades to run for most days without needing to stop and clean them and we do have the shur loc cleaner to help cycle a needed blade or flood quick there's still the fact that you can't let wb/dc or, god forbid, HSA sit on tooling and screens, we only get that luxury with plastisol and even then most plasti prints are DC UB.  I need the procedure to work the same for all inks, all jobs (or it ain't a procedure right?) so therefore I need to setup it up for wb/dc/hsa.

I'm leaning toward running the presses solo, making my third op the floater/teardown person and, if they or anyone else in the shop gets caught up, they help pull on one of the presses to get the job out faster.

The scenarios I've ran through with my production manager all seem to have a hitch to them, they feel like they won't gel ultimately.  Our somewhat limited space here plays into that heavily.  I can clearly see the best way to do it but can't see how a shop with a smaller crew, let alone a 1-2 person crew can make that best way happen.  (Pierre, I'm borrowing here from your fantastic post on trade info, I've always had the outlook of learning the "best way" and seeking to be as close to the "best way" as possible, you put that perfectly into words.)

So share your teardown, tell me why it's the best, or the worst, why you do it that way and what you'd ideally want to see.  I think some good discussion and re-thinking could come out of this from all sizes of shops.

[mimosatexas]

This might sound weird, but it could speed things up for you in the moment, but what about a dip tank with just water that can hold 6-8 screens, and something similar for floods/squeegees?  Take them off press and submerge immediately (after de-ink/se-tape, maybe a very superficial rinse).  That would free up everyone to actually get stuff off and on press, then while 1-2 guys are doing test printing or whatever, the other can go back and do a quick final scrub/rinse of the screens before racking, and no ink has sat around drying.

I am just a one man shop, but I have been wanting to try something like this when I'm in a hurry or trying to finish up a run by a specific time.  Cleanup on a WB run with 5-6 colors can take 20-30 minutes with all the immediate rinsing, unlike a plasti job that might take 5-10.

[tonypep]

I do something similar here but at Harlequin we had custom made teardown/setup carts that could hold ten/screens/ gals of ink/hanger for approved sample and 5 gal pail up front. Teardown takes under one minute per screen. Every thing is whisked away to prepress where it is processed. As that is happening new set up is under way. Best possible way but yes, for larger shops.

[3Deep]

We are a two person shop and from time to time we can get very busy but when the flow is normal I clean the ink out of every screen right on the press always being careful not to get ink all over the press (my press is pretty dam clean), but when we get slammed I have a cart that I will take screen,floodbar and squeegee all out at the same time lay it on the cart and my wife removes all ink etc, which gives me time to start with the new setup.  Tear down IMO is going to really depend on production schedule or how large of a shop you have and how you like for it to be done, don't think there is a correct or wrong way to get it done unless your the type that fellow every instruction in the book

darryl

[willy35]

I have a translation problem,

Could you please tell me what is SOP and teardown ?

Cheers

[ebscreen]

I'm guessing you've already tried carts. Our washout is pretty close to press area, so I even have to force myself to use a cart
sometimes, but I've found that if you start teardown with one next to you you'll use it for the whole job, and it is much
more efficient. Squeegees in a bucket, everything to the sink with waterbase. If there's time, and the screen guy has been
nice that day, we'll have someone scraping ink out of screens while on the cart, but never on press.

With lifting heads we raise the head, pull squeegee chopper down, scrape squeegee both sides into screen, then pull squeegee out,
scrape flood both sides into screen, flood out, both in bucket. This can be done with one hand, but having a cart/bucket there to put the squeegee
in makes it easier.

Where we stumble is screen to screen transfers of ink. A lot of jobs use the same colors front/back etc. (I'm sure many people
are familiar) and we have a bad habit of pulling ink from the done screen into the new one. Really need to get in the habit
of always going back to the bucket no matter what.

4:55 Friday afternoon last discharge job just finished you'll never see a press torn down so fast.

Willy:   SOP = Standard Operating Procedure
           Teardown = after a job is complete, removing screens, squeegees, floodbars, etc, from the press. The opposite of setup.

[BorisB]

I have a translation problem,

Could you please tell me what is SOP and teardown ?

Cheers

Willy,
SOP stands for standard operating procedure,

Boris

[BorisB]

Teardown: removal of screens, ink, floodbars, squeggees from machine... make it ready for new setup

[willy35]

Thank you thank you guys   

[ZooCity]

haha, yes indeed.

We do have some carts intended for this purpose, customized from some harbor freight deals to hold screens and ink, etc. up top.  We also have a little platoon of screen racks built from modded sheet pan racks that could do the same job.  Trouble is, our floors are gnarly, old school double wood plank.  And, we're tight on space around the presses of course.   It's annoying to push the carts all around so they don't get used.  I think we can find a happy medium where the carts are just closer than the trip to the washout area and use them more as an organization tool for teardown, I dunno though.

Like the idea mimosa.  We've done it before with ink buckets and found that you get a big tub of ink buckets gathering up as they are forgotten about until the crew has literally nothing else to do but finally clean the ink buckets.  So we 86'd it in favor of more immediate clean up.  A little better procedure could solve that though and let the floater get to something more pressing while floods and blades soak.   I'm thinking a shallow pan that holds up to 12 sets so you can see what's in there and not "forget" about them?

[Maxie]

I use a system that I learned from Greg Kitson a few years ago.
I have a cart that holds about 11 screens and the top one clips in so we can clean it on the cart.
When a print run is finished I try to get at least three people to tear down in as little time as possible.
I am working on a system that needs a second cart for the next job to be printed (also Greg's idea).
The person closing the screens will put the head number to be used on the side of the screen.
Once the team has finished tearing down they will put the screens for the new run into the head marked on the screen, put in the squeegee/flood bar and then leave one person to finish the set up and do a test print.     One of them can then start cleaning the screens on the cart.
We are very busy most of the time and have trouble keeping up with our printing orders.      The time we save in teardown and set up is critical.      Later this year we are planning on getting a second automatic.
Right now I want to measure teardown and set up with a stopwatch.
We are printing mainly Plastisol but I'd use the same system for WB.     The few minutes it takes until one of the team can start washing the screens will make no difference.     
I've attached a photograph of our cart full of screens.

[ABuffington]

In a shop with short runs we found the money maker was the shortest possible break down, to set up, to new print.  Carts definitely speed this up, but having dedicated help to deal with the screens and squeegees helped.  In some shops we had a dedicated set up team since we had 12+ presses.  The base plate was pulled off and dropped to the floor and either the set up team or the loader grabbed the next job's baseplate or keyline and set it up immediately and printed 4 sample shirts on 4 consecutive pallets to begin line up.  After the first head image was printed we had a huge piece of adhesive clear plastic, normally used for shelf liner.  This eliminated 15 pieces of tape across the image.  While the loader was prepping the first two reg pallets the unloader and 1-2 assist personnel broke down the screens sequentially and put the new screen in it's place.

For waterbase we had 2 5 gallon pails with hot water in them.  When the unloader and assistant were 3-4 screens ahead, the unloader would wash the squeegees and flood and get them back in the print heads.  For plastisol we had a small nearby Safety Clean machine.  Loader and Unloader would then check reg on next screens with the loader doing test prints on the images covered in clear plastic.  Once the unloader had all screens in the heads they would join the loader and start to check register.  The loader would fine tune register behind the unloader and add inks and test print.  When in reg he would print on one of the shirts without clear plastic to proof the color.  While he was finishing reg the unloader would load 10 scrap shirts on.  The unloader would follow these shirts around to check register, ink lay down and color.  The unloader would start to load good shirts.  If the job had a specific pallet temp in the recipe they would cycle pallets for 5 minutes with flashes on to reach pallet temp before cycling in the scrap test shirts. 

With 4 people we got down to the 30 minute mark.  Good tensioned screens help as well as having freshly made inks for wb and discharge that already had a recipe.
With pin register machine exposure set up we could often get 5-10 minutes faster on 10-12 color prints.  The other key area is how the job was sampled.  We forced all samplers to mimic the press.  One flood, one hit.  Recipe every print for sequence, PMS, flashes.  Nothing worse than a sample department who flashes all colors, double hits, print flash print, since this type of manual printing cannot be matched on press.

We often also had a leadman jump in on the last 24 shirts of the ending job to help load while the unloader took a break or looked over the next print recipe and checked screens.  The leadman also helped organize the crew and could lend a hand staging shirts, overseeing the process and keeping the pace going.  Placing screens and inks by the head they go before the previous job ends  to also speeds up the process.  Carts are the best way to organize all inks, screens, and sample print.  In the large shop I ran, having dedicated crew to pull screens and squeegees, help clean and take away the mess also helped.  Having a dedicated shop cleaning person to keep the area around the press spotless also helped speed up the process.

Al

[tonypep]

Yes that's how it works in the larger shops. Many would have a lead/captain to handle around three presses. Filling in for BR breaks, adding inks, pre-checking the next jobs, etc. Job turnover was go time. "Press ops don't make money cleaning" is the mind set.

[ZooCity]

Dang Al, I just copy/pasted that whole post into my worksheet on this.  Some solid gold in there. 

[Maxie]

Al, one thing I don't quite understand.
Why print on a plastic sheet and not onto a piece of material or shirt?