"He who marches out of step hears another drum." ~ Ken Kesey
We average about 60 screens per gallon of emulsion. We use the glisten method, round edge of scoop coater, 23x31 screens, mostly thin thread mesh. I've measured this many times over the years and we've used mostly pure photopolymer emulsions with fairly high solids content and it's always hovered around 60/gal.
we use SP1400 here... coating 1x1 round edgetypically running around 20-25% eom as measured with a thickness gaugewe get around 70 screens per gallon.. mix of 160S and 225S mesh counts.cost per gallon = $31.50 == approx 45 cents per screen in emulsion cost.
I haven't done any really hardcore number crunching that I've done for other things in the past when it comes to cap film versus direct emulsion, but I think the film sheets for 23x31 screens would need to be about $1.50 a sheet to be about even with direct emulsion. And that is assuming the quality of the finished stencil is equal. I know before the EZ film came out there wasn't anything that could compete with direct emulsion but getting 50 sheets of 30-50 micron film for $100 is getting pretty damn competitive. A shop that really struggles with coating screens and doesn't have any trouble with cap film may actually save money going with film. I think if it weren't for the adhesion issues we've had with film I might give it a harder look due to time savings. We could turn a screen right at the end of the reclaim process saving the time of pouring emulsion into the coater, prepping for a coat job, then the 30-45 seconds it takes to coat a screen. And then you get into the actual reclaim time and I wouldn't be surprised if it takes half the time to reclaim a cap film screen versus direct emulsion but haven't done any testing on that. I just know the few hundred cap film screens we've done have reclaimed really fast.
I could challenge you on that lowest volume shop title.
Quote from: Gilligan on March 23, 2015, 11:01:22 PMI could challenge you on that lowest volume shop title. If time spent on here is indicative of free time, you are certainly in the running.