Your best/worst equipment purchases

[LoneWolf2]

Been pondering on this here lately as I'm trying to figure out what route to take when it comes to upgrading and getting new equipment for our new location, and wanted to see what everyone's opinions were.

For you/your shop, what was the best purchase you made that benefitted yall the most? Whether it be increased productivity, making folks lives easier, increased quality output, anything like that.

Now the opposite side of that, what's left you scratching your head and wondering "why the hell did I do that?"

Just genuinely curious to hear of everyone's experiences!

[3Deep]

Pad Printer, now the printer was great work just fine, just didn't do all my homework, so it's another dust catcher.

[royster13]

Pad Printer, now the printer was great work just fine, just didn't do all my homework, so it's another dust catcher.

Equipment will only make you money if you have enough work for it.....As I recall there are a couple folks here with pad printers that do quite well.....If you have equipment collecting dust you need to get out and "knock on doors" and make some sales....

PS....Looking to buy my own pad printer soon as I have a "niche" product that can be brought in house....

[GraphicDisorder]

Best will always be first auto, it allowed me huge growth and allowed us to hire/expand.  Worst probably our heat press, used it 1 time so far. Just not something we needed and its 2k just wasted sitting there currently. 

[Homer]

BEST:
1) Automatic
2) Starlight
3) DTS


WORST:
1) Number Printing jig..dahell was I thinking on that. JV knows what I mean
2) panelframes
3) leased copy machine. not what I expected, huge let down.

[Zelko-4-EVA]

Pad Printer, now the printer was great work just fine, just didn't do all my homework, so it's another dust catcher.

Equipment will only make you money if you have enough work for it.....As I recall there are a couple folks here with pad printers that do quite well.....If you have equipment collecting dust you need to get out and "knock on doors" and make some sales....

PS....Looking to buy my own pad printer soon as I have a "niche" product that can be brought in house....

we have had our 1 color pad printer for about 8 months  - so far we have only printed inside neck tags, but plan to use it for other things as well...  we have too much tag printing to do anything else on it.

best equipment purchase: its a tie between our first Gauntlet 2 and the i-Image st.  the Gauntlet 2 is our first press that didnt break down every week, and the i-Image saves us about a dollar per screen in just material/supplies cost.

worst: our Digikote.  it would work fine, but we dont do enough screens at a time to keep it moving all day.  we coat by hand in batches of 20 or so screens.  cleaning out the troughs after 20 screens is stupid. 

[jvanick]

WORST:
1) Number Printing jig..dahell was I thinking on that. JV knows what I mean

You are so right on that thing...  LOL... POS... trying to pay that one forward to someone else and nobody wants it.

Best:

- As much as I hate to admit it, our beater Javelin.  Without that press there's NO way we would be where we are at this quickly.
- Sportsman perfect upgrade from where we were at, faster, more reliable, and more consistent.
- DTS -- setups are now unbelievably fast.

Worst:

- all of our non-Smesh screens and panels (I know-- we can restretch, but it's hard looking at 50+ frames that are still in decent condition that I just don't want to use).
- all the junk pressure washers we bought before we smartened up.

[Frog]

Vinyl cutter.
For years, I got used to having a buddy cut for me at no expense (though I kept my own materials at his place)

Even though it may take six months of cad cut jobs to pay for it, the convenience of having it right here and ability to crank out stuff without driving cross town to pick it up is sheer joy!

[3Deep]

I forgot to mention the best equipment, you would think I would say our auto, but believe me the best equipment was the pocket pallets I bought from The Grendel (Douglas Grigar) years back.  We print a lot of pockets and yes I know I can print them on the auto now, but the pallets ain't cheap and the pocket pallets have paid for themselves many times over.

[SteveS]

Best Purchase/Upgrade
36" Electric Fusion to 38" Gas Mini Sprint
Flash Red Chili-D
Unikote Screen Coater
AWT Drying Cabinet
Gagne Porta-Trace Light Box

Worst Purchase
Ioline CrystalPress
Newman Roller Frames & Stretcher
iDot DTG

I am sure plenty of arguments can be made about how the Roller Table and Frames should have been the best thing since sliced bread but it just doesn't work in our environment. We print some amazing prints on statics and the time, training and care for the roller frame setup just couldn't be justified.

The iDot, although converted to all CMYK (No White) just keeps clicking along. I can't tell you how many times that thing was close to being put on the dolly and rolled out to the trash dumpster. It has no resale value and just sits in the corner sucking $165/ltr ink and it gets to print about 30-40 shirts a month. When it's sitting there idle, I just can't bring myself to throw it away. I don't know why.

The CrystalPress.....where do I start. I could ramble about it all day and it would still be running the one design. That thing, in comparison, is the slowest stone setter on earth. I can almost hand set them faster than that thing.

I am sure both these lists will grow as time goes on. On a good note, that M&R Red Chili-D flash is the cat's meow. You CAN'T scorch stuff anymore. It's just awesome.

[dirkdiggler]

Best was all of our M&R stuff, period.  Our CH3d or our Iimage ST, toss up between those 2.  I couldn't go without either.  Worst was an Anatol Manual.  Bought new when we opened as a backup to my dback, but the dback never broke down and the manual has been collecting dust since the day we bought it.

[Doug S]

Best is the CTS, Sportsman upgraded to from a Dback and Mini Sprint upgraded to from a fusion and a squeegee sharpener.

Worst is I'm right there with some of you and that was the numbering system that we've used once "what a pain" and messy.  Next was a TJET Blazer Pro or should I say Blazer Poor, we lost big money on that one but even losing our pants on it, I was glad to see it leave on a trailer.  Not that it was a bad purchase but I bought a Newman roller stretching table and 25 used and I mean used 25x36" M3 frames, I just don't have time to fool with it "so I've used the table twice in 3 years", I always stick to the shurlocs because of how quick it is.

[Sbrem]

For us, and we're older, the first auto, then the second, then the third (upgrade to the first one). Going to ink jet positives after 30 years of film in a darkroom was also a game changer for us. Worst, for us anyway, was a used Brother GT541; it was good at first, then we just didn't have enough work for it and it turned to you  know what, now simply not worth the repair cost, according to the tech person. She could not in good conscience, do the work and take our money. 1 other piece back when I was somebody's screen guy, I picked up a used stretcher at an auction that I never could get to work, and once I realized what a load of crap it was, and that it couldn't work well (which I should have been smart enough to recognize) I just junked it. Whatever you buy, you want it to make things go faster/more efficient to be able to get more out the door for the labor costs...

Steve

[kingscreen]

Best 3:  Starlight, upgrading from an ElectraPrint to a Sabre, and Tri-Loc.

[beanie357]

Best
Starlight
Anatol 10c auto

Worst
Brown drying cabinet
Ingersol compressor with Chinese head