6 Station vs. 4 station manual

[XG Print]

I am getting ready to add an automatic to our shop hopefully this spring and am thinking about selling my 6/6 Anatol Lightning press, which is in good shape and prints very nicely with easy to use micros, but it has a foot print that is fairly large for a manual.  I am thinking about ordering a new M&R Kruzar in a 6/4 to replace it.  I'm probably one of the few that has never worked on a 4 station manual.  For those that have done both is there a noticeable difference in production times?  I would not think so but wanted to ask.  The Kruzar would also fit beside the new auto better too but will definitely still get some use on our smaller orders.  What do ya think?

[mk162]

To me that is overkill on a manual if you have an auto.  A single station 1-4 color press is all you need.

I would personally get one that handles auto press frames and switch over to a single size frame as much as possible.

We rarely use a manual anymore, it's too easy to let the auto do the work.

[jvanick]

We rarely use a manual anymore, it's too easy to let the auto do the work.

agreed. -- but... we like to have a decent manual press here for one color, one off type work, as well as any specialty type stuff (jacket hold downs, small runs of sleeve orders, etc).

we switched from a 6/6 workhorse to a 6/4 Kruzer and honestly I can't see much of a speed difference... even with flashing in station '2', the shirts are cool enough by the time they make it back to 'station 1'. 

[Shanarchy]

I would personally get one that handles auto press frames and switch over to a single size frame as much as possible.

Agreed!

Both presses are fine. They both handle auto screens. The kruzer is smaller. The Anatol has better micros. Unless your having issues with the Anatol, I'd just keep it and avoid the hassle of selling one press to buy another.

[3Deep]

I had a friend that bought a huge manual look like a 10 color just to dam big, but most guys on here toss everything on there auto, me I have a 6/4 manual plus an auto press and I use my manual alot.  What I do a lot of is set up repeat jobs on the manual since they only need a handful or like most do one and two jobs, and you can do just as much on a 6/4 as you can on a 6/6 just depends on the printer.

darryl

[alan802]

I guess in some situations having 2 more stations could benefit the user but we originally had a 10/6 manual and then went down to a 4/4 and there was no loss in production and anything that was more than 1 color went on the auto and now we usually only print multicolored jobs on the manual if none of the colors touch.  I understand there are many people that can print butt to butt registered jobs all day long on their manual but out of the few hundred we've done on our manuals over the years they are much harder to get into reg and keep in reg versus the auto. 

I'm sure someone will find a scenario where the 6 stations will be superior to the 4 but I know it would never come up nor has come up at our shop so 4 is all we'll ever need.

[blue moon]

we took 3 heads off our Rototex to make it easier to turn and fit auto sized screens. We only print one and two color jobs on the manual, the time it takes to register compared to the auto (with pre-registration) makes it a waste of time if three or more colors are involved.

pierre

[Sbrem]

we took 3 heads off our Rototex to make it easier to turn and fit auto sized screens. We only print one and two color jobs on the manual, the time it takes to register compared to the auto (with pre-registration) makes it a waste of time if three or more colors are involved.

pierre

Our best manual is an 8/4 Rototex, rock solid, and 23 x 31 fit nicely. We do a lot of very short run clothing for a yoga clothing business we take care of, it's in use a good 6 hours a day. We do a lot of short run work for customers with a long history...

Steve

[mimosatexas]

Love my Kruzer.  I have only 23x31 frames in my shop and it handles those fine.  You can even print 3 36x25 frames on it by only using every other head. 

Bit of a tangent, but it relates to the 4 vs 6 station question a bit (and some threads recently on flashing on the manual vs printing wet on wet).  I print by loading/unloading all the stations at once, then printing 1 color at a time on all stations.  Transitions between colors are made while rotating the stations after the 4th shirt.  Flashing is done over the station to my left and the shirts have 2 stations of cooldown before the next color.  Flashing dwell is timed to match the time it takes me to flood and stroke.  I flood as the screen is being lowered, and use a push stroke for the print.  After timing around 100 jobs between 4 and 6 colors, and testing flashing and rotating the way I do vs wet on wet one shirt at a time it saves me around 6-10 seconds a shirt depending on the color count.  While I am rotating the stations more often, I am rotating the screens less often, and pairing the rotations of the screens with a rotation of the platens.  I think much of the time savings is simply due to the economy of motion in doing individual parts of the process for each shirt in batches across all 4 shirts and getting in a rhythm seems much easier.  To put it simply, based on the way I print I can see an extra 2 stations shaving a few seconds off each shirt, but not enough to really matter. 

If space is an extreme issue, make the switch, but if the lightning does the job I don't see any reason to make the switch.

[numbercruncher]

The Standard Anatol Lightning fits 6 screens up to 26x36" and has 16x22" pallets, with screens in it has a diameter of 9'6". It is manufactured in a down-sized model with shorter arms that accommodate 23 x31" screens and 15x16" pallets and has a diameter of 8'3", only a few more inches than the Kruzer.  The 6/6 does come with all heads down as standard  and while this may not be needed if used as a sample press - there are times when it comes in handy.

[Printficient]

What are you asking for the Anatol?