New Oven. What a difference!

[Maxie]

For years we printed with a manual and one automatic, our oven was 36" wide and 120" long.
We recently bought a second MHM and a Adelco gas oven.      72" wide and 160" long with a 80" inlet.
We were always slowing down the printing because the oven couldn't keep up.
Printing 400 an hour was difficult.
Yesterday we printed two big jobs, one ran at 700+ an hour and the other at 600+, easy printing, the unloader didn't have to fold the shirts to try and get more through the oven and the receiver at the end of the oven also had a much easier time receiving them.
I didn't realize what a difference a big oven would make.    Financially this oven will pay for it self in no time,  not only is this one gas, old one was electric but we can print so much faster.     New world.

[jvanick]

how long is your heat chamber?

I've heard nothing but good things about Adelco.

[Maxie]

The heat chamber is 4m, that's 160".
The whole thing is 7m, that's 280".
Another big difference is the insulation, this one you can touch when it's hot and it has an exhaust.
The old one got really hot and had no exhaust so it heated up the whole place.

[jvanick]

very nice... our chamber is only 120" and it definitely causes a bottleneck here... (but we don't have space to extend it at this time).

You'll have to get a heater for your shop area

[Maff]

very nice... our chamber is only 120" and it definitely causes a bottleneck here... (but we don't have space to extend it at this time).

You'll have to get a heater for your shop area

Dam, so what situations (ink type and press speed) are causing a bottleneck for you?
I ask because I was planning to upgrade to a similar size gas dryer later this year...

[Maxie]

How,many automatics do you have?
We are running two through our printer.

[J-Man]

Very cool those Adelco dryers are slick

[jvanick]

very nice... our chamber is only 120" and it definitely causes a bottleneck here... (but we don't have space to extend it at this time).

You'll have to get a heater for your shop area

Dam, so what situations (ink type and press speed) are causing a bottleneck for you?
I ask because I was planning to upgrade to a similar size gas dryer later this year...

full size (up to about 14"x17") discharge/waterbase/hsa work at a 2.5minute retention time on a 38" belt + 10' chamber nets us about 400 shirts/hr...   if we're rocking plastisol, we can hit 660-700hr no problem with the same setup.

on many of the discharge jobs, there's many times we could run upwards of 800/hr due to no flashing, but the dryer slows us down majorly.

in an ideal world, I'd like to have a 60-72" belt, minimum 16' chamber...

[Maff]

very nice... our chamber is only 120" and it definitely causes a bottleneck here... (but we don't have space to extend it at this time).

You'll have to get a heater for your shop area

Dam, so what situations (ink type and press speed) are causing a bottleneck for you?
I ask because I was planning to upgrade to a similar size gas dryer later this year...

full size (up to about 14"x17") discharge/waterbase/hsa work at a 2.5minute retention time on a 38" belt + 10' chamber nets us about 400 shirts/hr...   if we're rocking plastisol, we can hit 660-700hr no problem with the same setup.

on many of the discharge jobs, there's many times we could run upwards of 800/hr due to no flashing, but the dryer slows us down majorly.

in an ideal world, I'd like to have a 60-72" belt, minimum 16' chamber...

Thanks, Good to know. We print a lot of discharge and water base as well, but usually smaller print sizes. I'll have to keep it in mind when we get closer to finding our next dryer.

[jvanick]

Thanks, Good to know. We print a lot of discharge and water base as well, but usually smaller print sizes. I'll have to keep it in mind when we get closer to finding our next dryer.

even the smaller print sizes can cause fun times...

I hate having to have the unloader play tetris on the belt

[Wildcard]

This is interesting info because I've recently been told that a Fusion 36" dryer with 4 panels would easily keep up with a sportsman, even running water based inks. It seems unrealistic to me though considering this info.

[jvanick]

This is interesting info because I've recently been told that a Fusion 36" dryer with 4 panels would easily keep up with a sportsman, even running water based inks. It seems unrealistic to me though considering this info.

in my experience, unless you were running fixers/low curing additives, this is incorrect information...  We've run the sportsman at 'max-speed' of 900 shirts/hr, there's no way a 5'-6' chamber will keep up at 900/hr on the
recommended heat dwell times.

consider that most WB ink vendors recommend a 2-3 minute dwell in the chamber.

now do your math on belt speed vs chamber length.

[244]

This is interesting info because I've recently been told that a Fusion 36" dryer with 4 panels would easily keep up with a sportsman, even running water based inks. It seems unrealistic to me though considering this info.

A Fusion 4 panel will not easily keep up with a Sportsman running waterbase unless you are running the press really slow. Fusions can do waterbase but is not designed for that application and as such will be slow.

[Maff]

This is interesting info because I've recently been told that a Fusion 36" dryer with 4 panels would easily keep up with a sportsman, even running water based inks. It seems unrealistic to me though considering this info.

We have a hard time running our Manual press at full speed when printing waterbase/discharge. We have a 3 Panel 36" belt with forced air.  We usually print team style with 2 operators and unless its a small design, we are playing Tetris and usually waiting for the dryer to catch up.... it's painfully slow.  All my research here has led to the rule of "Size Matters" when it comes to WB/DC/HSA.  I was hoping 8' of gas heat would be enough... but now i'm reconsidering 

[Wildcard]

This is interesting info because I've recently been told that a Fusion 36" dryer with 4 panels would easily keep up with a sportsman, even running water based inks. It seems unrealistic to me though considering this info.

A Fusion 4 panel will not easily keep up with a Sportsman running waterbase unless you are running the press really slow. Fusions can do waterbase but is not designed for that application and as such will be slow.

Thanks for the response, I'm trying to plan some upgrades at the moment.
Is there a ratio or guideline to use for matching dryer size according to a particular size/speed press (or multiple presses)?