Impressions per gallon

[AAMike]

Can someone lead me to threads discussing prints per gallon with plastisol and or WB?

Thanks

[dirkdiggler]

hard to say, u talking left chest prints or full backs.

[GraphicDisorder]

hard to say, u talking left chest prints or full backs.

Even then it could vary so much, what if its solid filled graphics vs just a line of text. I would say at best a average could be established.

[Frog]

Not sure if this has been discussed much, but the variables are numerous. Mesh count and area will vary greatly. Union's UniMix mixing program includes this calculation function, and probably is fairly applicable to other similar inks.

[GraphicDisorder]

Print size too, shop A may do a bunch of 10 inch prints, shop B might be nothing but left chests, some like myself pretty much all 15 inch wide 17 inch tall backs. Would be difficult to lock it down even from one shop to the next let alone even in one shop. 

[tonypep]

Rutland, Wlflex etc have calculators. Large margin of error do to almost infinite printing variables. For the 10K to 100K orders I have the ink dept print each ink/screen separately and weight the shirt wet. Or pellons. Whatever. Just tare first of course. This is the most accurate method if you really want to put cost on large projects

[Admiral]

Rutland, Wlflex etc have calculators. Large margin of error do to almost infinite printing variables. For the 10K to 100K orders I have the ink dept print each ink/screen separately and weight the shirt wet. Or pellons. Whatever. Just tare first of course. This is the most accurate method if you really want to put cost on large projects

If it's after the fact - or a project to get the best approximations possible - you could weigh the ink before and after, don't forget to estimate the loss due to screen / spatula / squeegee / floodbar cleanup also. 

[jvanick]

fabric type will matter quite a bit too...

a really coarse weaved hoodie will use a ton more ink than say a 100% poly performance T.

[alan802]

This would be so difficult to figure out from shop to shop, job to job.  It's easy once you've got a few shirts printed and weighed, but aside from that, lot's of pee'ing in the wind.

[SI]

IC Plastisol Pantone matching system has a calculator where you tell it the imprint size and the quantity of shirts, and it calculates how much ink you need to make to print the job.  I haven't enough experience to see how accurate it actually is, but there is another tool that might help in figuring the answer

[abchung]

 

If it's after the fact - or a project to get the best approximations possible - you could weigh the ink before and after, don't forget to estimate the loss due to screen / spatula / squeegee / floodbar cleanup also. 

We also weight before and after, we try to clean everything as normal (same way).

The data we collect are : mesh size, type of graphics(halftone or vector), ink type, fabric type, quantity.

After a while you can approximate to the nearest 50 grams. If we get it way wrong, we need to know why.

[Maxie]

This is something I have never worried about measuring.
It's virtually impossible to be accurate for all the reasons mentioned, the main reason I don't measure is because the cost of the ink is so low per print it's not worth worrying about.

[jvanick]

because the cost of the ink is so low per print it's not worth worrying about.

if we were talking sub pennies here, maybe I could agree with this, but some of our prints come out to 20 cents or more of ink per shirt (and we're not talking specialty inks here...)

when doing a 10,000 shirt run, saving a few pennies here and there can add up quick.

[starchild]

If it takes a gallon of ink or more for a production run then using impressions per gallon makes sense for cost pricing.. But if it takes only 2 grams for the run then use impressions per 2 grams for the cost pricing.. It's not what the ink cost it's what the production cost.. Ink cost is a recipe for cutting cost by using cheaper inks..

Sent using Tapatalk

[AAMike]

I think that I will go with the weight of the shirt. My plan is to run the shirt through the dryer to get rid of any moisture first. Print the job in plastisol and weigh it. Then print the same design in waterbase. I will weigh the WB before curing. I am also going to try and calculate what kind of loss we will have with leftover ink when using WB/DC.