3 Weeks In, Gauntlet III Initial Thoughts

[Maxie]

Alan, sounds like you need to slow your machine down.
You manage to print at amazing speeds but it sounds like in the process you are killing your workers.

[shirtshack]

Would love to try the synergy ink but being in the UK means I will hit the usuall not available in th UK wall..
I really like the legacy for its bright white and creamy texture and zero bleed issues, maybe if you could explain the body of an ink in detail I could do some tests on some inks.

What would be your top 3 white inks for poly blends and top 3 for printing black gildan premium ring spun cotton. Hopefully at least one will be available in the UK and I can do some testing.

[Maxie]

Shirt shack, where are you based.
Pyramid have some interesting whites that are worth trying.

[alan802]

Alan, sounds like you need to slow your machine down.
You manage to print at amazing speeds but it sounds like in the process you are killing your workers.

If the workload they've been submitted to the last few months is killing them...I don't have much hope for their future endeavors.  It's been cupcake city around here except the first week in Jan when we did 20K impressions.  Besides that we've been doing regular jobs and with 2 autos we've not had to bust our butts much at all.  I'm just being honest, last year and so far this year we've probably been overstaffed if anything and the long, tough days are much fewer.  Our sales are up and job numbers have stabilized so we're making more per job and the workload on the crew has declined as we've gotten more efficient.

[shirtshack]

Im based in Weymouth, dorset.
I used Pyramids poly white most of last year but once I  tried the Legacy from International coatings I switched as it is a brighter white.

[alan802]

From what little I've been able to gather, the Legacy isn't your issue with print speed.  It should shear fast, as it's a little light in the loafers, but might suffer in opacity compared to some of the whites I prefer.

Do you have Rutland or QCM where you're at shirtshack?  Rutland Tidy or QCM 158 are the same product and I really like them.  They will FLY on the press.  They are good for 50/50 but you still need to be careful with bad bleeders. 

Would love to try the synergy ink but being in the UK means I will hit the usuall not available in th UK wall..
I really like the legacy for its bright white and creamy texture and zero bleed issues, maybe if you could explain the body of an ink in detail I could do some tests on some inks.

What would be your top 3 white inks for poly blends and top 3 for printing black gildan premium ring spun cotton. Hopefully at least one will be available in the UK and I can do some testing.

[shirtshack]

Rutland inks I can get through pyramid UK, but as I understand it inks are mixed here so formulars may be different.
I will drop Qcm a line to see if they have a UK dealer, Google did not supply an answer on that.

I did wounder about legacy opacity, when printing on to gildan premium ringspun shirts, 150 s mesh does not seem to place enough ink for total opacity, better results using 135s or 110t mesh with 20% eom and action double Squeegy.

[Maxie]

I don't think Rutland make any more inks in the UK, they tried and it was not successful.

[alan802]

I used the Revolver Mode for the 1st time today...it was nice!  I'm so used to turning heads on and off while I'm trying to operate all the other things on the press and some 7-8 color jobs can be very tough to do while keeping the auto spinning at a decent rate.  Now I just programmed the heads and revolutions and it just did what I told it to do, even allowing me to run the press super fast on one revolution and the unload revolution it slows itself down to whatever speed I can unload and load.  It's a feature that I'll try not to use very often, but I am really impressed with the feature and it's not all that slow either, I was spinning it at around 700/hr.

[GraphicDisorder]

I used the Revolver Mode for the 1st time today...it was nice!  I'm so used to turning heads on and off while I'm trying to operate all the other things on the press and some 7-8 color jobs can be very tough to do while keeping the auto spinning at a decent rate.  Now I just programmed the heads and revolutions and it just did what I told it to do, even allowing me to run the press super fast on one revolution and the unload revolution it slows itself down to whatever speed I can unload and load.  It's a feature that I'll try not to use very often, but I am really impressed with the feature and it's not all that slow either, I was spinning it at around 700/hr.

But Alan..... you should never use that feature. Every for any reason.

/sarcasm

[alan802]

I thought it was pretty awesome that it took almost 2 months before we actually used it

[GraphicDisorder]

I thought it was pretty awesome that it took almost 2 months before we actually used it

That it is!

[DannyGruninger]

We probably used it on the first day 

36 pcs with white print on black.... yeah I will revolve that all day vs making 2 screens

[Nation03]

I used the Revolver Mode for the 1st time today...it was nice!  I'm so used to turning heads on and off while I'm trying to operate all the other things on the press and some 7-8 color jobs can be very tough to do while keeping the auto spinning at a decent rate.  Now I just programmed the heads and revolutions and it just did what I told it to do, even allowing me to run the press super fast on one revolution and the unload revolution it slows itself down to whatever speed I can unload and load.  It's a feature that I'll try not to use very often, but I am really impressed with the feature and it's not all that slow either, I was spinning it at around 700/hr.

That's pretty cool. I always wondered if it was possible to speed up the revolver when it was printing and then slow it down when you needed to load/unload. Was 700/hr your production number or was that just what the press was indexing at? Either way, that sounds fast for sending the pallets around twice.

[alan802]

When it's in revolver mode it doesn't show you the production counter but I was trying to keep up with it by counting pallets.  When we weren't loading new shirts the press was running at roughly 1300/hr (but you have to remember there are no shirts coming off then so it's really not 1300, that's just the rate the press is spinning) then down to about 600/hr when I was loading/unloading.  That 700/hr might be a little high but next time I do something similar I'll run the stop watch over the course of a few hundred shirts and see exactly what our print rate is.  I do know we ran through 100 pieces way faster than we used to, at least in half the time, since I didn't have to run in manual mode and remember when to turn heads on and off.