Realistic printing speeds

[Maxie]

I think our printing speeds are too slow.     I'd looking for feedback with realistic printing speeds, what do you in your shop on a day to day basis, hour after hour.
We have two printing options. printer plus catcher or printer, puller and catcher.     Printing on MHM S type.
How many one color shirts can you print in an hour? Two hours etc.
How many 4 color shirts, etc.?   Thanks in advance for your feedback.

[whitewater]

Being realistic, there's no way my staff will print like I used to. I can dial it in, where if I have 2 and myself,  I can load in 1 squeegee stroke, they can or do not. There really is no need to bust their ass when they get paid the same no matter what. And in the past I tried to offer incentives, didn't work for me.

What I do though, is we keep track of the  time of the job we are doing. Start is when they load the screens in, and finished is when boxed and screens down. They put the time in monday, with any notes of if or why it may have took longer than they thought. Then we pout that in price it, along with whomever does art, they put their time spent doing mockup, seps, and burning screens.


In price it it gives us a percentage of profit or loss...

Monday mornings we go over the previous week and see where we hit our numbers or didn't. And try to figure out why.

Its so hard for me to even get staff to work here, that I try to figure out ways to hold them accountable without directly saying " you are to slow on this, we can print faster."

Maybe instead think of it as " are we hitting our percentages?" " or " they are going a little slow, but there are no mistakes and the prints look good"

[Doug S]

With us just being a mom and pop with an occasional helper.  I would say we average 420 give or take a dozen an hour.  I am the bottleneck as the loader because I am too obsessed with straight and centered.  Unless they are really long prints the number stays roughly the same.  I realize there are many that print faster.  If I had to do it over again, I would've forked over the difference for a press that the tables didn't raise and lower.  I didn't realize how much of a difference that makes until I went to a class that had challengers and I loaded 100 shirts at a speed of 1/3 faster than I load now with less fatigue.

[balloonguy]

I have a very old diamonback (number 7, I think). With me loading and unloading I can consistently hit 350. With an unloader I can get up to about 450 for a couple of hours. After 3.5 - 4 hours I begin to slow down to 420 or so. Of course the size of the print matters. A left chest can go a little faster than a 14” tall print…

[blue moon]

anything more than 48 pieces we have a puller. They are slower when alone, probably 350 per hour or so. With a puller if they are doing less than 700, something is wrong. Most settle in at 850 or so on the runs over 100. Some print at 950 pretty steadily.
For really long runs we are at 4k per day normally. One of our faster guys will crank out 6k plus. He can do that for a day or two, but then he is beat so we'll give them smaller orders to recover...
Last three days we did pretty good and averaged over 550 per hour per press with setups included. Thats with 6.5 setups per press each day. Average order size 190 pieces. 5 ppl working on the floor plus 2 catchers.

pj

[farmboygraphics]

My answer will be of no help to you, but here it is anyway.
264 pcs an hour once around with flash (average job), printed by shirt size, folded, stacked, next size.
I'm also checking emails, keeping jobs going on the Roland at the same time or wandering off in the shop to
work on something that I just have to do because I'll forget if I don't. One man shop, some days I'm more efficient then others.

[Homer]

Are you giving them the proper tools to be efficient and run faster production? This has been my quest for the past few years, is there anything I can do/buy to make your quality of life better?... Standing pads, better shoes, better stacking tables, portable AC units, lasers, an assistant, a beer fridge...I find the "happier" they are, the more they produce..... Rewards, like last Friday, if you guys get through x, y and Z, you can take Friday and Monday off...

[tonypep]

Apparently not since most press mfrs advertise print speeds up to 1,000+ per hour

[3Deep]

We are a Mom n Pop shop and now I could care less about how fast I get a job done as long as we get it done for there pickup date, now back in the day I was about hitting numbers in and out.  What really changed a lot of print speeds and hitting numbers (covid) is order size's now which for us has dropped, once was 1k to 3k orders and now we are comfy at 48 to 500 pc orders now with a 1K every now and then, and to be truthful I think we make more doing the smaller orders than the large ones.

[prozyan]

I'm pretty much like Daryl.  When I was in the grind, we shot for 900/hour.  These days, its just me and I don't really care how fast I'm going as long as I make deadlines and are not printing all day.  If I had to guess, I'd say I cruise somewhere between 150 and 200 per hour these days. 

I'm going to fully retire in another 18 months, so I've scaled way back on clients and only take the jobs that I feel like taking now.  Life is good.

[Maxie]

We're making some staff changes and I want to make a table with numbers we can aim for.    I also want to plan production based on numbers.   We use Monday and have a lists of all the jobs to be printed but without times.     I want to add times and be able to check at the end of the day if we're keeping up.
At the moment the printer prints at whatever speed he's in the mood for and we have no way the check.
We're are not a normal print shop, we don't do custom printing, we only sell printed shirts.  The shirts we import from India and print here.      We average about 1400 prints a day which is very slow.    I want to keep the figures with less staff.

[blue moon]

We're making some staff changes and I want to make a table with numbers we can aim for.    I also want to plan production based on numbers.   We use Monday and have a lists of all the jobs to be printed but without times.     I want to add times and be able to check at the end of the day if we're keeping up.
At the moment the printer prints at whatever speed he's in the mood for and we have no way the check.
We're are not a normal print shop, we don't do custom printing, we only sell printed shirts.  The shirts we import from India and print here.      We average about 1400 prints a day which is very slow.    I want to keep the figures with less staff.

1400 finished goods on one press is not bad. It will depend on the number of ppl you have working on the press and how many jobs you print per day. If it was just one design, that’s low, but from what I remember you have multiple setups with higher color counts.
Even with two ppl operating the press(loader and puller) you still need to burn screens and mix inks. If they are doing that too, 1400 is a good number.
This all heavily depends on how many setups you do per day. If it’s 2, you should produce more. If it’s 8 then they are doing well.
My suggestion would be to work based on dollars per hour (or your equivalent).
pj

[Maxie]

At the moment we average about 230 per hour so if we are printing 1400 per day we need 6 hours.
Our work day is 8.5 hours net so that leaves 2.5  hrs a day for washing screens, exposing, etc.
Right now we have 2 people on the press, a catcher and a fourth person who gets orders ready, ships, etc.
I think we can manage with one person less, the printer can work alone on smaller jobs and get help with big orders.

[blue moon]

At the moment we average about 230 per hour so if we are printing 1400 per day we need 6 hours.
Our work day is 8.5 hours net so that leaves 2.5  hrs a day for washing screens, exposing, etc.
Right now we have 2 people on the press, a catcher and a fourth person who gets orders ready, ships, etc.
I think we can manage with one person less, the printer can work alone on smaller jobs and get help with big orders.

What is your average order size?

[Maxie]

Average about 75, a lot have front and back.   Now and again sleeve as well.