Anybody here a One Man Shop that went Auto?

[inkstain]

Hey guys,
I'm a One Man Shop that has been printing manually for about 10yrs.  My body hurts and business has been growing rapidly.
Good but hard on the body and brain. It's to the point where jobs are taking a lot longer to finish and at times turning down jobs.  Crazy I know!
Anyway, I'm going Automatic next month, a dream come true I hope! 

Any of you out there gone Auto from years of Manual?  How did it change everything?  Or did it change everything?
I'm hoping to have more time with the family and more time on art, clients, and not go home with a sore body.


Cheers!

[Socalfmf]

We we got our auto it was just Jill and myself...here is how your life will change

#1.  you will not be so F'ing tired at the end of the day and you body will thank you
#2.  you will get jobs done faster and faster...thus making more money and taking those last min jobs that you could not take before
#3.  you will be done printing by noon for the first month because it really increases your speed that much

I could go on and on, but i think you get the point....1 think I would tell you is to make sure you have everything in line BEFORE the auto gets there.

-make sure you have the right screens
-make sure you have the airlines put in
-make sure you have enough electricity to the press for flashes  yes flashes...having 2 is great
-make sure you dryer is up to speed with the auto...

and Congrats you have no clue to how your life is going to change

Sam

[IntegrityShirts]

One man shop here.  I went auto a little over a year ago, had an oval before that but I wouldn't count it.  I'm also not a full time screen printer as I have a day job 6.4hrs a day and I work the screen printing from 3-6pm M-F.

I've found that once you get in the groove of auto printing it makes a world of difference. 

The biggest thing I've learned though is, do it in daily chunks:

Clean and coat screens one day.
Pick and stack blanks another.
Do art, print films, expose another day.
Only print one or two days a week depending on work load. Summers are slow for me in a college town, it's nice!

If you run around printing films, exposing, drying, stacking, taping, setup, printing, stacking, boxing, you'll go nuts.  Set it up so you don't have to do the full process daily.  At least that works for me, 3 hours a day.

It's hard to get away from the manual for jobs around 24 pieces at first because of the intimidation of setting up the auto.  Set up multiple jobs on the press at one time.  Once you're familiar with the machine you'll notice your manual collecting dust until someone wants a sleeve print lol.

[GraphicDisorder]

We were 2 person shop, went auto.  That was just 1.5 years ago.  Now a 6 person shop, and have almost 4x the embroidery heads because of it. 

You can grow as about as fast as you want with a Auto assuming your pricing makes sense.

[Scobey Peterman]

We are a two person shop. We are going on our forth year of the auto. It frees me up to do other stuff while my co-worker prints.

Do you know what kind of auto you are going to get??

[ScreenPrinter123]

We are a two man shop as well and when we got our first auto in 2008 we asked ourselves why we waited so long.  If I was on my own there is no way I would be pulling/pushing squeegees having done it both ways now.  Call me lazy but even if its 12 shirts I am putting that job on the auto.

[3Deep]

Same here we printed for years manually then whent auto and Sam nail it! print jobs fly, you take jobs you would not take other wise due to time and amount of printing, I  will say this if your planing on hiring or getting bigger, get as many heads as you can now you'll thank yourself later down the line.

Darryl

[JBLUE]

Take what Darryl said about the heads and melt it in your brain. If you think you need a 6 color get a 10. If you need a ten get a 12. When buying equipment you have to think down the line so you do not paint yourself in a box. We got a 10 and I wish it were a 14 sometimes.

[GraphicDisorder]

I have a 8 and and wish it was at least a 12 or 14.  But I did start looking for a 6 color, so I moved from a 6 color to a 8 color at least.

For context there are MANY jobs I have done this year that I could not have done on a 6 color or smaller foot print machine.  I would buy no less, not in any way shape or form less than a 8 color.  6 color you will hit walls fast. 

[ScreenFoo]

If you have more good work than you can handle, it's a borderline no brainer to me.  Unless you do nothing but tiny orders, or weird locations, it's bound to pay for itself.


But I'm in agreement with most here--unless you're doing discharge only, or have some other reason for not needing a flash or two, get as many heads as you can.
Even though we don't turn down a lot of jobs for lack of capacity, I am wishing we would have had the room for a bigger press.  Revolver mode is great for short runs, or in a pinch, but it is a time sink.
We have an 8/10 Gauntlet, and had a line on a 14/16 Challenger at the time--wish we could have made that bigger press work out.

[Gilligan]

I have a 8 and and wish it was at least a 12 or 14.  But I did start looking for a 6 color, so I moved from a 6 color to a 8 color at least.

For context there are MANY jobs I have done this year that I could not have done on a 6 color or smaller foot print machine.  I would buy no less, not in any way shape or form less than a 8 color.  6 color you will hit walls fast.

Tell that to Gerry... I don't think he has had more than a 4 color job come in his shop yet.

[Prosperi-Tees]

Going on 3 years and have had a total of two 4 color jobs so far. Countless 1 and 2 color and a sprinkle of 3 color. Makes it hard to justify the extra heads for me.

[GraphicDisorder]

Going on 3 years and have had a total of two 4 color jobs so far. Countless 1 and 2 color and a sprinkle of 3 color. Makes it hard to justify the extra heads for me.

Must be nice.  I wouldn't know where to start with that type of thing.  We rarely ever get 1 color jobs.

[royster13]

I wonder if the number of multi colour jobs that come in depends on the charges for the extra colours......I have seen some price grids where the extra colours were very cheap....Therefore, I am speculating that those folks get more multi colour jobs than folks who charge more for the extra colours.....So maybe the discrepancy is caused by a pricing problem....

[Screened Gear]

I wonder if the number of multi colour jobs that come in depends on the charges for the extra colours......I have seen some price grids where the extra colours were very cheap....Therefore, I am speculating that those folks get more multi colour jobs than folks who charge more for the extra colours.....So maybe the discrepancy is caused by a pricing problem....

You sir hit it on the head. Your pricing and how you price will determine where you are cheap and where you are expensive. I have been working on my pricing and I have found many areas where I am too expensive and areas where I am way to cheap. I am working on a new pricing calculator that will give me full control of my pricing. Its going to take time but I will make more money and get more jobs that I want because of it.