Printing on long tables is popular in asia because they all use cheap materials.
1. Investment.
Extremely cheap to start with a flat table, then build yourself up from there.
2. Ink
The cost of cheap rubber ink can be 75% cheaper than plastisol inks or cheap water based ink can only cost 90% cheaper than Matsui. However, air dried inks cause a lot of problems on carousel presses.
3. Production flow.
There are print shops here that can lay down several hundred shirts at one time. So they set up colour 1 then starts printing. By the time colour 2 is set, the colour 1 guy is already over 20 to 30 shirts ahead of colour 2. This creates a buffer for wiping the screens, or give time for the ink to dry. Can you imagine on a carousel, if one person needs to wipe down a screen, the whole production line has to stop and wait. Waiting time causes ink to dry in screen.
Why I moved onto carousel presses.
1. Efficiency.
2. No need to hire too many workers.
3. Quality(Can't use Newman on long tables).
Which one is cheaper to run?
Long tables due to ink cost. But the headache of controlling more people is not nice.
How do I compete?
Quality and find something that can't be done on long tables.
My moto: "Work smarter not harder, Don't complain find a solution".
Anthony
