eighty screens in eighty minutes (DTS cons and pros)

[trebor]

Here is as simple as it gets......

52 weeks in a year x 5 days per week= 260  days per year. 10 days of no work due to holidays and such = 250 work days per year x 8 hours per day = 2000 hours per year x 3 years = 6000 hours

$40,000/ 6000= $6.67 per hour + any type of interest or cost of money = $7+ per hour every hour you are open for the next 3 years or $50-$60 per day.

Is it worth $50 per day for you?

If you shorten that ROI to 12 months, triple the daily cost to $150 per day.

What you can save or increase in your profits in addition to those numbers is ROI. The rest is just break even. Or worse.

[alan802]

Here is as simple as it gets......

52 weeks in a year x 5 days per week= 260  days per year. 10 days of no work due to holidays and such = 250 work days per year x 8 hours per day = 2000 hours per year x 3 years = 6000 hours

$40,000/ 6000= $6.67 per hour + any type of interest or cost of money = $7+ per hour every hour you are open for the next 3 years or $50-$60 per day.

Is it worth $50 per day for you?

If you shorten that ROI to 12 months, triple the daily cost to $150 per day.

What you can save or increase in your profits in addition to those numbers is ROI. The rest is just break even. Or worse.

In a nutshell, yep.

[tonypep]

I get that but what if presses are down waiting for screens? That was the point of the original post.

[JBLUE]

I get that but what if presses are down waiting for screens? That was the point of the original post.

And that point has been missed. Also for these guys that have had to pull the glass out of their exposure unit or modified them beyond easily burning filmed screens? What do you do then?

My other question was what if you had to reburn while on press and the machine was in the middle of printing out a job? Can you quit the job/ pause it then restart?

One day or even one hour of down time in a large shop wipes out a huge chunk of that ROI.

[Printficient]

I get that but what if presses are down waiting for screens? That was the point of the original post.

And that point has been missed. Also for these guys that have had to pull the glass out of their exposure unit or modified them beyond easily burning filmed screens? What do you do then?

My other question was what if you had to reburn while on press and the machine was in the middle of printing out a job? Can you quit the job/ pause it then restart?

One day or even one hour of down time in a large shop wipes out a huge chunk of that ROI.

One solution to this is to do duplicates.  At the low consumables cost of most DTS machines this can be done for fractions of film cost alone not to mention employee cost.  Of course this presupposes a sufficient number of screens available in inventory at the proper mesh counts and it helps to have some sort of registration system on press.  In fact if you do not have a registration system on your press then getting DTS would be putting the cart before the horse.

[inkman996]

I get that but what if presses are down waiting for screens? That was the point of the original post.

And that point has been missed. Also for these guys that have had to pull the glass out of their exposure unit or modified them beyond easily burning filmed screens? What do you do then?

My other question was what if you had to reburn while on press and the machine was in the middle of printing out a job? Can you quit the job/ pause it then restart?

One day or even one hour of down time in a large shop wipes out a huge chunk of that ROI.

One solution to this is to do duplicates.  At the low consumables cost of most DTS machines this can be done for fractions of film cost alone not to mention employee cost.  Of course this presupposes a sufficient number of screens available in inventory at the proper mesh counts and it helps to have some sort of registration system on press.  In fact if you do not have a registration system on your press then getting DTS would be putting the cart before the horse.

Duplicate what?

I think it was mark at flying colors I was talking to and he mentioned something about dabbing a tray inside his expo unit right under the existing glass. Sounds like a good idea for that just in case scenario not to mention you can still use your old films.

[Flying Colors]

What kind of cts did you end up getting and has it made setups faster?

What percentage of jobs need no micro compared to what you use to do?
[/quote]

We ended up with the Douthitt CTS. I am not sure of the exact model number but we bought the one that can image larger frames. Our largest frame size is 29 x 42. It can accommodate that size of frame.

The two main reasons we bought this unit was location to us geographically and the wax.

First off Douthitt is a 20 minute drive from us; I agree wholeheartedly with Alan however that their website needs some work, and that is being polite. Just like everyone else you hear how buggy these things are and when you talk to a sales rep from the any company regarding a unit they all say the same thing -

"You are looking at the brand XYZ DTS? We just put two units at a place down in XYZ where brand XYZ had 3 units. Our two outperformed those two hands down, the others were down constantly down".

I am not exaggerating that I heard that exact phrase from 3 different companies. Consequently, with Douthhitt being so close to us it really made a difference knowing they could be here so quickly.

The other reason I mentioned above was wax. After speaking with a couple industry people and performing our own research we felt like wax was the way to go. Once we compared pricing and products we felt that Douthitt was the one for us. Now, that begs the question - what if Douthitt only sold a waterbased system? Well, I really cannot tell you without thinking more about it if we would still have went with the wax from somewhere else or stuck with the local company...

In regards to set up it was as advertised. If everyone does there job properly then it will be dead on. But, that doesn't mean it is idiot proof, you will still have to take care of a couple things. First off it matters how you put the frame in the unit. You have to make sure you are consistent where you put your hands when loading the screen. It is very easy to do, but I want to convey that you have to make sure you shift the frame over to the stops with your hands on the same position of the screen each time. Also, if you have all your screens at 25-30 newtons and one is at 15-20 you might have small adjustment. If you are finishing a discharge underbase job and then you have a plastisol job next and do not adjust your pressures then same thing, you may have a small adjustment. All of these things I am sure you have with any registration system but if you take the proper precautions then you should be on.

As to what percentage of jobs we micro compared to before I cannot say, due to machine types our prior reg system was not the same across the board and it would not be a fair comparison.

Mark

[Flying Colors]

Absolute kickass post Mark.  We must be using the same equations and numbers for figuring ROI, because the numbers you posted were so close to what I got that I'm wondering if you stole my notebook .  I took conservative numbers, ridiculous numbers, and everything in between.  I kept getting around that 40-50 screen/day mark with our current averages and based on repeats or new jobs the ROI tilted from looking fantastic to 48-60 months and beyond.  The ROI calculator I use is extremely detailed and is meant to put in ALL the equipment and literally everything you could think of that costs the shop money and time.  I need to simplify it a little so it doesn't look like the chinese alphabet but it works like it is, it's just a mess to look at.

Mark, did you get the Acti ScreenMaker Pro Legend 2800?
[/quote]

I try to be as detailed as possible to make sure the proper decision is made. Especially when you are in a family business like us you are responsible for parents, sisters, nieces, nephews, and not too mention your own kids. I would hate to think I wasted a ton of money on a decision because I was too lazy to do some research.

I think that when you are talking about such a drastic change to your normal day to day business operations it almost impossible to figure out exactly how it will go. Greg Kitson talks about how after you get a DTS that you will find other bottlenecks that you never knew existed. Thus, if you never address those new bottlenecks then your anticipated ROI goes down the drain due the lack of attention to your new problem areas.

That is why I believe taking a very conservative view and an aggressive view (aggressive view being what the sales rep tells you is going to happen) is the way to go and make sure you are ok with both outcomes before pulling the trigger on a capital purchase.

It is also good to know that are numbers are close, that either means were both good or both bad - at least we have company.

Mark

[ebscreen]

Duplicate what?

Screens.

Seems ridiculous to me for anything other than hot jobs or super long run or something.

[inkman996]

Duplicate what?

Screens.

Seems ridiculous to me for anything other than hot jobs or super long run or something.

That's what. I thought he was meaning but shooting duplicate screens would completely negate the whole purpose of the DTS so why bother. Double the screens, double time on the expo double screen reclaims etc no frigging way!

[JBLUE]

Great post guys! Good info on the ROI numbers. Thanks for sharing.

[alan802]

In 6+ years we've only had one screen bust while on press.  Is this something that others have experienced at a much higher rate?  A squeegee C-clamp fell off an empty print head onto a pallet on our old auto and then a screen came down on it and popped.  I've heard others mention screens busting on press but never thought it was something that happens but once in a blue moon (ha).  Only when we are doing a process job with 55-65 lpi and need to hold 4-5% dots do we need to occasionally burn more than one screen to get it right so I dpn't think DTS in this area would hurt us on re-shoots.  If anything it would help cut down on re-shoots.

[bimmridder]

Boy am I glad I didn't get in on this one.

[Orion]

Same here Bimm, although I have enjoyed watching.

[Gilligan]

I get that but what if presses are down waiting for screens? That was the point of the original post.

Yep... take your labor cost for that press and any other processes that are put on hold and that quickly adds up and sets you back a couple of days on your ROI.

Backups seem important for shops that can't be down.  Hell, I even have a WF1100 sitting in a box that I picked up on sale for $100 bucks as a backup in case my printer goes down/out.

If DTS goes down then, as mentioned, those that have converted to open air shooting of screens have a bit of change over just to get back operational.  With spare printer ($100 bucks), I pull the old one and slap in the new one and I'm printing in 10-15 mins.

This is of course speaking worse case scenario and strictly about ROI during those situations... everything needs to be thought about.

Hell, the same can be said for the entire press as it is a "single point of failure" that can shut down your shop and it's not so easy to have a "backup".  But you never want to increase your "single points of failure" without some redundancy.

I do like the idea of two DTS's!  Increased production rate and redundancy (though at half speed)... but that is taking this ROI conversation to the HNL (hole, nuther, level).