eighty screens in eighty minutes (DTS cons and pros)

[Socalfmf]

for us it is print the first one....start the exposure unit, then get the next one going then it is done exposing get water on it then expose and start a new one and do a round robin...

again works for us.

also Mike you hit the nail on the head...how much time do you spend lining up film? how much on finding film ect....that is where our savings are plus on press time...line up is even better than film with tri-loc and no pin holes no regi marks ect...

again  works for us....

[tonypep]

Makes sense, more of an assembly line.

[alan802]

I can't believe we finally have an in-shop video of one in action!!!!  I'm pumped about that, let's see some more.  I used to think this was going to be our next big purchase, but I'm leaning second auto right now, then DTS once we hit that 40-50 screen/day threshold.  That's where my math is telling me we will see great returns. 

[inkman996]

for us it is print the first one....start the exposure unit, then get the next one going then it is done exposing get water on it then expose and start a new one and do a round robin...

again works for us.

also Mike you hit the nail on the head...how much time do you spend lining up film? how much on finding film ect....that is where our savings are plus on press time...line up is even better than film with tri-loc and no pin holes no regi marks ect...

again  works for us....

I agree Sam dealing with films pre-press is time, fortunately since we got the Tri-Loc we have gotten proficient with the system and 99% of our set ups are nuts on. Currently I am still the only one aligning the carrier sheets till i have someone i feel comfortable enough with to pass it on, since doing them all my self I got pretty fast at it.

As for film storage I guess it depends on each shops system, some may store films several rooms away, some may have horrible orginization skills. In our case our films are stored in the same room as the exposure, I maintain a database on the PC of all folders, and art work is all saved on the PC with easy to use information to help find films in the future. It works well and we never have to waste any significant amount of time searching films.

Me personaly I think CTS is awesome but like many its like any really expensive toy, you dream about owning but you need to justify the cost first.

[ZooCity]

Sam, that was really good to see a video of one working.  I can see it's efficacy in the right shop. 

One of those machines would speed things up when taken as a whole system v. inkjet film but would actually slow us down in the screen room itself.  There's no way it could keep up, you must be shooting with a smaller expo unit in your shop and not using a plain water dip tank and a pressure washer to resolve.  I'd be standing around with my d!ck in my hand waiting on that thing.  We have a purposefully limited screen mesh selection and can shoot most exposures 2 screens up, then into the dip tank and onward.  There's tons of room for improvement in our process but it's still too fast for a device like this, all screens would have to be CTS imaged well in advance, maybe while someone coated screens so it wasn't dead time in the darkroom. 

Our flow is like Tony's and literally every single screen gets film placed on carrier sheets whether it's a single color run that will never be repeated or a job that will be ran every month.  I consider the pre-press aligning of films a major checkpoint as well, it's what the Pin-Lock system hinges on and it works. 

I understand you could replace this checkpoint digitally using Distiller to manually generate an on-screen or, I would hope, a CTS specific pre-RIP preview that's built into your unit's software.  I think that's the coolest thing about it honestly, that it forces perfect pre-press art, but anyone can get that serious about finalizing art before ripping without the machine to make you do it. 

Looks bad ass if you've got the right system for it to fit into though.  That black looks dark!  And I would be head over heels about eliminating milky films for the high lpi dot work.  I bet you've seen some major fine dot improvement?

[alan802]

I think on press setup times, faster exposures and better 1:1 reproduction of art, specifically halftones, due to no milky film blocking light are great things, I'm not trying to argue against DTS at all, I love the technology.  But I also see how in some shops it will not give you the fast ROI times.  If your shop can develop 80 screens in 80 minutes, hell, 160 minutes, with film technology then you will not get the ROI compared to shops where they can only develop 15 screens an hour.  Me and my new guy just did 10 screens in 17 minutes, film taping, exposure, washout, compressed air.  The first 10 minutes was pretty slow and we had 2, 110 mesh with 50 micron EOM that takes 3 times longer than a 156-305 to develop, but the last 7 was better than one screen per minute.

[DannyGruninger]

I think we can all sum up the fact if your a shop with a large pre print line where your not printing films all day long then a DTS probably isn't the hot ticket. Granted I would like to know how many hours a shop like Tony has in printing all the films he keeps on hand as I imagine there's a boat load of time originally in all that. I know for fact our DTS machine can image a screen faster then I can print the same film......


I would love to setup a competition comparison with a shop like Alan's or Pierre that has an efficient production already in place using films and a shop like ours with the DTS technology......This would be the exact same multi color design going from start to finish from the time the first screen/film is outputted until the first shirt comes off the press.....We did a similar test the very first day we "plugged" out dts into the wall and on a 5 color job I saved 25 minutes from start to finish. When we do 8 jobs like that a day, well you get the savings....


I will get a video of ours doing a screen tonight or tomorrow sometime for everyone to see. Our DTS only has 1 printhead so the speed of ours can be increased by almost 3 times. I never image more then 50 screens a day so having more print heads was not an issue for me. The 3 print head machines will image a full size design in under 45 seconds with lots of ink coverage which a standard epson printer out putting films would take 2-3 minutes. By looking at the video Sam posted I would say our Lawson is quite a bit faster then his. I can't speak for him but it looks like Sam's is not the current version that M&R offers which is basically identical to our lawson unit.

Just more food for the thought, but I will get a video shot by tomorrow sometime.

[Socalfmf]

Danny

you are correct we have the iImage...it is the older one not the iScreen....we also only have 1 head...we also run it with the msp3140....

i would love to see that data as well a shop with a dts vs film from start to finish..

sam

[tonypep]

Pierre's shop would be a perfect beta site.

[screenprintguy]

http://youtu.be/n1zvjphtRYs

the good bad and ugly....again it works for us...not having to find, line up refile ect...

Can't wait for ours to come in man, thanks for the video!!!!

[RICK STEFANICK]

Tony...with DTS you don't think you could have done 90 or 100 in 80 min?  I would think DTS is faster than looking up film....

Lets see a video of your DTS printing a screen.

thanks for posting it up

[DannyGruninger]

Here's a quick and disclaimer** real shitty video of our unit....I took the video on my phone and had to break it up in a couple sections so they probably overlap. Below are the links.

I've got the machine set real slow right now and it's printing UNI directional which makes it much slower as well. I was just doing a bunch of high end sim process screens so that's why it was set at uni direction. The bi direction we use for solid style prints which speeds it up quite a bit compared to this video.

dts 1

dts3

dts2

[CastleKing]

We have the I-Screen currently and love it so much, I've ordered an I-image (due to be here any day now). The benefit for us has been the reduction in set-up times, not film. We use this in combination with the Tri-Loc. It is amazing how accurate the set-ups are. We are nailing set-ups in under 2 minutes per color, day in and day out. It makes no difference if we set up a 2 color or 12 color design, they are very accurate if not perfect on the first test print. We have had days where we have set up 15 3-6 color jobs and still ran 2600 pieces on 1 machine in 1 day. Look at the big picture and the value of the open press capacity. Our ROI on the I-screen was about 3 months when we factored in additional revenue generated by faster set-ups, yielding more production each day.

[tonypep]

That's where I would see the benefit......set up time. My presses are pre-tri-lock and are all different so wouldn't work for me but If I had newer ones I would probably reconsider. Still too slow though.

[alan802]

How many DTS units are out there? 

Kiwo I-jet II, wax-based ink

M&R I-image & I-screen, waterbased ink

Lawson Express Jet, waterbased ink?

Douthitt CTS Digital Screen Imager (great product name), fantastic website as well...insert fart noise here, wax based ink

Exile Technologies (formerly OYO Instruments) Spyder, wax based ink, Diablo & Goblin, both thermal ribbon

Acti Camera Legend 2800, Screenjet 3100, Legend 6460, waterbased ink

Richmond Direct Jet Pro and Direct Jet Max, waterbased ink

Jackhammer Tech, CTS Jackhawk 9000

Did I miss any?  Got to be one or two more out there.