MHM presses

[alan802]

I've thought about adding a bigger servo motor to our machine if our servo ever goes out.  Our press will dry cycle at 1020 pcs/hr and will print at that pace with up to a 15" design if we can move the squeegee that fast.  But ink and mesh count can slow the print speed down a lot.  I only flood fast enough so that the flood stroke finishes a split second before the index is finished.  We also run our flash units in unison with the print stroke so that there is usually no dwell time or bottle necking due to the flash unit, or a flood stroke, or even a squeegee stroke.  Our servo return happens when the carousel is in the up position and the print sequence is ending right about the time the servo is back in it's home position.  There have been times where we are waiting on a long squeegee stroke with thick inks but for the most part, everything is in unison with each other and we control the speed by setting our dwell time in the carousel down position.  At one second dwell time the press is running about 800-850 pcs/hr.  When I'm operating I usually keep it around .5-1 second dwell but on an easy loading shirt with a left chest I'll run the press with zero dwell and it's humming along at 1000/hr.  It's not easy to keep up that pace though.

I do agree with us being in the golden age of autos.  The mid/late 90's were not printer friendly in terms of bells and whistles and those machines that did have a ton of features, the MHM's and perhaps the centurian were well over 100K for even a 10 color.  Now you can get a press with all our features for under 70K and depending on the manufacturer, you might could get a nicely equiped machine with 16 colors for under 100K.  That last option does come with a slight risk .

[blue moon]

the fastest we've run our E-type was 1180 per hour. 'did not last very long as we ran out of shirts after about 5 min. It dry cycles at 1400 per hour, but that's without any stroking. The 1180 we did was on a youth shirt (so it was easy to load) and it was a small print, probably 4" or so.

This is not a sustainable speed by any means! The wear and tear on the operator is too much, and trying to keep the shirts coming to the press and sorting and stacking at the end of the dryer are a pretty big undertaking. If we are running at 700/hour I am a happy camper.

we have printed as many as 30 different setups in a day (long day, probably a little over 12 hours), but that is still a lot of setups for one press. We can do 10-12 jobs per day on the press without really making a big deal out of it (mix of one color, multi and usually one sim process. of note too is that we register to 5-6/1000th of an inch).

pierre

[mk162]

our old gauntlet would dry cycle at around 84 dozen an hour, the fastest I ran it was 72.  I just couldn't go any faster than that and I still can't...heck I am even slower now.

setups matter more than print speed, but print speed gets all the glory.

[alan802]

I think the MHM's index faster than any press on the market (production models at least).  The E-type I saw in Ft. Worth was so amazing to me because I was used to the very slow index on the centurian.  I remember the sleeves of the shirts were flapping out straight when the press would index and they had it dry cycling at 1400 per hour.  If our press was faster in the return to the home position and if it indexed twice as fast as it does now then I'm pretty sure it would approach 1500 per hour.  Rick told me they had experimented with a servo motor that had twice the HP of the ones that came standard and he mentioned that it was crazy fast but he thought it was way too dangerous and he worried it would end up hurting someone.  He felt it wasn't worth it to have it print that fast since most operators couldn't even sustain 1000 per hour for more than 15-20 minutes.  I feel the same way as far as the safety feature goes but I also would like the option to have the press cycle faster for those few jobs that we could run at 1200-1400 per hour.  The acceleration and decceleration control is very important on machines that index that quickly but all the manu's have that under control.  I wish our press had options to increase or decrease index speed and acceleration but Rick didn't want people messing with some of that stuff and really screwing something up or hurting someone.  I'm still going to look at a bigger servo if this one ever goes out but for right now, if I could speed up the servo return while the carousel is up, I think it would increase cycling to about 1300 per hour.

Is there any good video of the MHM's in a production run to compare index speed?  I looked briefly but didn't find much.

[blue moon]

personally, I think anything over 850 is overkill. I would rather we sustain the 700 than get wiped out by 30 min of 1100 and then have the production suffer for the rest of the day. On a rare occasion when we do go balls to the wall for a day, our press ops are beat the next day and the production suffers. Last big order we had, I set it up for a double index, got a couple more ppl on the press and we sustained 800/hour for two days (actual production about 500+ per hour). It was easy going without anybody killing themselves. The spirits stayed pretty high and nobody was dreading the next day.

pierre

[TCT]

our old gauntlet would dry cycle at around 84 dozen an hour, the fastest I ran it was 72.  I just couldn't go any faster than that and I still can't...heck I am even slower now.

setups matter more than print speed, but print speed gets all the glory.

Totally agree! Like Blue Moon said, with the reg systems these things have you can set up, and be printing in no time. Job turnover is can be really high(which in this case is a good thing!).

When we ran the press at 1020pc./hr it was also kids T's, but we had 12K of them. Needless to say within the first 25min I was overjoyed. I was daydreaming of new incredible speeds, but like you guys said it is not that realistic to run like that all day, sure would be nice though!

[larryk]

Not to change the subject or hijack the thread but I believe Dan is onto something...... Sometimes, and becoming to be more often, things are taken out of context by one person or the other. If you are having a rather bad day and you read something you don't like, you are more likely to react with a negative comment and things just escalate from there. I would like to suggest that maybe our moderators could offer some kind of color coding for our posts..... You know like BLUE when everything is cool, ORANGE when you are kinda upset and RED when you are being a smart a$$....... and I'm sure they could come up with a bunch more...... Like YELLOW when your panties are in a bunch............ just a suggestion.

[Screened Gear]

Not to change the subject or hijack the thread but I believe Dan is onto something...... Sometimes, and becoming to be more often, things are taken out of context by one person or the other. If you are having a rather bad day and you read something you don't like, you are more likely to react with a negative comment and things just escalate from there. I would like to suggest that maybe our moderators could offer some kind of color coding for our posts..... You know like BLUE when everything is cool, ORANGE when you are kinda upset and RED when you are being a smart a$$....... and I'm sure they could come up with a bunch more...... Like YELLOW when your panties are in a bunch............ just a suggestion.

This is not a bad idea but would make this site look like some kind of rainbow party. <<<I'm feeling sh!tty today)

[Dottonedan]

This is not a bad idea but would make this site look like some kind of rainbow party. <<<I'm feeling sh!tty today)

[/r]

That would be BROWN.

[blue moon]

it would all be OK until some hack turns it into a skittles forum!

pierre

[T Shirt Farmer]

Pierre,

What does this mean? "we sustained 800/hour for two days (actual production about 500+ per hour)" was the press cycling @ 800 and you netted out 500 per hour because of stopping for screen maintenance etc...

[blue moon]

Pierre,

What does this mean? "we sustained 800/hour for two days (actual production about 500+ per hour)" was the press cycling @ 800 and you netted out 500 per hour because of stopping for screen maintenance etc...

yup! lint cleanup, misprints, gluing/wiping the platens . . . We actually stopped and had a lunch break instead of rotating, too.

pierre

[alan802]

I dread doing the big jobs.  I cannot stand looking at 5 carts with 500 shirts on each cart then printing for 2 hours only to still have most of the shirts still left.  And when I speak of running the press at 1000 per hour I'm certainly not talking about that being the average for an entire day.  We run even the small jobs as fast as we can simply because we are trying to get a lot done in a day.  Running the press at 1000/hr instead of 600 an hour for a 300 piece job can be more beneficial than having a regi system.  Obviously I think a regi system is more important than running the press full speed but I'm just trying to explain why I do sometimes talk about press speed and why it is a very important factor.

[Gabe]

well I believe @600/hr is a good speed to run at beyond that
in my experience the quality starts to diminish

[T Shirt Farmer]

We run at 600 - 700 index speed depending on print size etc... which for us seems to not beat anyone up to bad and gives the loader enough time to get the shirts on straight, swipe of a random thread or lint ball and the puller has 2 seconds or so to eyeball the print before pulling the shirt off the pallet. My pricing system is based on a net of 450 shirts net per hour and gives us some wiggle room when you have ONE OF THOSE DAYS!!!!