Props to M&R

[Socalfmf]

Thanks M&R once again for great quality machinery.

here you go.

3500 shirts full back and left chest. 

back was underbase, yellow highlight white on purple shirts
left chest was 6 colors.

back not a problem but we wanted to flash 2x due to artwork and making it so sharp it will cut your finger...we used Kool-Mist for the first time...and wow.  worked great to print right after the flash. 

we did this job in 2 - 8 hr days with one guy loading and unloading and one guy at the end of the dryer.  so that is only 2 guys printing this job...they crushed it.

so thanks M&R for having the equipment to make us look great again

sam

[Parker 1]

That is impressive.  Props to the 2 guys working for you.

[3Deep]

Sam you should have jumped your booty in there and it would have been 3 guys and only two 6 hour days HA HA...good deal my friend!!!!!

D

[Frog]

Is it typical to have one person both loading and unloading on "real" autos (as opposed to what I always considered automated manuals, the little guys)
I have not had a lot of experience on these machines except helping on old Advance presses which we always ran a two person crew, loading and unloading.
Of course, another at the end of the dryer, and another floater bringing more shirts.

I guess my question is at one point do you add the second player?

[ZooCity]

That's sweet.  Kool mist sounds handy for those with low color presses or, I suppose, high color/flash needs.

Frog, I'm still a rookie but it's just about press speed and also scheduling for me as to whether 1 or 2 people are on the Gauntlet though I reckon the all-air '92 Gauntlet may fall under your category of "automated manual".  It can go shockingly fast if you dial it in but many DC/WB jobs need a 2x stroke and old air presses are just plain slow at that so 1 good op can run most jobs we print as fast as the press can.  If the press op is sloppy or slow you'll want someone else on there to keep from running the auto at an 8 sec dwell all day and missing lint boogers, low ink wells, etc.  Plastisol is almost all single stroke and flies like the damn wind, two needed there to run as fast as the press, or just one if there's no big hurry that day.  Back to 1 op if we have to revolve anything.  Also, any job that's really flying may bottle neck our dryer so you have that to consider as well.

If we have to go full bore I have 2 on the Gauntlet, one catching, one floating to help everyone else with ink, shirts, coffee, catching the phone, whatever's needed.  So that's a crew of 4 to haul on press or as few as 2 to just move along at a reasonable clip.  I have the added option of running both the auto and manual onto our dryer too so that gets taken advantage of when there's a slow job on the auto.  I am def learning how beneficial it is to cross train our small crew.

Not sure if that answers your question but I don't think there's a hard and fast for this, or perhaps I've yet to find that hard and fast set of rules.

[Socalfmf]

Frog..we would have only gained about 6 dz an hour if we added another "unloader"  so we decided against it and used that person to start making screens, cleaning floodbars, squeeges coating screens ect.  I think you get the idea.  we planned 2 full days for this job and we hit it right on the mark...love when that happens.

hope that makes some sense

[TCT]

Does the Kool-Mist just spray air? Or is there a fluid?  Seems like the fluid would be weird. I made a air sprayer for our anatol a while back that mounts on top of a print head with magnets, it works but it is a air drain!

[bimmridder]

I believe it sprays a mist of water and silicone. 

[tonypep]

Let me preface by stating that whatever works for you is just that. However I never quite got the 2-man crew concept. Assuming you have enough steady work a 3-man crew will generate more revenue when managed correctly and will far more than justify the extra payroll. Again, evryones biz model is different so this does not always apply, although in my past experienced it always has. Once you get to a certain point this will often become apparent.
Anyway those are good #s no matter how you look at it Sam, congrats!

[Socalfmf]

Tony..

thanks for the input...yes a 3 man crew is great, however in this situation we were better off dropping one guy to have him do other "projects" to further us for today and tomorrow to finish out the week way ahead vs. having him on the press where we would not gain as much as we would having him do "other" things.  it is a job by job preference.

when I walked in today I know we have all the screens ready for the next two-three days, we have all the shirts layed out for today...so overall it was a great move to pull him

thanks for the input guys

sam

[tonypep]

I figured as much, its no use blowing out a big run only to look around and suddenly not be ready for the next orders. Makes no sense there.

[alan802]

If you have an operator that can average that pace for 16 hours I'd probably just have 2 guys in the back instead of 3.  We routinely run the auto faster than that but there are occasions when I let my printer run it by himself and he couldn't sniff 400+/hr for any extended amount of time and no offense to the DB but it can't run as fast as the RPM.  We are a shop that runs the auto with 3 guys if the quantity is high enough, and I get pissed when I see my printer running the auto by himself with a stack of just 72 shirts.  But if you can only add 6dz/hr by adding the 3rd guy I'd probably do the same thing that Sam did and 400+/hr for that long is a pretty rare feat for one guy on the auto if you ask me.

Sam, I'd probably take this thread down in case your competitors are lurking and looking for a good press op, cause that guy is pretty special.  I know my guy is one of the fastest guys I've seen run an auto and he can't come close to maintaining that type of speed by himself.  He's as fast as I am but he can maintain it a little longer these days.  We can run the auto at 16-17 shirts/min with a full crew and only around 7/min with just me or my printer running it alone.

[Frog]

Sam, I'm not knocking your deal, just explaining that it's different than what I'm used to.

I should say, that when I did work on the auto, we had enough people to justify a loader and unloader on each of four presses, and, frankly, I never saw it doing differently until years later when I started seeing the mini-autos that many one person shops seem to step up to. Running one wide dryer between each two presses did cut down on two or even three workers at that end.
There were occasions, when for one reason or another, a skeleton crew was working, and even the boss himself would run it solo at half speed.
I guess the advantage of multiple machines laid out efficiently really becomes evident with only nine folks working four machines! (Of course, with the volume of shirts being cranked out, at some point one will need more stackers and packers as well.

And btw, that shop is running M&R now as well.

[Admiral]

35 doz/hr solo is pretty easy on our DB.  3 guys can do that for extended periods just fine.  If we get 2 we crank it up to 47-50 doz/hr.  At 50 the squeegee is moving stupid fast though. I do wish our press could move faster but you get what you pay for.  We did have 20k imprints to do in just over a couple days (power outage for 2 days killed our scheduling of it) and just made it.  Back print had to be 1 operator, front left chest print we were pulling the shirts on the last print head which did have a screen in it printing...doesn't help QC but worked fine.

Also just before that job our flash sensor died so I had to wire it to a light switch for all 20k of those prints.  "Lighthouse operator".

[tonypep]

You'll often see in large shops where there are Team Leaders responsible for up to 3 autos; their job is to keep everything spinning and minimize interruptive downtime. So 10 peeps for three autos. Those production #s are off the chain. At Precision Screen Machines we had a 3 million pc order f/b with 11 peeps per auto on 3 autos. 2,200 imp per auto per hr. Many things are possible!