Wow, Screen Tape Costs!!!

[inkman996]

Just for comparison sakes.

I figure we spent about $1500 on screen tape last year. I would guess no more than $5 on scotch tape for films. Hell we spend more on toilet paper in a month than we do on scotch tape.

[alan802]

wait a second..you are worried about tape?  really who worries about tape costs?  oh that's right people running the F**KING BUSINESS. 

Why are you so angry

I do concern myself with most everything we spend money on as well.  Over $2K in tape that we just throw away 5 minutes after a job is done.  I do not worry about scotch tape for film other than knowing that it makes up .00016% of our consumable costs...seriously.

[TCT]

wait a second..you are worried about tape?  really who worries about tape costs?  oh that's right people running the F**KING BUSINESS. 

Why are you so angry

I do concern myself with most everything we spend money on as well.  Over $2K in tape that we just throw away 5 minutes after a job is done.  I do not worry about scotch tape for film other than knowing that it makes up .00016% of our consumable costs...seriously.

Sometimes to save money on scotch tape for films, I just spit on the screen.....

Sorry, was that too soon?

[ScreenFoo]

^^Awesome.  Actually if you use WP film, a little heavy breathing on it will make it stick.   
I think we bought ten bucks worth of Scotch tape three years ago--still have an extra roll in the drawer.


As far as the actual topic goes, we only spend a few hundred a year on screen tape, but I haven't seen a brand of frame tape that is so expensive it's WAY less cost effective than the cheapest crap I can find. 
What I found was that using PMI on frames @ fifteen to twenty cents each costs us less than spending ten cents a screen on cheap tape AND a minute or two fighting with it... but I'm certainly not saying that's the situation for anyone else.

[Croft]

wait a second..you are worried about tape?  really who worries about tape costs?  oh that's right people running the F**KING BUSINESS. 

Why are you so angry

I do concern myself with most everything we spend money on as well.  Over $2K in tape that we just throw away 5 minutes after a job is done.  I do not worry about scotch tape for film other than knowing that it makes up .00016% of our consumable costs...seriously.

Holy crap $2k a year on screen tape.   We've been using 3M 347 packing tape for years with no problem , one strip of tape around inside of frame and 2 strips on back to cover reg. marks. never a problem on our auto. 
 At what I pay that would be 55cases of tape (36 rolls). You must be cranking out the screens.

[alan802]

wait a second..you are worried about tape?  really who worries about tape costs?  oh that's right people running the F**KING BUSINESS. 

Why are you so angry

I do concern myself with most everything we spend money on as well.  Over $2K in tape that we just throw away 5 minutes after a job is done.  I do not worry about scotch tape for film other than knowing that it makes up .00016% of our consumable costs...seriously.

Holy crap $2k a year on screen tape.   We've been using 3M 347 packing tape for years with no problem , one strip of tape around inside of frame and 2 strips on back to cover reg. marks. never a problem on our auto. 
 At what I pay that would be 55cases of tape (36 rolls). You must be cranking out the screens.

Crunching the numbers a little more it's probably closer to $3K than $2K but we use the tape for everything, including taping up boxes in shipping to getting lint balls from screens.  I found that using 3" tape for sealing boxes is cheaper than the 2" since it almost always took 2-3 strips of the 2" on a box and now almost always 1 strip of tape on the box with the 3".  Also, there is a roll of tape, sometimes 2, on every print head on the auto so there is at least 10 rolls on the auto, and 2-3 rolls on the manual.  We've produced somewhere around 5,500-6,000 screens this year with approximately 50,000 ft of tape used on screens alone, then counting the 10-15,000 ft used for other stuff around the shop.  Good lord, shops way bigger than us must use miles and miles of tape making our consumption look like a drop in the bucket.

[Mr Tees!!]

...Man, I dunno whats wrong with you guys sometimes. Why anyone is still effing around with screen tape is beyond me.

...Spend 25 bucks on a 19 inch coater, and then use blockout the rest of the way. Kill the possible pinholes AND eliminate tape entirely. In fact, we have switched to a new blockout that is water-resistant, and it DOES WORK. Whats cool about this is that if you have images ganged to both sides of the screen (or just need to reset a job up), you can de-ink it in your washout sink (we use beaniedoo specifically for this), scrub it down and rinse with water. Let dry, and its like a freshly burned screen right back on press. No press wash, rags, nothing.

...you can get the blockout from our good friends at Scott and Brandon at SpotColorSupply:

http://shop.spotcolorsupply.com/Water-Resistant-Blockout-Water-Resistant-Blockout.htm

...believe me, I was resistant to the whole idea too, I had been taping screens for 17 years. Then on the encouragement of some here that proposed this method (THANKS HOMER), I committed to trying it for one month. Haven't bought a roll of tape since. Its amazing how stuck in our methods we are sometimes, and how hard it is to break out of them, regardless of the benefits.

...I sound like a former 12-stepper over here don't I?

     "Hi, my name is Sean, and I am addicted to Split tape."

 

[Socalfmf]

Mike and Alan.  I find it funny that I get jumped on because I included tape in my ROI and now someone is talking about tape costs it is ok.  hahaha..well you know what?  it all costs money and that comes out of my paycheck! 

so I love the double standards you guys have!

[Gilligan]

Mike and Alan.  I find it funny that I get jumped on because I included tape in my ROI and now someone is talking about tape costs it is ok.  hahaha..well you know what?  it all costs money and that comes out of my paycheck! 

so I love the double standards you guys have!

Sam, for the record, you didn't get "jumped on".  You had talked about your ROI and said you were going to provide numbers in a few weeks.  Months went by and nothing.  So I asked about the numbers (politely) and you said that you were still calculating ROI as you kept finding things everywhere.  You mentioned that you had just discovered that you had saved $90 bucks in scotch tape a year for example. (if my memory is correct, that was the amount).  I simply suggested that you were getting too anal with it and in fact you were potentially losing money looking for the small things at this point.  Meaning that you had plenty of data and I didn't think anyone was going to go... "if there was only about $90 more bucks I could save somewhere this would make total sense to me".

This is the same sentiment being expressed right now.  People are discussing this because it's THOUSANDS a year in cost, not under a $100 bucks.  No one beat you up because you were concerned about tape, it was only suggested that it was starting to get very minor and that the bigger picture is what we were curious about.

Then you got all pissy, took your ball and went home with it.

[inkman996]

Mike and Alan.  I find it funny that I get jumped on because I included tape in my ROI and now someone is talking about tape costs it is ok.  hahaha..well you know what?  it all costs money and that comes out of my paycheck! 

so I love the double standards you guys have!

Did you not follow the rest of the thread?

$5 worth of scotch tape versus several thousand in screen tape.

Scotch tape around here falls under basic office supplies, screen tape is a real quantifiable cost. There is no double standards when comparing two totally different products.

[Sbrem]

This seems a lot of pages for tape, but what the hell, I'll jump in. We like good old fashioned masking tape on the inside (some of our printers are so neat, that they only tape the tops and bottoms, never the sides) and the 2.0 mil rubber adhesive tape on the print side. We buy our rubber adhesive plastic tape from Atelco, 2" x 100M (109.something yds) for 3.99 per roll, 36 in a case.

Steve

[alan802]

Mike and Alan.  I find it funny that I get jumped on because I included tape in my ROI and now someone is talking about tape costs it is ok.  hahaha..well you know what?  it all costs money and that comes out of my paycheck! 

so I love the double standards you guys have!

Gilligan summed it up pretty much, but I'll jump in here and say that trying to compare the $50 we spend on scotch tape to the 50,000 ft of screen tape is just plain dumb.  That's unlike you Sam, you're usually trying to convince everyone around here how smart you are.

Funny that you of all people are complaining about a double standard where there is absolutely none. 

 

[Sbrem]

I know Sam has a hard edge, but I usually think he's trying to point out that "doing it right" will get you a lot further than struggling along with bad processes. He's studied and worked pretty hard to get to where he's at, and he's seen small shops go down around him because they really didn't know what they were doing. I never get that he thinks he's smarter than everyone, but he does recognize when someone makes a post that is less than wise in a business sense, that it may be foolhardy, and he makes it pointedly. With the info available, especially here with all the givers here, people can have nice operation going and make a decent to very good living. But it ain't easy, and you (any of us) have to be "smart".

Steve

[Gilligan]

I agree with you Steve.

It's just along those same lines that people point out it has become "less than wise in a business sense" to worry about the cost of scotch tape when calculating the ROI of a 50k machine.  We are talking about like less than a point of a percent of the total cost of the machine.

When someone else worries about savings thousands of dollars going DIY or used he is quick to say how foolish it is to worry about the cost of just getting it done.  And I agree some times.  I just bought my vac hose attachment at what I feel is a ridiculous $90 because I have wasted too much time TALKING about making one for a few bucks.  He would be the first to say I'm wasting my time worrying about a $90 item.  Yet it's the exact same amount that he is worried about when talking about a 50k machine!

We just all felt that he should stop worrying about if Rich dropped a nickle in his machine as he looked over it and get on with things.

[alan802]

I know Sam has a hard edge, but I usually think he's trying to point out that "doing it right" will get you a lot further than struggling along with bad processes. He's studied and worked pretty hard to get to where he's at, and he's seen small shops go down around him because they really didn't know what they were doing. I never get that he thinks he's smarter than everyone, but he does recognize when someone makes a post that is less than wise in a business sense, that it may be foolhardy, and he makes it pointedly. With the info available, especially here with all the givers here, people can have nice operation going and make a decent to very good living. But it ain't easy, and you (any of us) have to be "smart".

Steve

Sorry if my post sounds like I'm saying that Sam isn't smart, I'm sure he's got an IQ that more than a mother can be proud of.  The nature of his argument was absolutely dumb and it's always been my opinion and mine alone probably that Sam speaks as if he's imparting pearls of wisdom upon those who have a lesser mental capacity than he possesses.  Speaking the way that I comprehend his posts is fine if you're a PH D professor giving a lecture to a bunch of college freshmen but when your speaking to many people who are as talented or more, as smart, have equal or more success, etc it helps to speak with a tad bit of humility and to act like he very well could be the 2nd or 3rd smartest guy in the room.  My personal issues with Sam aren't without provocation as he's on more than a few occasions replied to a very innocent post of mine that wasn't meant for needing advice and it's rubbed me the wrong way.  That's my problem and I don't want to be one to create a negative atmosphere and I do try to ignore posts like that most of the time.  It's little more than banter for the most part but sometimes one can overreact and say something out of line and maybe I'm guilty but there was no reason for a post like Sam did so obviously there was reaction.  I understand it's perfectly ok for any of us to inject our comments wherever we so choose, but just like there is freedom of speech in our country, there are repercussions at times.

That's my take and my opinions on the matter.  Now how about some tape talk?