Wow, Screen Tape Costs!!!

[ScreenPrinter123]

Ahem.

Second press or a few more employees will be your fastest return on more fishing time.
I can guarantee it.


Except for some hot market stuff we haven't worked a weekend in years. That's a point of pride
as far as I'm concerned, to me my free time is exponentially more valuable than money.

That is definitely one way to go though though hiring for us would mean that we would have to go out and get more work to justify the hire and deal with the many headaches we read on here about employees.  I am happy with the money coming in and the amount of work so why not tighten up our processes with possibly the help of certain capital equipment to get that 5 day work week down to 4.5 or maybe even 4.  I could be dead wrong about this and it could just be that hiring someone makes me nervous since it would be something completely new to me.  Making a press do what I want I would imagine is much easier than making a person making an hourly wage do what I want.

[Prosperi-Tees]

Ahem.

Second press or a few more employees will be your fastest return on more fishing time.
I can guarantee it.


Except for some hot market stuff we haven't worked a weekend in years. That's a point of pride
as far as I'm concerned, to me my free time is exponentially more valuable than money.

That is definitely one way to go though though hiring for us would mean that we would have to go out and get more work to justify the hire and deal with the many headaches we read on here about employees.  I am happy with the money coming in and the amount of work so why not tighten up our processes with possibly the help of certain capital equipment to get that 5 day work week down to 4.5 or maybe even 4.  I could be dead wrong about this and it could just be that hiring someone makes me nervous since it would be something completely new to me.  Making a press do what I want I would imagine is much easier than making a person making an hourly wage do what I want.

This is my thoughts exactly I just wish there was a magic ball to make all the necessary equipment just to be here and be good at running it. I'd love to work 4 days a week but at our pace and the lack of equipment to make things go faster sometimes 5 isn't enough.

[DannyGruninger]

Wow, haven't had a chance to look at this until now so my turn to derail the thread  .... Slammed this week so just got home from printing. Starting out as a 2 person shop when I leaped into the industry using a manual press and extremely limited equipment eventually growing to a small sized high production(for our size) shop using DTS/2 autos here's my take.... My number one thing trying to grow screen printing over the years is I've always approached making money to keeping a press spinning, bottom line. The only way a t-shirt company can make money is if they are printing t-shirts right? That's how I have looked at it so being the one that had to hire employees, train people the way I expect things to be done, watch the press op stand over a job for hours(yes I said hours and if anyone here is saying they have never personally struggled setting up a job for great registration on press I would say might be ummmm fibbing, lol), among many many other factors which leads to a stressful situation made me want dts for multiple reasons much more then a "roi". When your in the position of having to work IN the business and ON the business there becomes a new sense of urgency trying to put in place tools and people that can allow you to work on the business more in order to continue to grow it. When I looked at buying dts it wasn't so much about the consumables I was saving, rather the potential it would do for me. I was effing sick and tired of watching press ops I would hire to help me out stand over a job setting it up while I was having to attend to a client, or a shipment, packslip, sell a new job, order supplies, etc etc etc because I knew my press was not spinning which was the only way I could make any money. My job is to keep jobs feeding the press and if there's no work then that's all on me. I will admit before my guys were nowhere near the best at setting up jobs on press but I always found it pretty hard to find employees that had a high level of dedication and care for their work along with the understanding we are a business trying to make money which meant try to work at a good pace hence why I look hard at new technology. I might be the only one but I have struggled finding employees that give a damn, which is another factor in why I went dts all together. Since going dts I have been able to keep my same press ops for a long time as we have a great system with that has allowed me to get off my ass and get an actual ROI(that's what I would call it)......I told myself take the risk with dts, get off your bum and work your ass off to sell some jobs and pay for it....I did not look at the roi as what I would save so much on film and consumables but the fact I would be able to keep my presses spinning more often and allowing myself to work ON the business finding new work. I think it all boils down to what your definition of roi is, as I was able to pay for my dts many times over already when I looked at it this way. My system is real simple, 2 autos, 1 guy on each press, 1 guy catching at the end of the belt, and myself staging jobs for each press and helping with setup/teardown on each press. 1 guy making screens on dts, prepping art files, exposing screens, taping screens, etc, then 1 guy in the washout doing whole screen process/ink tasks has been a pretty great setup for a small shop like mine. 6 people total is all to make it run pretty well. The dts allows me to setup all the jobs on press and with proper planning I usually make sure 1 press is always printing shirts. This year we will have done almost 1 million impressions between both presses by the end of this week which I think is respectable considering much of our work is 6-10 colors, 100-1000 pcs runs and I know would have never been possible without dts, bottom line. Just yesterday I timed myself and press helper tearing down a 4 color job and setting up another 4 color job and with perfect registration in 4 min, 53 seconds. Will that always happen? No way, but that alone when I can save that type of time and stress(go back to other things in the business) the roi is so fast to me it's not even funny. I would probably be naive and say dts has it's place in every shop but I truly am too young and umm stupid to understand every business model out there. We all know Tony has his stuff together, runs his production badass, the list goes on so I can respect someone like him that says dts will not work in their business model. But for my business, being a young guy starting out with nothing and trying to grow from the bottom up, dts was the best thing I've ever done. The fact is the most stressful day in my shop the last year was when my dts was not working. I watched my press op stand over an 9 color sim process job for 45 min getting it lined up and about puked since I was then used to our max 20 minute setups. 45 minutes was not even bad for what he was doing but it felt like forever to me at that time when we got used to much faster setups. Do we get perfect setups each job? No way, but usually it's a tiny micro this or that and if art is done correctly on a lot of jobs never any micro needed. But at the end of the day, is dts right for everyone? Probably not. Do dts machines have problems? Yes at times. Will dts make you money? Nope, you have to go out and sell work to feed the beast but they sure are hungry. Would I ever run a shop without a dts now that I've been fortunate to have one? Nope, never would even consider it as I've worked less weekends, less nights, spent more time with my kids, brought in more business, kept employees longer, and have been much happier since having dts. It was a risk for us, but has proven to be something that I will never regret purchasing, ever. I look at it as a necessary tool in my shop that is every bit as important as the press printing t-shirts, and it's one of those things that I think is hard to understand the true potential until you have one.

Just my .02 on some late night dts discussion, take it for what it's worth.  Just thankful we are fortunate enough to have a dts.

[GraphicDisorder]

Sorry Brandt, I was basing that on your own post.  Forgive me that fau paux if you will.

My shop is very much at capacity on screens.  We are a small shop, we don't have MORE time for screens.  In fact screens is very much what hold us back in doing more screen printing.

Holy November 2012.  That was over a year ago.  The shop has changed in a lot of ways since Nov 2012.

You've taken the post out of context.  The context and larger problem is too many hats for Shelly.  She is tied up in other areas so there is not more time for screens due to that. If we had some more hands, this would allow more time for screens.  When we hired James our screen time got much faster as Shelly just hands him the films and he burns/rises/tapes/stages/etc.  He is even doing the set up of the press now and Shelly basically shows up to load.  This was a huge output change for us.  But as we are SUPER busy in embroidery as well digitizing is sucking up a fair amount of time now as well.  So the two processes bump into each other.  Screen print often looses that battle as there is SO much embroidery to do and its harder to make up time in there.  We simply need to hire again.  Assuming Jan kicks off good we likely will.  This will allow for Shelly to get things done a bit faster while other things are happening.  Our embroidery girl is trying to learn digitizing but being that she is so busy doing the actual embroidery it's tough.  Erik has more artwork to do most weeks than time to do it.  I have more sales to do than time to do it as well most weeks.  When I can I help embroidery most often. 

[GraphicDisorder]

Would I ever run a shop without a dts now that I've been fortunate to have one? Nope, never would even consider it as I've worked less weekends, less nights, spent more time with my kids, brought in more business, kept employees longer, and have been much happier since having dts. It was a risk for us, but has proven to be something that I will never regret purchasing, ever. I look at it as a necessary tool in my shop that is every bit as important as the press printing t-shirts, and it's one of those things that I think is hard to understand the true potential until you have one.

This is basically what I was questioning with as passionate as several DTS owners are about them....  Thanks for confirming.  I feel like its easy to just do ROI and assume the math is the full picture.  IMO it sounds like from your post it just made your shop better all around even happier employees.  I am not sure how you put a number on quality of life in the shop but it's worth mentioning for sure!

[Socalfmf]

oh Danny....you mean more than consumables are factored into an ROI?  no way! ( my best valley girl voice)  that is what I have been trying to say to all of them but they just don't get it. 

also on the post about clearing out film  how much are you paying someone to do that?  how much are they being paid to put them back, how often do you have to reprint film?  these are all factors.  we were spending a lot of time trying to file so good we were losing money.  then if one film got ruined we would have to replace the entire print job. 

oh yeah like Danny said and Screenprintguy can confirm my head printer said he will NEVER work in a shop that did not have a dst.  I know Mike aka screenprintguy spoke with my head printer for a while before buying his dst.  so it is not coming from me it is coming from an employee who can see what it has done to our shop!

sam

[bimmridder]

I won't argue the pros and cons of this anymore. We have been CTS for 8 1/2 years. I have one employee that was here pre-CTS. Nobody here understands what "film" is and how you use it to make a screen (really kind of funny). I just know CTS is right for us. Otherwise instead of ordering another one a few weeks ago, I would have bought a nice film printer. (Anyone looking for a new in box 4880?) I will just offer, that if anyone is interested in learning more about what it has done for our company, and how it might help you, please give me a call. I love talking shop, especially equipment. Just make sure you set aside an hour or more. I'm no J.C., but I do ramble on. This is a legitimate offer to help anyone that might be looking, to learn more about what it has done for me. I'm not saying it's right for you. I just can't imagine our business with it (them)

[alan802]

oh Danny....you mean more than consumables are factored into an ROI?  no way! ( my best valley girl voice)  that is what I have been trying to say to all of them but they just don't get it. 

also on the post about clearing out film  how much are you paying someone to do that?  how much are they being paid to put them back, how often do you have to reprint film?  these are all factors.  we were spending a lot of time trying to file so good we were losing money.  then if one film got ruined we would have to replace the entire print job. 

oh yeah like Danny said and Screenprintguy can confirm my head printer said he will NEVER work in a shop that did not have a dst.  I know Mike aka screenprintguy spoke with my head printer for a while before buying his dst.  so it is not coming from me it is coming from an employee who can see what it has done to our shop!

sam

So that's how you've come up with 11 month ROI?  Just pulling numbers from the sky to make up for quality of life?  Well hell, I can just make up some numbers then and make the ROI whatever I wanted it to be, but I don't work like that.

I guess we're lucky, we rarely have to reprint film so DTS will be a breeze.  My artist doesn't even look at the film after he prints it.  It goes into the art folder and out to production. 

Seriously, how much time could possibly be spent filing an art folder full of film?  Unless you were printing 50 jobs a day and your filing system was a mess then I couldn't even imagine one second of press time being lost due to filing an art folder, at least here.  When a repeat job comes down, my artist goes and grabs the folder from the wall within 10 seconds.  Filing it is as simple as putting a shirt on a hanger and putting it in the closet.  If that really was something that was slowing down production then you don't have the process nailed down as much as you thought. 

[GraphicDisorder]

We get it guys, we really do. You don't believe Sam's ROI numbers.  I don't think anyone does.  It's ok to let it go. 

[Socalfmf]

alan

it is not made up numbers it is labor cost numbers.  it is pulling film, sorting, film, lining up film, refiling film ect.  it is not all just about press time it is about burn time, about set up time, about rise out time.  yes I measure all of it. 

it quality of life factored into the ROI nope.  but I will tell you it is really NICE!


oh yeah and instead of printing film my artist is doing work that makes us more money vs. just printing film.  more value. 

[Gilligan]

Sam, you have been hammering "11 month ROI!" Over and over... And now Danny post a well composed "this is why it works for me REGARDLESS of ROI" and you hook your wagon to it and scream, this is what I've been trying to tell you guys.

No, you have said that you get it in 11 months because you get all this time to do magic jobs that you weren't turning down before but now have as soon as that dts landed on your shop floor.

Brandt has been talking quality of life from the beginning and NO ONE has argued against that.  If that is what he wants then we've all said, go for it.  Not everyone would buy for that reason, but no one has ever said he was wrong for that justification.

11 months ROI, wrong.  Quality of life, dealer's choice.

*edit* in fact no one was arguing anything at all about dts here until you got all pissy about 3k/year tape cost being discussed and not your $40/year scotch tape cost.  Look at the title of this thread.

[Socalfmf]

no my original posting was why is it so important to worry about .3% of cogs?  if he is doing a 1 million in printing who cares about some tape.  that was my point.  because it does matter. 

for 11 months ROI yes that is what it is.  I attempted to tell you guys how I can to that number and I am being told NO!  but oh well.  I know this year we had another record year and we added new machines, new employees and I am making more and more. 

sam

[GraphicDisorder]

Sam you could shut these guys up if you show all the numbers.  If you don't then IMO this will never end and we know some of these guys will bring it back up 1000 times just cause thats what some of really enjoy about the forum.  If you don't it also appears to them you are hiding something. 

[inkman996]

Sam you could shut these guys up if you show all the numbers.  If you don't then IMO this will never end and we know some of these guys will bring it back up 1000 times just cause thats what some of really enjoy about the forum.  If you don't it also appears to them you are hiding something.

I disagree no one would bring any of the scotch tape gate except for Sam himself. Just go back to the second or third of this page and see where Sam jumped into this thread with a snotty comment about scotch tape.

[GraphicDisorder]

Sam you could shut these guys up if you show all the numbers.  If you don't then IMO this will never end and we know some of these guys will bring it back up 1000 times just cause thats what some of really enjoy about the forum.  If you don't it also appears to them you are hiding something.

I disagree no one would bring any of the scotch tape gate except for Sam himself. Just go back to the second or third of this page and see where Sam jumped into this thread with a snotty comment about scotch tape.

So nobody has ever brought up DTS or Tape after the original incidents ever?   You sure?

Doesn't change my point really.  If he was to provide numbers (believable ones), it would shut these guys up.