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screen printing => Equipment => Topic started by: Ron Pierson on July 16, 2013, 09:02:06 PM
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My space is extreemly limited and I need a new press. The only one that fits is the sportsman EX 8/10. Are these presses worthy of industrial production and can they get 80 doz an hr with proper settings?
Thanks in advance for your comments
Ron
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will an RPM 8/10 fit? Just an idea.
It's pretty quick, but a speedometer on the thing would be nice. ;)
With the sportsman I would think M&R should have some numbers on it. It's a servo/ac head press, it should move pretty good.
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We have a sportsman ex 8/10 with chili flash. Bought last year and its max is 72 dozen a hour. Never run it that fast. Usually run it 55-60 dozen a hour. Its the best piece of equipment we ever bought. Not one complaint. Very smooth and quiet.
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There is an MHM E type 8/10 coming up for sale in August. It will run that fast. My question is if space is limited will your dryer keep up?
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We have two sportsman e machines. The 12 can run 72 doz on a small design, the 8 is faster than 95% can load. They are work horses and we run them hard.
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I second that. We have a Sporty E as well and yes, on small print areas it is fast. It is a fast press anyway. Really any press should be fast as long as your seps and screens are proper. But printing all day long at that speed is a quick way to kill employees. In my opinion what we do is a marathon, not a race. Pace yourself!
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Sportsman EX here as well, 72dz is the top speed.
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What speeds do you guys run with larger prints, lets say an image that is 20" tall? Also what speeds do you M&R guys run when Double stroking the base flashing then moving on to colors?
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first off why would you underbase with two strokes vs. using the correct mesh for the job?
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DC ink penetration? Just a guess.
I didn't know M&R made any presses that were slow enough to be easy to load... ;D
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DC ink penetration? Just a guess.
BINGO
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Not to derail the thread but is DC ink penetration a big issue with single stroking? I can see it being an issue if you're using too high of a mesh count but the principle is still the same with plastisol or DC...just use a more open mesh count to reduce the strokes to one. Lower mesh count + softer blade=single stroke, at our shop at least. I know the art can dictate mesh count to a large degree but you might be surprised by how much detail a 150/48 can hold, and especially a 180/48. We haven't done as much DC printing as many shops here but we approach it the same way when it comes to not double stroking plastisol and we haven't had to double a DC ink on the auto. Double stroking on a manual isn't much of an issue because it doesn't add a whole lot of time, typically a second per shirt but on the auto it takes it from 900/hr down to 500-600 easily, and on some presses much lower than that.
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OK for get about the Double stroke. What about 20" tall image.
We only double stroke DC on 230-305 at 65lpi to get a good penatration.
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We can completely saturate fabric with up to a 180 mesh and one hit and heavy pressure and a low angle. But you're gonna get gain like crazy.
Fine on many designs (especially if you don't fully saturate) but on finer detail stuff, nope.
Two (as fast as possible) hits with slightly lighter pressure/steeper angle on a 230 or so gets great penetration while still
maintaining detail.
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I've done very little DC printing through the higher mesh counts, and only 195/55 and 225/40 to be specific, and the 225 with one stroke wasn't bad but you could tell it wasn't saturated enough and needed two strokes. There was literally zero difference between the two mesh's ink deposit but the 225 required less pressure than the 195.
If you can print the 20" image at 15-20"/sec (totally doable) then I don't see why you couldn't run it at almost full speeds. Most shops only print at about 4-10"/sec anyway so speeding up the print and flood strokes will allow you to get more out of your press...obviously. So now that leads us to making a much better decision on the mesh counts we use and the ink as well. Most of the inks we have out back will perform at 20"/sec but the mesh count has got to be right. If you want to run your press at maximum speeds then you'll have to have better mesh counts on hand than the "standard" counts that suppliers try to force y'all to buy. We as an end user of mesh need to stand up and demand better mesh from our suppliers and ditch the counts that make them the most money and only buy the mesh that performs the best. A 156/64 is a terrible choice when you could have a 150/48, 230/48 is junk compared to the 225/40 and it's not just the print quality that is better, but PRESS SPEED is affected greatly by our mesh selection. I knew I could get a rant in that pertained to this thread's subject matter.
Demand should drive what our suppliers carry when it comes to most things, so why shouldn't mesh be any different? If my supplier doesn't have the mesh counts I want then I don't buy from them. The suppliers won't change their ways until we make them, so join me in using the best mesh for printing on textiles and don't settle on what your supplier has in stock. WHO'S WITH ME???....cricket chirping sound here....
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we always double stroke DC white on 230 mesh. I like the final print through the 230 vs a 156, or 180. Those take a nice single but for DC white, double strokes through 230 give a "clean edged" deep penetration with a vibrant bright finish vs a single, IMO for our set up anyways. I wouldn't see anyone, on "any" press running faster than say maybe 50-60 Doz per hour, on a 20" print, just because of the nature of the print. I can say, I look forward to the day of AC heads, no stalling mid design or on edges of a design like the air heads do when you need a slower fluent stroke. The air heads stall in motion sometimes and can affect the final print and force you to make adjustments that suck just to get through the run. I can see AC heads just gliding through anything, plus, Sportsman or others vs db, you can adjust your forward placement of your sq/fl as to where on the DB we have to go all the way forward all the time. Those little travel adjustments can save seconds which speeds up the process. Just different things I know I am keeping in mind for the future on a new machine. I doubt anyone running water based inks is running faster than 50-60 dozen an hour, just in the method's nature and the curing that it takes, I could be wrong though. The fastest that we can go with our Heat Wave is maybe 30 doze per hour on small designs where the shirt can be creativly placed on the belt. Other than that, if the image is big and has to be wide open full shirt down at a time, we go down to less than 20 doz per hour because of the time it takes to properly cure the water based inks. I see a big a&& sprint international in the near future :o ------Parker, I think the Sportsman EXG is alot faster than the EX since it uses a Ballscrew with it's servo indexer, lil more money but a faster machine heres a vid of a guy running a 14 co EXG at 76 doz per hour and it looks on his controller that he can probably go faster if he really wanted to. M&R Sportsman EXG 14 Color (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUyVESbkMDw#)
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I run a servo/AC Sportsman 8/10 every day. Just yesterday and today I was running a full back, (bout a 16" stroke) one color at 81 doz/hour. I must admit that 70-75 doz/hour is much more comfortable, but the speed is there when we need it.
I keep chipping away at the shop bosses about the sorry state of our screen inventory, and hopefully someday they will listen. I often (almost always) have to double stroke white inks. The screens are all low tension statics, full of holes and tears, bad ghosting, pinholes, fisheyes, wet ink on the frames (and ink spots UNDER the coated emulsion), etc etc.
If we fire the bad screen guy and replace a bunch of screen stock, we could run the press at the higher speeds every day. Sigh.
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Evo,
When you are just auto indexing your press (no squeegee/flooding/printing - just indexing), how many indexes do u get in 1 minute?
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Evo,
When you are just auto indexing your press (no squeegee/flooding/printing - just indexing), how many indexes do u get in 1 minute?
just as a FYI we set the press at 900 per hour plus or minus 100 depending on the shop.
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Evo,
When you are just auto indexing your press (no squeegee/flooding/printing - just indexing), how many indexes do u get in 1 minute?
just as a FYI we set the press at 900 per hour plus or minus 100 depending on the shop.
I haven't busted out the stop watch for an exact per-minute index timing, but that sounds about right. Dry indexing, it shows 83 doz/hour on the counter, so almost 1k per hour.
At a running speed, one color, I think we calculated about 3.7 seconds per impression, so about 16/minute. Then you have to calculate the "Gildan Factor" (lint balls, loose threads, stains, bad seams, etc) and you're probably closer to 12/minute.
;)