Huge Oval press!!!

[jvanick]

I've heard of shops in bfe africa having presses with 30+ flashes on them...

I jokingly asked if they had a nuke plant next to the shop.. turns out some of them have HUGE 2-megawatt diesel generators (like the size of a locomotive).

[ebscreen]

You know that global economics are out of whack when you can literally burn diesel to generate
electricity to flash inks and still make money.

If HSA ever becomes mandated the US infrastructure is in for a doozy.

[TCred]

Roq has a function in their presses where you can program the press to print either odd or even pallets..... So you can setup job a on the even pallets, and setup job b on the odd pallets and run two jobs at the same time.

Our ECO 16/12 is set up exactly like this. We have no screen head at station 9 (and also none at 3, but that's open for a flash) and got ROQ to add a cut down control panel at the second load station so that we can run the press with 2 loaders and 1 unloader. We also have positioning lasers, skip shirt buttons and foot pedal control at both loading stations. ROQ customised the machine to our exact requirements, and even wrote a special program for the control computer.

For us it's about short runs, we can print a long run (which for us is anything more than about 200 shirts!) and several smaller runs at the same time - In a market where run lengths are dropping like  a stone a single press doing multiple jobs is much more efficient than the alternative of running jobs one after the other (small job customer has to wait for longer runs to finish) or having all the costs of a second machine which may or may not be fully utilised.

A big multi colour press spinning for hours on a 1 or 2 colour job with most of the heads being unused while several small run 1 or 2 colour jobs wait their turn does not make sense to me.

[Sbrem]

after running 4 jobs concurrently, how much time for breakdown, and the new setups? Does it work out?

Steve

[cleveprint]

all good info. I've always wondered what the benefit of an oval would be. truthfully, an oval in our shop would fit way better than a traditional circular press. we are thinking about getting a bigger press and going up to a 10 or 12 color. 4 extra feet is going to cause us to do some rearranging if we go that route. not the end of the world, but a pain in the butt with the way our shop is laid out right now.

I'm also assuming that they are much more expensive than a traditional circular press. Which is probably the biggest concern over having to rearrange the shop!!

[bulldog]

Roq has a function in their presses where you can program the press to print either odd or even pallets..... So you can setup job a on the even pallets, and setup job b on the odd pallets and run two jobs at the same time.

Our ECO 16/12 is set up exactly like this. We have no screen head at station 9 (and also none at 3, but that's open for a flash) and got ROQ to add a cut down control panel at the second load station so that we can run the press with 2 loaders and 1 unloader. We also have positioning lasers, skip shirt buttons and foot pedal control at both loading stations. ROQ customised the machine to our exact requirements, and even wrote a special program for the control computer.

For us it's about short runs, we can print a long run (which for us is anything more than about 200 shirts!) and several smaller runs at the same time - In a market where run lengths are dropping like  a stone a single press doing multiple jobs is much more efficient than the alternative of running jobs one after the other (small job customer has to wait for longer runs to finish) or having all the costs of a second machine which may or may not be fully utilised.

A big multi colour press spinning for hours on a 1 or 2 colour job with most of the heads being unused while several small run 1 or 2 colour jobs wait their turn does not make sense to me.

How are you setting this up? One job that maybe you run 200 of (job A)? Then a 1-2 color job of say 50 (job B)? and then another 1-2 color of 50 for job C? Do you have a loader for job A then a loader for job B, you complete job B and immediately go to job C while job A is still going?

Trying to work this out in my head so things wouldn't get all mixed up.

[jvanick]

I could see this feature being cool for say race shirts where you have a front and a back...

get 2 people at the end of the belt, one person to bring the shirts back around to the 2nd loader on the press... 

much less 'logistics' when running the job...

[blue moon]

Maybe Danny or Rich can chime in.

Can you have a no-shirt skip sensor in the middle of the oval, or two shirt skip sensors? if technically you wanted to print two different designs at a time on them? My guys won't run without the skip sensor, love to take a stretch their backs/take a drink in the middle of long runs.

I think M&R holds the patent on the shirt sensor and I am not aware of anybody else offering them . . .

pierre

i know if a couple other presses that have them --they maybe just under the lawyer radar.  its amazing that a simple proximity switch can be patented, for application alone .

this was what I remembered and it could be completely wrong! I was hoping somebody else would know more.

pierre

[244]

Maybe Danny or Rich can chime in.

Can you have a no-shirt skip sensor in the middle of the oval, or two shirt skip sensors? if technically you wanted to print two different designs at a time on them? My guys won't run without the skip sensor, love to take a stretch their backs/take a drink in the middle of long runs.

Yes we can do multiple short sensors on the same press.
I think M&R holds the patent on the shirt sensor and I am not aware of anybody else offering them . . .

pierre

i know if a couple other presses that have them --they maybe just under the lawyer radar.  its amazing that a simple proximity switch can be patented, for application alone .

this was what I remembered and it could be completely wrong! I was hoping somebody else would know more.

pierre

[jsheridan]

after running 4 jobs concurrently, how much time for breakdown, and the new setups? Does it work out?

Steve

With CTS, tri loc and press carts, it's about 2 minutes per head to remove old screens/tools and put the new ones in. With the removal of wasted setup times these days, presses print longer and more than they ever did in the same 8 hrs shift.

[nvenda]

Roq has a function in their presses where you can program the press to print either odd or even pallets..... So you can setup job a on the even pallets, and setup job b on the odd pallets and run two jobs at the same time.

Our ECO 16/12 is set up exactly like this. We have no screen head at station 9 (and also none at 3, but that's open for a flash) and got ROQ to add a cut down control panel at the second load station so that we can run the press with 2 loaders and 1 unloader. We also have positioning lasers, skip shirt buttons and foot pedal control at both loading stations. ROQ customised the machine to our exact requirements, and even wrote a special program for the control computer.

For us it's about short runs, we can print a long run (which for us is anything more than about 200 shirts!) and several smaller runs at the same time - In a market where run lengths are dropping like  a stone a single press doing multiple jobs is much more efficient than the alternative of running jobs one after the other (small job customer has to wait for longer runs to finish) or having all the costs of a second machine which may or may not be fully utilised.

A big multi colour press spinning for hours on a 1 or 2 colour job with most of the heads being unused while several small run 1 or 2 colour jobs wait their turn does not make sense to me.

How are you setting this up? One job that maybe you run 200 of (job A)? Then a 1-2 color job of say 50 (job B)? and then another 1-2 color of 50 for job C? Do you have a loader for job A then a loader for job B, you complete job B and immediately go to job C while job A is still going?

Trying to work this out in my head so things wouldn't get all mixed up.

Hi,

I was reading this thread with pleasure and could not let this go.
I want to share some with you videos we took from a ROQ customer. These show a ROQprint Oval Pro with 50 pallets and 16 colors. So its literally a "smaller" machine than the one presented on our last video.
Still they run 4 jobs at the same time in this platform!

Enjoy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_4Z9SA4VXg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSx8lugqMaI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-4jN0Xh5Bs

PS: the quality of the videos is not very good but they are able to clearly show the work being done.

Feel free to shoot any questions!!!

and

Keep on ROQing!!!

[TCred]

How are you setting this up? One job that maybe you run 200 of (job A)? Then a 1-2 color job of say 50 (job B)? and then another 1-2 color of 50 for job C? Do you have a loader for job A then a loader for job B, you complete job B and immediately go to job C while job A is still going?

Trying to work this out in my head so things wouldn't get all mixed up.

Hey Bulldog - You got it in one. In your example loader 1 would load job A onto the even pallets from the main cnotrol station that has two open pallets (loader and unloader), Loader 2 who is round the other side at station 9 would then load job B and when finished job C while loader 1 is ploughing on with job A. The unloader would be unloading both jobs.

The computer is set to odds and evens, so it knows that for example job A is using screens 1, 2, flash and 3 and so on up to potentially screen 8, then it knows that Job B is being loaded at station 9 and using screens 10, 11 and 12.

Obviuosly you have to have a press with the right number of pallets and open stations to achieve this trick.

So effectively we can print a 2 colour job with a flash in between on a shirt loaded at the second load station. It's pretty cool to watch the computer work it out, it will even work out a skipped shirt, although given that each loader is only loading every second pallet if they get it wrong they are really not trying.

Job change over is easy and quick we use a system similar to the ROQ film registration gizmo and all the frames are pin registered to the gizmo and the press.

Don't ask me for detailed breakdown of cost comparisons which I know you blokes in the states are keen on, truth is I have no idea. For us we can only afford one press, and so that one press has to be versatile enough to do everything that is thrown at it and then some.