Film Position Unit accuracy

[Stinkhorn Press]

two thing I want to learn from this - are CTS's hyper accurate?
can a cheap alternative to a CTS provide CLOSE TO or AS GOOD AS off-press registration?

feel free to comment your take on those as well.

We are a 1 auto, 1 manual shop. 10-15 screens per day. Mostly 2-3 color work. Some 5-6-7 color work at least 2X a week.
Setups are slow. We run an Alan style inverted Tri-Loc fpu for taping film, and a Tri-Loc jig/stop black on our RPM. We are well below anything like 80% accuracy, no micros needed. Closer to 15% perhaps. Trying to determine if this is simply human error or something we're missing. 80 to 99% accuracy from the get-go would be effing amaze balls.

[mimosatexas]

Human error or some issue with your setup. On my diy inverted flu I am around 80 to 90%. On spot color stuff it might honestly be almost 100%...

[3Deep]

On my DIY unit I built for our press I will say it's 98% when I use all the correct screens and not mix and match or get sloppy taping art

[mimosatexas]

Yea, it really should be extremely accurate unless:

-films arent lining up fresh out of the printer due to drag on the roll or printing them at different rotations (landscape vs portrait).
-not precisely taping the films when on the FPU
-Your FPU stops contact the screens in a different spot or height than your registration pallet on press
-screens are shifting when you lock them in place
-your screens are significantly different tensions
-off contact between heads is significantly different
-squeegee pressure and angle are significantly different between heads

All or some of these combined will cause a world of headaches and slow you down...

[blue moon]

you get out what you put int. When I was doing the FPU it was 40% more accurate than when the screen guy was doing it.

pierre

[Stinkhorn Press]

Yea, it really should be extremely accurate unless:

-films arent lining up fresh out of the printer due to drag on the roll or printing them at different rotations (landscape vs portrait).
-not precisely taping the films when on the FPU
-Your FPU stops contact the screens in a different spot or height than your registration pallet on press
-screens are shifting when you lock them in place
-your screens are significantly different tensions
-off contact between heads is significantly different
-squeegee pressure and angle are significantly different between heads

All or some of these combined will cause a world of headaches and slow you down...

- epson 4800, always print rotated 90 degrees to feed direction ( i never trusted the "adjust the pull difference" setting to be close enough)
- not taping accurately (THAT is always my guess - I'm hoping I'm wrong and I've missed some mechanical logic thing that will bring it all together instead...)
- static screens (no up and down worries from newman corner "shoulders" as I understand it). inverted Tri Loc expo frame has identically located stops to the Tri Loc on press jig...
- shifting when lock ... possible, that's the second user possible error, but it's the same printer and it's his headache when it's not perfect so HE'S pretty incentivized to get that part right
- diff tensions? not noticeably enough. they start low (24N and end a bit lower 18-20N) static thin threads
- OC is central on my machine, we don't use physical blocks to get away from that
- we run pretty low pressure and low angle coming from the school of Joe Clarke

you get out what you put int. When I was doing the FPU it was 40% more accurate than when the screen guy was doing it.

pierre

I agree, I think it's people (and the other reason to run this poll was to give them some baseline of general "this % of accuracy is possible elsewhere why do we suck" perspective)

[alan802]

A local shop that has a G3 and recently got a CTS and their setups have gotten so much faster since then.  But, and I will preface that I believe that he's "mostly" honest with me when it comes to production, but I think they are still behind us when it comes to setups.  He's given numbers here and there and I think when I tell him what our average day is like with a competent press op I can read from him that he's questioning what I'm telling him because it's more than what they are getting done.  He knows what they are getting done and when he asks me our numbers I can just tell he's not buying what I'm telling him. If you were to add pre-press into the equation then they would probably outperform us overall, but strictly from putting the screens on press to first shirt of the order being printed, I think we are ahead of them.

I'm not saying we are faster than most CTS shops.  But I know we're faster at a very specific area than at least a small percentage of CTS shops.  When we go CTS our production rate should increase a good bit, but I can't fathom our setups getting much faster since the room for approval in that area is almost nada.  Maybe we go from averaging 2 test prints for a 6 color to only 1 test print, but I doubt it since it usually takes us 2 just to get the print settings dialed in and it's not usually a registration problem. 

The 3 guys (including myself) that put film on screens do a great job and I can't tell a difference with who did the screens once I start test printing.  BUT... we have had employees that were absolutely awful at film placement and they were not allowed to do it.

[mimosatexas]

Who in Austin has a G3 and CTS?  Seems like every shop out here getting new stuff is getting Sabres...

[ericheartsu]

Who in Austin has a G3 and CTS?  Seems like every shop out here getting new stuff is getting Sabres...

we had one, and our set ups were never dead on.

Now that we've switched to roq, we are still working out our system, but 75% of the time we are perfect reg.

[alan802]

Who in Austin has a G3 and CTS?  Seems like every shop out here getting new stuff is getting Sabres...

Actually in G-town and a shop that used to be in north austin but they moved recently I think.  They have the RPM knockoff though, and a G3.  So I think there are 3 shops within a 20 mile radius that have a 2M/RPM and a G3 on their production floor.  Weird, but they work well together.