Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work. - Thomas Edison
I have a CTS unit, and on one of my three presses, the newest, I have dead on probably 85% of the time. I can handle a micro on the fly. The older presses aren't as good, but still....We're doing up to 8 or nine color set ups in well under fifteen minutes. 4-6 color jobs in five minutes. You HAVE to remember, CTS is PART of the system. Even with CTS there is a small human factor. And your screens and press(es) play a big part. All of them have to be in top shape to reap the benefits. I know when we're busy, we'll be doing a ten hour shift and on three autos we will do 40-45 set ups. Lots of small runs. Ton of set ups. Ain't no way I'd be doing that without CTS, good, presses and screens. And good PEOPLE!
Quote from: bimmridder on January 19, 2014, 08:15:27 PMI have a CTS unit, and on one of my three presses, the newest, I have dead on probably 85% of the time. I can handle a micro on the fly. The older presses aren't as good, but still....We're doing up to 8 or nine color set ups in well under fifteen minutes. 4-6 color jobs in five minutes. You HAVE to remember, CTS is PART of the system. Even with CTS there is a small human factor. And your screens and press(es) play a big part. All of them have to be in top shape to reap the benefits. I know when we're busy, we'll be doing a ten hour shift and on three autos we will do 40-45 set ups. Lots of small runs. Ton of set ups. Ain't no way I'd be doing that without CTS, good, presses and screens. And good PEOPLE! Our unit does have a standby mode. We have left the unit in standby for weeks and after startup it is perfectly fine.Thanks for the reply, I have a 2010 sportsman e and I notice sometimes that the screen holders will kick the screens a small amount when locking them in so I can see that as being a problem. What about the heads clogging when it's not in use for an extended period? We have a vinyl printer we leave on and set it to auto clean every 10 hours to keep the ink moving. I just didn't know whether or not the cts units have the same feature. I'd be worried about that especially during the winter when we are really slow if it didn't.
Indeed maximizing usage of a single press is always desirable. Second auto for us was as much productionas it was peace of mind. Haven't ever had a machine down for more than an hour, but if we went down hard with one pressI'd have a heart attack. Redundancy is key for sleeping well at night. We have multiples of everything except a dryer,which I just bought a backup belt motor for. Even if you have the best supported equipment in the world you ain't gonnaget a new index motor at 1 AM Sunday night, which hopefully no one in Seattle or Denver found out...
If I were you Tance, I'd trade in the DB, package a DTS with an auto that will run at a higher production rate than you can physically load and with that combination you'll never need more than 3 guys running production until you're doing 2,000 jobs per year and WELL into 7 figures in sales. Those numbers will be from a shop that doesn't do much contract work but handles the every day person off the street and the run of the mill business in town needing shirts for their employees. Obviously the 2K and 7 figure numbers only apply to a shop like ours with our current job characteristics. If you do nothing but 1 to 2 color jobs all day and don't ever see yourself doing 40 screens per day, even 4-5 years from now then I'd look elsewhere but I think your average job is probably similar to ours.We're getting closer, and I do not want to add a second auto or another employee until we're so smothered in work that we're missing deadlines. I think maximizing your production capabilities while maintaining just one automatic is the best route, but that's just my opinion. I think adding support machinery (DTS, regi system, high output expo unit) until all methods are exhausted before buying that second auto is the way to go but I know there are other opinions. Others choose to get that second auto much sooner than I would but I still respect that idea even though I'd do it differently. I just wish the costs of DTS would come down a bit.