M&R i-Image questions

[Zelko-4-EVA]

our film output machine (Autotype Aspect / Roland FJ-600) is in need of replacement soon so we are looking into purchasing either an ST or STE.



we print about 400 to 800 new films per month

we process about 100 to 150 screens per day

two of our autos are M&R and the other two autos are Anatol, we have one 10 color chameleon

screens are a mixture of 23x31 MZX, 25x33, 25x36, and 36x42 M3

currently we output our films at 60lpi, 22.5 angle - simulated process

emulsion is Autosol Plus 2000 and CCI WR-25





my questions: 


what have you had to change in your workflow or processes in your change to the direct to screen?

climate control - what temperature and humidity do you keep the machine at 

has the i-Image met your expectations?

are there any other considerations i should take into account before we purchase?

thanks

[screenprintguy]

I think the main thing is that you are on the right track with your thought process right now. Adding the I-Image changed our lives here big time, I wouldn't go back at all. The big choice you need to make now is if you want to go ST or STE. Either way, you are going to make things so much easier, so much faster, and so much more precise by adding either one. We built an office for ours that has A/C, but I know there are some folks like Sam, who have theirs right out in the shop. I personally would rather what we did. Keeps it more controlled, cleaner ect, but that's really up to you and how you feel you can accommodate adding the set up. Danny and Bimmrider added STE models to their shops, and I believe they love them to death. I'm sure they will hop on this thread, but I can say from being an I-Image owner now for close to 2 years now, it's one of the best decisions we have made to date! The digital team at M&R has been really great as well, they will coach you through it all.

[tonypep]

Duane I know you guys are pressed for space but try to climate control this. Temp/humidity changes in NH lean to the extreme side.

[jsheridan]

screens are a mixture of 23x31 MZX, 25x33, 25x36, and 36x42 M3

You will find out very quickly that multiple screen sizes are not DTS friendly. I know those 36x42's won't fit and you'll have to change out the base plate to switch between 23x31 and 25x36.

In short.. stick with one frame size.

We use 28x38 custom sized frames and had to have our CTS custom made to fit it.

[Zelko-4-EVA]

Duane I know you guys are pressed for space but try to climate control this. Temp/humidity changes in NH lean to the extreme side.

as you know we have extreme heat and humidity in the summer and extreme cold in the winter - being in a mill building with 15 foot ceilings dosent help either.

we would have dehumidifiers and air conditioners in the summer, and heaters in the winter - but it still might not help enough...

[Orion]

You will find out very quickly that multiple screen sizes are not DTS friendly. I know those 36x42's won't fit and you'll have to change out the base plate to switch between 23x31 and 25x36.

In short.. stick with one frame size.

We use 28x38 custom sized frames and had to have our CTS custom made to fit it.

I thought that switching between frame sizes may require some re-tooling on the M&R DTS. How time consuming is that to do?

[Alex M]

Takes roughly 15-30 seconds to switch frame sizes.

[Zelko-4-EVA]

screens are a mixture of 23x31 MZX, 25x33, 25x36, and 36x42 M3

You will find out very quickly that multiple screen sizes are not DTS friendly. I know those 36x42's won't fit and you'll have to change out the base plate to switch between 23x31 and 25x36.

In short.. stick with one frame size.

We use 28x38 custom sized frames and had to have our CTS custom made to fit it.

i realize the 36x42 wont fit - i wish they would.

the Gauntlets barely fit a 36" long frame

its not often that we use the M3 - maybe once a week or every other week...

[screenprintguy]

Our I-Image has what they call a pusher frame/box where you load your screens. There is a pin that you can pop out, the whole frame/box pops out, and if we were using 25x36's, that new one would pop in, put the pin in, change a print parameter in the software real quick, have your art laid out on a template for that size setting and boom, Really not a big deal at all if you had to bounce between the two sizes if you go with the M&R unit. I'm not sure how other units are set up though, they've made it easy on the I-Image for sure.  Like Alex M said, it takes seconds to change over.

[DannyGruninger]

Zelko, we recently installed an I Image STE in our shop so if you want to jump on a phone call I can probably do a better job answering a few of your questions....... I'll try to address them here first but let me know if you want to call.


- As far as your workflow, everything will be significantly improved as press setup times will go to almost nothing. Nearly every job we are setting up with our ste is in almost perfect registration. We had just setup 113 screens over 8 jobs on just one of our auto's for an 8 hour shift. What you will find is the dts will speed everything up so much that you will experience a few bottlenecks the first few weeks until you can get your processes of washing imaged screens done. Without knowing your washout setup(if dirty reclaim is separate from rinsing newly imaged screens) I cannot say for sure but with the STE you will be imaging screens at lightspeeds compared to printing films. Once you get used to imaging screens at the speed in which you can your workflow will be better then ever.

- Climate control, we keep our room at a constant 68* and 40% humidity..... Our I Image ste has been working perfectly for us so I've been playing around with the room keeping it climate controlled. The last 3 days of imaging I have not done anything with our room and our screens are still coming out perfect. While I think climate controlling the room is important, once your I Image is setup well I personally don't feel it's 100% necessary but I would def. recommend it for your screens to stay consistent.

As far as the I Image meeting our expectations, it is by far exceeding it for me right now. We have been using dts for 2 years now, and I would never start or run a shop without one personally. I have done a ton of research on DTS and I personally feel the I Image STE is the unit to have. There's going to be some pros/cons with each machine but I feel like the I Image is engineered the best out of them all and from a production standpoint I feel like it has the best parts for longevity.

Like I said feel free to give me a call here and I talk everything over with you but right now we are incredibly happy with our m&r ste dts machine. I have a pretty small 2 auto shop but this has bumped our production numbers above some of our competition in town that have 4 autos......On friday we imaged approx 120 screens and that only took 1 guy half the day but if we were in the market for dts and I had unlimited budget I would choose m&r I Image ste over everything else, bottom line.

Hope this helps, Danny

Also, if your going to make the leap for the I Image I would strongly suggest getting a uni-kote auto coater as well if you guys aren't already auto coating. Pairing the two machines together have made our screens so much nicer then they were before. Now we can control our eom extremely consistently which also helps dial the ste exposure in correctly. With the price of the uni kote, it really should be paired with the dts though for best results.

[DannyGruninger]

Also, regarding your question on the screen sizes. With our STE we are setup to print our normal 23x31 mzx frames as well as static 25x36 screens....... I timed my brother the other day switching the setup from 23x31 to 25x36 screens and it took him less then 20 seconds to do it....... It really is not an issue at all, everything is on a quick release pin making it easy..... The time it takes to switch setups is so fast that it shouldn't be an issue to even consider imo. I know some of the other machines it takes minutes upon minutes to switch over but for us we were less then 30 seconds switching.

[Zelko-4-EVA]

Zelko, we recently installed an I Image STE in our shop so if you want to jump on a phone call I can probably do a better job answering a few of your questions....... I'll try to address them here first but let me know if you want to call.


- As far as your workflow, everything will be significantly improved as press setup times will go to almost nothing. Nearly every job we are setting up with our ste is in almost perfect registration. We had just setup 113 screens over 8 jobs on just one of our auto's for an 8 hour shift. What you will find is the dts will speed everything up so much that you will experience a few bottlenecks the first few weeks until you can get your processes of washing imaged screens done. Without knowing your washout setup(if dirty reclaim is separate from rinsing newly imaged screens) I cannot say for sure but with the STE you will be imaging screens at lightspeeds compared to printing films. Once you get used to imaging screens at the speed in which you can your workflow will be better then ever.

- Climate control, we keep our room at a constant 68* and 40% humidity..... Our I Image ste has been working perfectly for us so I've been playing around with the room keeping it climate controlled. The last 3 days of imaging I have not done anything with our room and our screens are still coming out perfect. While I think climate controlling the room is important, once your I Image is setup well I personally don't feel it's 100% necessary but I would def. recommend it for your screens to stay consistent.

As far as the I Image meeting our expectations, it is by far exceeding it for me right now. We have been using dts for 2 years now, and I would never start or run a shop without one personally. I have done a ton of research on DTS and I personally feel the I Image STE is the unit to have. There's going to be some pros/cons with each machine but I feel like the I Image is engineered the best out of them all and from a production standpoint I feel like it has the best parts for longevity.

Like I said feel free to give me a call here and I talk everything over with you but right now we are incredibly happy with our m&r ste dts machine. I have a pretty small 2 auto shop but this has bumped our production numbers above some of our competition in town that have 4 autos......On friday we imaged approx 120 screens and that only took 1 guy half the day but if we were in the market for dts and I had unlimited budget I would choose m&r I Image ste over everything else, bottom line.

Hope this helps, Danny

Also, if your going to make the leap for the I Image I would strongly suggest getting a uni-kote auto coater as well if you guys aren't already auto coating. Pairing the two machines together have made our screens so much nicer then they were before. Now we can control our eom extremely consistently which also helps dial the ste exposure in correctly. With the price of the uni kote, it really should be paired with the dts though for best results.

our screen department has three separate wash booths -  emulsion removal, degreasing, and screen rinse for newly imaged screens are all separate. 

we do have an automatic coater - a Digi-Kote T2 - the kind that can coat two screens at once.  we found that we could coat manually faster - it has sat unplugged for 8+ years.  maybe its time to revisit the DigiKote and get it back up and running - although i would rather have a single trough coater over a double.

thanks

d

[DannyGruninger]

If your screen wash department is setup like that you guys will be good to go from the start. Your workflow will be extremely fast compared to what your currently doing using films..... Honestly if your making the amount of screens you are, I wouldn't be waiting any longer as your press setups are going to justify the cost of the machine before you even calculate film savings, ink savings, etc. From the sounds of it I don't think you will have to change much in terms of how your workflow operates but without seeing your setup/how you do things it's impossible to say but I really don't see a huge learning curve for you guys.... The biggest aspect to get used to is how to send ripped files to the dts software but that should go pretty quick as well if you have an artist even halfway smart lol..... But seriously if I was in your boat I wouldn't even have to think twice about purchasing the ste.......

[Zelko-4-EVA]

If your screen wash department is setup like that you guys will be good to go from the start. Your workflow will be extremely fast compared to what your currently doing using films..... Honestly if your making the amount of screens you are, I wouldn't be waiting any longer as your press setups are going to justify the cost of the machine before you even calculate film savings, ink savings, etc. From the sounds of it I don't think you will have to change much in terms of how your workflow operates but without seeing your setup/how you do things it's impossible to say but I really don't see a huge learning curve for you guys.... The biggest aspect to get used to is how to send ripped files to the dts software but that should go pretty quick as well if you have an artist even halfway smart lol..... But seriously if I was in your boat I wouldn't even have to think twice about purchasing the ste.......

we have four artists - two work remotely and send the separations via dropbox. 

currently the artist will send the art to the aspect computer and all i have to do is open the file, double check spelling and then its added to the layout to be printed to the film. 

we have lots of reprint jobs - right now we have walls of racks with file folders.  the employee would take the folder out, remove the films, expose on the screen and then put the film back. with the i-Image - going forward we will have to send all the art on our schedule over to the i-Image.  im not sure what is involved, but will we have to convert any of our separations to a format that the i-Image will interpret?  or can we just have the artist put all the photoshop and illustrator files on a hard drive (faster for the terabytes of files we have) and just plug it into the i-image computer and we would be all set...  im concerned with tying up one of our artists who should be working on separations.

[alan802]

Are you set to use a registration system on all 4 autos?  You definitely have the screen output to justify a very nice unit but if you're registering jobs manually with the DTS then that will negate a huge chunk of the benefits of going there.

We do a ton of repeat stuff too and that plays a role in the decision but our screen usage is 1/3 of Zelko's right now and we only have 1 auto so we're not a "slam dunk" like many shops are with going DTS.