Teardown/Setup Video - I Image STE

[DannyGruninger]

So I've had a few private messages with people asking if we are really setting up jobs as fast as I "claim"....... I decided to shoot a quick video today of us tearing down a job, and setting the next one up. First of all sorry for the crap cell phone video but this will be able to show the "time". I know it's pretty boring but this shows real time of us working setting up the job...... The job that was being printed on the press was a 7 color job that needed to revolve so we started the video about a minute before we were finished with that job. Attached are a couple pics of the actual shirt that was printed on this test. The shirt is in 100% perfect registration with no adjustments needed at all, shirt looks much better in person and also once we dialed in the pressure/speeds. But at least this will show how awesome the i image ste has been for us..... Total time of tearing down and setting up on this was under 8 minutes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_FDQFkZBwk&feature=youtu.be

[inkman996]

I think a lot of people when comparing set ups and tear downs are thinking one person only. Thats basically how i judge the speed of a process on our shop. My guy never has  help unless I have time to get back there or our screen cleaner has time. It looks like you have two well coordinated employees with screens/inks/sq/fb's all set to go. The thing I do not get is how the STE is helping with your set up times discounting a little micro here and there that can happen when using film. For us when ever we have a mis-registration its a super fast micro and done. I am of course only talking about the time after screens are exposed.

[jvanick]

That is seriously impressive... (as I head out to the shop to set up a 5 color job on my javi which will probably take me the better part of 30 minutes to set up and register)

[DannyGruninger]

I think a lot of people when comparing set ups and tear downs are thinking one person only. Thats basically how i judge the speed of a process on our shop. My guy never has  help unless I have time to get back there or our screen cleaner has time. It looks like you have two well coordinated employees with screens/inks/sq/fb's all set to go. The thing I do not get is how the STE is helping with your set up times discounting a little micro here and there that can happen when using film. For us when ever we have a mis-registration its a super fast micro and done. I am of course only talking about the time after screens are exposed.

The small guy in video is me, and the other guy is my press op..... 95% of the jobs in here I setup as I float to help my press ops....... So yes we are tearing down and setting up with two guys which really helps compared to just having 1 operator....... The reason why I Image ste is helping us so much is that it's much more accurate then having a person tape a film on the screen/carrier sheet. For the last few days I swear we have not had to really even micro a screen, if we do it's such a small adjustment that the time it takes is a mute point. With vacuum draw down, films not being printed perfect, etc with regular tri lock we almost always had to do adjustments so that is where my shop is finding savings. You guys might be better at lining up films on screens, etc which makes your setups fast like this but we never saw it until dts was making our screens, lol..... We are seeing major savings in all areas of the shop because the i image and our quality is better then it ever has been compared to our previous dts.

[inkman996]

I think a lot of people when comparing set ups and tear downs are thinking one person only. Thats basically how i judge the speed of a process on our shop. My guy never has  help unless I have time to get back there or our screen cleaner has time. It looks like you have two well coordinated employees with screens/inks/sq/fb's all set to go. The thing I do not get is how the STE is helping with your set up times discounting a little micro here and there that can happen when using film. For us when ever we have a mis-registration its a super fast micro and done. I am of course only talking about the time after screens are exposed.

The small guy in video is me, and the other guy is my press op..... 95% of the jobs in here I setup as I float to help my press ops....... So yes we are tearing down and setting up with two guys which really helps compared to just having 1 operator....... The reason why I Image ste is helping us so much is that it's much more accurate then having a person tape a film on the screen/carrier sheet. For the last few days I swear we have not had to really even micro a screen, if we do it's such a small adjustment that the time it takes is a mute point. With vacuum draw down, films not being printed perfect, etc with regular tri lock we almost always had to do adjustments so that is where my shop is finding savings. You guys might be better at lining up films on screens, etc which makes your setups fast like this but we never saw it until dts was making our screens, lol..... We are seeing major savings in all areas of the shop because the i image and our quality is better then it ever has been compared to our previous dts.

From what i have heard over the years some shops just cannot master the Tri-loc system and others have it down to a science. I feel our shop has it to a science because never do we have a mis-registration so bad that a quick micro cannot help. Many jobs are nailed the first try.

[Doug S]

Man that is bada!@ looking smoke.  Nice video and print.  I'm definitely going dts

[alan802]

Like me, others were probably thinking a little different with regards to what a teardown/setup is.  Every shop is different and although we are fast at our method, we aren't that fast because we do it differently than Danny.  We can have 2 guys on the press but the majority of the time it's just one person.  It takes me 90 seconds on average to tear down a screen which includes: take the floodbar out, wipe off the ink, take the squeegee out and do the same thing, then the screen is removed and ink is scraped out and the screen is placed out of the way.  So on a 7 color job there would only be one guy doing those steps and so 11 minutes would be the average teardown of a 7 color.  The setup would involve the triloc registration which is the fastest part and then putting squeegees, floodbars and ink in the screens at approximately 2 minutes per screen to lock it down and then get it ready to print.  So just the setup part of our 7 color jobs would be under 15 minutes (hopefully) with one guy who knows what he's doing.  We have to do micro adjustments less than half of the setups so we have ours dialed in really good and we've gone entire days and 15 setups without unlocking a micro.

I'm thinking a regular DTS wouldn't help us near as much as the STE would because of the way we currently do things.  Our shop is different.  With so many repeat jobs and our current setup efficiency the STE would probably give us a better ROI (even at a higher price) than the standard DTS machine. 

[Socalfmf]

I dont get it...having a system in place and using tools to do you job did what?  make you set up an 8 color job in like 5 min...I know plenty of guy who could do that by eye with wood screen...big deal...

[screenprintguy]

Sam, you need to trade mark Smart A$$ hahahahhahahahahahahahh.

[Underbase37]

Nice video.....Way to keep the process moving.

Murphy37

[bimmridder]

All shops do things differently. We treat change overs like a pit stop. Everyone available jumps in and does something. If I have two sets of hands available, that's who we use. If there are five people that can help, that's how it's done. When a press stops for changeover, it's all hands on deck.

[GraphicDisorder]

Create stuff that's a bit faster than us but pretty similar as we throw 2-4 at change overs.  Wish I had set though. 

[GKitson]

All shops do things differently. We treat change overs like a pit stop. Everyone available jumps in and does something. If I have two sets of hands available, that's who we use. If there are five people that can help, that's how it's done. When a press stops for changeover, it's all hands on deck.

Ninja press changes are our goal.  People and hands magically appears as screens seem to almost change themselves.

It is really about having a prep person having all the inks in the screens, squeegee/flood bars ready, and garments sitting on a table ready to roll into the load station.  Pre-loading inks is one of the biggest timesavers we have seen on set-up, other than the CTS/pre-register that is .

[tonypep]

All shops do things differently. We treat change overs like a pit stop. Everyone available jumps in and does something. If I have two sets of hands available, that's who we use. If there are five people that can help, that's how it's done. When a press stops for changeover, it's all hands on deck.

Exactly Dave. For us its always 3 people per press. Clean up stations take care of the nasty business while the next job is being set up. It amazes me to watch some ops in different shops hover over the screen scraping off squeegees/fldbrs.

[alan802]

Multi auto shops can easily have a gang jump on a teardown and do things that way, it's obviously the right move if you have the personnel.  We will gang up the teardowns if we need to but for the most part reclaim, coating, developing, staging, etc. is done while jobs are being torn down and set up.  Those things aren't being done while shirts are coming down the belt but as we get busier we'll need to add someone to allow us faster changeovers while keeping the screens flowing.  When we get really busy we acclimate to that need and we're able to 15 jobs in a day if we have to.  Our changeovers are fast enough that when we're busy we don't get screens cleaned and they start piling up and if they're not getting cleaned they aren't getting coated, and so on.