Ganging Images-split from DTS pros and cons

[jsheridan]

Maybe I'm not looking at this through the right glasses, that's why I asked the question.

put your money glasses on and think cost per minute.

an 8 hour shift only has 450 minutes to be productive

labor hour in the screen room = $11.00 = $.18 cents per minute

labor hour on press = $250 = $4.16 per minute

to clean a screen on press is both a time and money loss.

[ebscreen]

I suppose for us it's just that the press is typically stopped while we're waiting on that screen to be wiped or re-taped
or whatever. And it crosses that dangerous threshold of 5 minutes or so where if we aren't printing the press ops and pullers
and catchers start wandering around and forgetting what it was they were doing before we stopped. Plus like John says,
one employees time costs less than 4 or 5 employees time.

Also, I find not ganging makes organization soooooo much easier.


Do automated screen cleaning machines actually work?

[Frog]

I gang, but not for the same job.

Back of one job, small front of another, same color = no brainer for me

[alan802]

Unfortunately I don't have enough screens to even try to not gang images right now.  I've got 130 in production and if we got from 30 screens per day to 60...I'm gonna have to hire another person to clean screens so my money glasses are on and there is definitely a lot more to this than what I was looking at, but I'm still not sure there's a clear answer for our situation.  I'm going back and forth on this and whenever I think I've got it figured out another number enters the equation and sways it back the other way.  If hiring another person keeps the press downtime from 1 hour a day to 15 minutes then there should be enough profit in those shirts coming down to make up the additional payroll, but those numbers change a lot depending on a lot of different factors I don't have a handle on right now. 

Great discussion.

[ebscreen]

O also, I had a spare 48" metal wire rack sitting in the back of my shop waiting for a purpose (picked it up for $20 at an estate sale a few weeks ago, little rust on the bottom shelf) so I just built one of these drying racks.  Took $25 of pvc, some bolts and zip ties I had laying around, and about 30 minutes this morning.  Holds 18 screens vertically.  Here's a few crappy pics, ignore the clutter and random doors and drywall from my screen room build out

Classy looking piece of equipment, you officially get to join the tighta$$ fraternity.

~Kitson

I "appropriated" that fantastic design as well, though mine doesn't look as nice. I placed the whole thing in a big
rubbermaid under the bed container in a vain effort to keep the floor a bit dryer.

[DannyGruninger]

We still gang about 80% of our screens around here even using our dts but the more and more I study this in MY shop I realize we are better off when we do not gang screens. I absolutely hate watching my guys de tape a screen, clean it, put pallet tape over the previous image, etc..... We are pretty efficient at reclaim/processing screens and even more efficient with press setups so the time we lose by ganging screens is not worth it for me. Over the next few weeks I'm going to try and compile some data to support this, but again might only apply to MY shop. I have a feeling the data is going to tell me we need to stop ganging screens

[gtmfg]

I've never done time studies or anything but we don't gang anything. Thought about trying to gang same color LC designs.  Ganging just seems like a huge pain. Plus I like to have jobs tied up into a nice little package before press. Just grab and go.

[Lizard]

We gang almost every job and there is no way we could cycle the screens to keep up if we didn't.  Most of the time they are for the same job and same or similar ink color so without a doubt it is much quicker for us.  Two guys on the press spinning a few screens around is much quicker than a reclaim guy and a screen guy essentially remaking those same screens.

[GKitson]

We gang almost every job and there is no way we could cycle the screens to keep up if we didn't.  Most of the time they are for the same job and same or similar ink color so without a doubt it is much quicker for us.  Two guys on the press spinning a few screens around is much quicker than a reclaim guy and a screen guy essentially remaking those same screens.

Great conversations on the logic of decision making on the production floor.  Whenever you ask yourself why you do something, if the answer is "because....we have always done it that way" you almost always have room for improvement.

Andy/Pierre/Dan can you split this 'ganging' conversation into a new thread with a proper heading so everybody can benefit from the discussion.

~Kitson

[Sbrem]

We gang almost every job and there is no way we could cycle the screens to keep up if we didn't.  Most of the time they are for the same job and same or similar ink color so without a doubt it is much quicker for us.  Two guys on the press spinning a few screens around is much quicker than a reclaim guy and a screen guy essentially remaking those same screens.

Great conversations on the logic of decision making on the production floor.  Whenever you ask yourself why you do something, if the answer is "because....we have always done it that way" you almost always have room for improvement.

Andy/Pierre/Dan can you split this 'ganging' conversation into a new thread with a proper heading so everybody can benefit from the discussion.

~Kitson

I will say that this current turn in the conversation has me thinking differently. As someone who has always ganged screens, I'm having a d-uh moment...

Steve

[TCT]

I'd say we gang maybe 40% of the time. Usually only left crests or prints less than 6" tall. Our screens are 25*36's and about half are double pinned for ganging. But by only ganging the smaller designs on our size screens, we actually don't even tape off the old design. Just the shirt side gets taped. There is enough clearance that we don't need to fuss with taping inside the screen.

[Homer]

our processes are setup to where we don't have to gang. I can and do, but it adds extra time on press with taping and whatnot so we just don't do it.

I find it's quicker to pull a screen and put in a fresh clean one.

i'm not trying to save a screen or save room, i'm saving time on press so my guys have maximum use of the minutes in a day to be productive.

bingo. we gang once in a while with crests but it slows down the entire process. I used to think we saved money by ganging but one day, I stood in the back and watched...I'm not saving a dime. the time it takes to prepare a screen to be used properly -twice- I could have had a new one in place and printing. with all the blocking out with old film and taping and junk, waste of time in my book.

[Admiral]

I think some of the responses are missing a couple things.

If there is no ink change the ganging up is pretty awesome and no time is really lost.  Throwing 2 pieces over a left chest design to do the small back design right after is obviously worth doing...

The size of the shop and how busy they are will also affect this greatly.  A 1 person shop should obviously gang up even more.

We just gang up same ink color (typically same job) and that 'additional' setup is very minimal.  20 seconds a screen maybe.  We don't remove screens, ink, use screen or press wash and return to press...that wouldn't be worth it for us.

[bulldog]

I think some of the responses are missing a couple things.

If there is no ink change the ganging up is pretty awesome and no time is really lost.  Throwing 2 pieces over a left chest design to do the small back design right after is obviously worth doing...

The size of the shop and how busy they are will also affect this greatly.  A 1 person shop should obviously gang up even more.

We just gang up same ink color (typically same job) and that 'additional' setup is very minimal.  20 seconds a screen maybe.  We don't remove screens, ink, use screen or press wash and return to press...that wouldn't be worth it for us.

+ One.

If I'm ganging it's same color. No way I would gang if I had to do a color change. And I'm a one person manual shop. And I'm sure this will get some raised eyebrows, but I don't even tape my screens most of the time.

I can see the argument either way though. If I had someone else making my screens I'd be more inclined to not gang, but when it's just me, the less screens I use the MORE I can keep the press spinning.

[alan802]

We try to gang same color and so that there is plenty of room in between the images and it takes about 15-20 seconds to put a couple strips of tape over the second image (not the whole image, just the first few inches usually) on the squeegee side to keep ink from the ganged image if any were to get to it.  Then we take the first image off the press, tape up the shirt side which is about 20-30 seconds, pull the tape off the squeegee side over the second image to be printed and put the screen back on press.  Maybe others are doing this differently and it's taking up more time?  I spent all weekend going over this and I think I'll do a video today of the typical screen changeover so we can analyze it and see what I'm missing. 

I've never been one to harp on keeping the press moving at all times but rather keeping quality as high as possible and never missing a deadline.  I remember conversations back in the day where people would talk about how they keep the press spinning and shirts on the belt at all times and although that's the goal, we went after it indirectly by making sure we were efficient at everything we did and not wasting time double stroking or using revolver mode.  Really taking a look at this over the weekend I have played with both scenarios and walked the processes through my head numerous times and today I'll be back there putting a stop watch to everything involved in ganging images and comparing that to the 20 minutes standard and how much time the press is stopped because of the pulling of tape and taping up the used image. 

We don't do color changes often, I typically only do it when we're short on screens and we need every screen in house for something so it's mainly the extra time to tape up a portion of the second image then putting tape on the shirt side of the image already printed, then I'll add in the extra time it takes to pull the extra tape during reclaim.  Doing a complete color change for us is under 5 minutes and probably closer to 3 because we have screen opener and rags at every turn of the shop and it's a pretty quick process but I still don't like to do them if we don't have to. Obviously we're not making money if we're not printing shirts but we charge for setups and screens so technically we do make money the more jobs we print in a day.  We are only just now getting into maxing out our production capabilities so the press has been spinning a lot more the last few months than average.

I'll spend the next few days breaking this down as accurately as I can and I'll share everything and try my best to show how everything is done here at our shop.  I'll be interested to see how the stopwatch compares to what I've done in my head and I'll make sure there are no biases or pride that gets in the way of the final numbers.  However this turns out is fine with me, I've always only been about running the most efficient shop possible and if I've been wrong in my thinking then I'll own up to it and change the way we do things.