Press install (finally)

[tancehughes]

Our new (to us) Gauntlet II is being installed. I am so excited!! This dude is quiet and smooth, and I'm excited about the faster print speeds. Lots of little air leaks that the tech is taking care of, but mostly in good shape.

Now to get it making some money, two presses is going to be a new world for us, but should help tremendously with scheduling and flexibility.

[Screen Dan]

Nice.  Very clean.  Leaks are to be expected...especially if it was in storage.  Usually you just have to wiggle or tighten the fitting or re-cut the line or re-wrap with teflon tape.

We recently brought back our old 12/14 G2 that we intended to sell...got another dryer and hooked it up for a fourth auto.  It was a sloppy hissy wreck when first assembled.  When the tech left it was velvety smooth, quiet perfection.  In far better operating condition than when we tore it down a year prior.  I've never used another brand of press but after seeing many of these things beaten on for 20+ hours every single day for well over a decade I must say that I'd never suggest that going blue would ever be something to eye suspiciously...especially considering M&R's service, which I've always been thrilled with.

From my week of training at M&R with Francisco I'm pretty well convinced that the only unrepairable deal breaker issue I know of is if the central carousel shaft is worn down and off center from lack of lube/maintenance.  Everything else is usually relatively simple...save for rebuilding a mac block or the lift cylinders on a Z...may god have mercy on that line.

I'd say stock up on tol-a-matic cylinders...from what I was told by Francisco they haven't been manufactured for well over 10 years now and the repair kits aren't being made anymore.  Though, we haven't had to replace one in years once we got our front-stop stoppers pushed out more.

Exciting stuff man.  I wish you the best of luck with a machine I have nothing but the fondest memories of (and 13 years later it's still going strong 20 hours a day).

[tancehughes]

 Thanks dan, it's encouraging to hear of other people that speak highly of the gauntlet II. M&R equipment truly is some of the best out there

[dirkdiggler]

is that a big TV above the press?

[ZooCity]

Two presses can do a lot for a shop, a lot of whatever the shop wants really; be it to full bore schedule both machines or run both at about 75% of what they could handle and enjoy the peace of mind that only redundancy can bring. The Gauntlet II's are legendary and, from what I have seen, worthy of it.  Maybe not as elegantly basic as the I's (I'll slowly back out of the room at any mention of a "drill down menu" on a press) but they shored it up in all the right places I think.  Congrats!

I can't make out your dryer in the pic which means you probably have a bottleneck now.  Time to make some scratch with the dual press setup and get the biggest dryer you can swing. 

[tancehughes]

Yeah our next upgrade is a dryer, were severely underserved now. We're not going to run both presses at the same time initially though, so we will survive for now. We will have one person setting up one press while the other is running, then swap presses to always keep one running. Our runs aren't too large most of the time, so setups and tear downs are what cause a lot of our down time, and we've maxed out the DB.

Yes that is a large TV above both presses, we use printavo for shop management now, and we put the digital proof on the tv above the job that runs so that the print is always up there for everyone to see and make sure things are correct. They've really been a great investment as they've already helped cut down on errors.

[tancehughes]

We access printavo on the iPads and hook one up to each TV for scheduling and proofing purposes.