Metal Halide vs led

[alan802]

The Starlight demo I had here in the shop went great, I can't say if the screens would have held up on a long run because I only did 5 screens and none of them were for longer runs, but the initial results that you can see right away showed it performed much better than the Vastex.  I don't think I ran the exposure calculator on any of the Starlight screens unfortunately, I wish I would have looking back but at the time I thought I was going to be selling the Vastex and turning around and buying the Starlight.  I had 3 screens that I put the expo calculator on and shot on the Vastex to show the M&R guys the results and of course they weren't impressed at all.

Hopefully within the next few months I'll have a Starlight in here and I can see just how close it is to a good metal halide unit.  I'll be sure to do a very thorough writeup and document the comparison.  But I've got to get rid of the Vastex unit before I do anything and who knows how long that will take.  I sure don't help my cause with my posts but I can't not tell the truth about it to sell ours, that's not how I operate.     

[Sbrem]

I think you need to be a pretty big shop to have an exposure unit as a production bottleneck, if it is, then LED may just be the answer, although I'll put my old converted 3K Nuarc fliptop with an 8+ year old bulb in it up against just about anything for speed on just about any emulsion.

If you're looking at both MH and LED new, and the costs are similar, as well as the finished product, I see no reason to not go with LED, but so far we've heard and seen mixed reviews of LED, and with used MH readily available at great prices, it's a tough sell to many shops.

I pay a lot of attention to the discussions on this topic; we don't have a bottleneck in production with screens, so I have trouble justifying the high cost of CTS, no matter how you expose it. As we start to think this over, the new Epson printer that has been under discussion has more of my interest than CTS.

Steve

[alan802]

The CTS debate is unfortunately a lot more shop-specific than the discussions on it portray, that's why so many say they wouldn't do this at all if they went back to film and shops like mine would have a hard time seeing a quick ROI and would benefit in the quality of work environment more than with bottom line benefits.  That's a huge gap that doesn't make any sense to a lot of the good people that just lurk and don't have the time to drill down on this subject to see if they fit the prime profile of a CTS shop or where they'll benefit the most or other areas they won't benefit as much.  Think about how our shop does almost 80% repeat jobs and a fairly high proportion of those 80% is reprinted within 4-8 weeks of the last order.  Film still makes sense in some areas although the lower pricing of CTS units can affect things greatly.  5 years ago it made zero sense for a shop doing 25 screens a day to buy a CTS machine but today it can make sense.  I know as we creep above a 30/day average the ROI numbers look more appealing but our better setup times this month versus 12 months ago means we'll see less time savings during setups so we're still back to a morale/quality of work-life meaning more than a bottom line benefit.

[GraphicDisorder]

Ahhhhh CTS and LED are never ending debates.

[Sbrem]

Well, I'm not trying to start any debates (too late, already did) but I love shiny new equipment, I drool over new toys. But I still can't make sense of spending 40K or so to put an image on a screen unless I'm producing an awful lot of screens a day, and we are in Alan's category, 25 - 30 a day. We have tons of film that gets used repeatedly, which of course is 0 ink cost on a reorder. We run an MHM, and the setup on those, if you have the FPU made for it, and why wouldn't you(?), is pretty damn fast. 5K MH burns 2 up in wall mount vacuum frame, but certainly much longer exposure times than LED. Making films is cheaper today than it was in the '80's when we used silver based films. Now, I'm pretty sure we can tape films on and get burning faster than a screen can be imaged, but we can't touch the reported LED exposure times; as I see it, screens exposing a lot faster than we can wash them out is a different type of bottleneck, but again, we're never sitting around waiting on a screen except in an emergency. One caveat, we can burn any size screen we want up to 50 x 30.
Of course, this may be because I've been burning screens since 1972, I find it hard to change, but that's really not it, I like change that works for me. Alan, maybe you could PM me your findings if you have the time, but only if it's not an inconvenience. Thanks everyone for all of your input.

Steve

[GraphicDisorder]

Film has zero ink cost but remember you have time to find it, time to dig it out, time to re file it and so on. That costs something.

The debate will never end.

[jvanick]

... but just think of all the savings in tape.

* if I had to go back to film, I'd quit this industry... [disclaimer -- we did not have a REAL tri-lock type system before we switched, so maybe I'd have a different opinion if I had that before we switched].

Between no film, faster setup, quicker and better screens, no registration marks, no taping (especially on press), etc... it's a no-brainer in my mind (and we ARE at that 20-25 screens per day #)...

[GraphicDisorder]

We bought a CTS when we were doing about 50 screens a week.  We are doing 100-140 screens a week now. Guess we grew into it pretty quick. LOL

[Homer]

One thing that seems to get over looked on the CTS "I can't justify it" thread is...when we ran a FPU, we had to have a skilled person, aka"someone that gave a sh*t" to do it...you had to be super accurate, and understand how the process works. With a DTS, we can stick ANYONE in in that spot and have them cranking out spectacular screens.  The exposure time is already set in stone -thanks to our Starlight- the mesh count is called out in the file and all you have to do is put the screen on the machine. We aren't even talking about reg time / film / ink/ tape / labor time or any of that savings....but I don't want to go into the things you can save on that you have NO idea about.....

[bimmridder]

 

[GraphicDisorder]

One thing that seems to get over looked on the CTS "I can't justify it" thread is...when we ran a FPU, we had to have a skilled person, aka"someone that gave a sh*t" to do it...you had to be super accurate, and understand how the process works. With a DTS, we can stick ANYONE in in that spot and have them cranking out spectacular screens.  The exposure time is already set in stone -thanks to our Starlight- the mesh count is called out in the file and all you have to do is put the screen on the machine. We aren't even talking about reg time / film / ink/ tape / labor time or any of that savings....but I don't want to go into the things you can save on that you have NO idea about.....

 

 

[Screen Dan]

We came from films.  They did the trick.  But with our event printing and our custom back printing program even our massive collection of in house designs don't seem to get reprinted very often.  Our film costs were nearly $1500 a month.  That doesn't even take into consideration the giant PITA of cataloging them and handling them.

Sure, you could pop the films on and be ready to wash out the image in about as much time as it takes to mask a full 15x17" design...but once you get smaller than that the time savings of films diminishes.  Not to mention the fact that we couldn't replace just one film, but the entire job all at once.  Watch out for water!  Registering to carrier sheets, almost forgot about that.

We are currently on our 3rd and 4th CTS (Douthitt CTS-30 and CTS-52) and couldn't imagine being without them.  Granted, on a slow day we do 100 screens, peak season can get up to 200 a day.  For that kind of volume it just makes sense.  If we were only doing a dozen screens a day there is no way I'd have ever gotten approval for one of these, let alone two to replace the previous two (of brands I'd rather never discuss ever again).

All said, I'll be putting in my order for an Starlight Gemini by the end of the day but if we didn't have this kind of volume we'd probably still be exposing on the same fluorescent light table we were using 20 years ago and we'd have no idea about the level of quality and repeatability that we were missing. 

[GraphicDisorder]

That doesn't even take into consideration the giant PITA of cataloging them and handling them.

This is a point that gets glossed over by the ones defending film. IMO the time in that is no joke.

Not to mention the fact that we couldn't replace just one film, but the entire job all at once.  Watch out for water!  Registering to carrier sheets, almost forgot about that.

This too.  One thing that has been great for us is if we pop a screen or have a issue on screen choice or we can just output another screen on the CTS in seconds really, no need to go chase back down the films that are either already put back up or not right in front of you as screens were often made days ahead or many hours at least in many cases in shops. I walk to the CTS, click the file, print right to the screen and im burning in 30 seconds later. I am not sure how it could be much easier.

[jvanick]

I walk to the CTS, click the file, print right to the screen and im burning in 30 seconds later. I am not sure how it could be much easier.

it sure does make it easy to do 'same day' jobs... and I LOVE the 200% markup that comes with same-day contract printing...  we plan 3 hours per day now for those types of jobs as we have a few 'contract' clients that will call to 'see if we can get a job in'... sure at 3x our normal rates, NO problem.

[bimmridder]

250 screens a day, 40-50 jobs. Film? No thanks

Now