Back of oven

[Maxie]

We work with one automatic and a smallish oven that restricts out printing speed, printing 350-400 an hour one person handles the back of the oven.
We are soon getting another automatic and bigger oven, I'm interested to know how many shirts a person can handle at the back of the oven.
We talk a lot about printing speeds, what about catching speed?

[Frog]

What do you mean by catching speed?
Most shops just have bins which get emptied when full (or when size changes)
Then the "dryer back person"  or other stackers or folders can deal with them.

[ebscreen]

I'm right with you Maxie, I'm beginning to realize that it kinda doesn't matter how fast we can print
if packing can't keep up. We typically have one person catching for two presses, BUT one press will
have two people running and the second press will only have one. So basically one person
catching for 1.5 presses. If we've got large large runs we'll have two people catching for two
fully staffed presses, and even then...

It depends a lot on the design, what's being run, if it's the only/last print location, etc. It irks me out
when there's a giant stack of shirts to be boxed at the end, and I try and keep them counting in dozens and straight
into the boxes, but it is admittedly hard to do that at 720 pieces/hr. Except for larger runs we're typically
done packing by the time the next job is coming down the dryer, but it still irks me.

So yeah, if you plan on running two presses full speed, plan on having at least a catcher for each, and maybe even
a third person. As printers we do tend to ignore the needs at the end of the dryer.

[LuckyFlyinROUSH]

One press 60 doz an hour is a good pace to keep up with boxing. After that you get employees who can't keep up, or don't want to keep up for what you are paying them.

Just have floater employees like we do. When there aren't shirts coming down they go clean squeegees or count in orders.

[blue moon]

one competent person will handle 700 or so per hour. They will not be able to catch and box at the same time, but shirts get in the box while another job is being set up. Since we run lotsa small jobs, there is always time to box. With two presses, it might be harder as there would not be a break. For your size, you should be able to combine shipping/receiving and catching between two ppl.

pierre

[Maxie]

Frog, we never let the shirts fall in a box.
Someone catches them, lays them flat if we are printing the other side or folds them in 10's for shipping.
They get creased falling in a box, I also have the person at the back of the oven check the print and shirts.
I'm just thinking that it doesn't help to print fast if the person at the back of the oven cannot keep up.
Yesterday we printed 3000 shirts front 2 colors and back 5.
Printing speed about 550-600 an hour, we had 2 printers, 2 people behind the oven, one person getting the shirts ready for printing and one checking inks etc.
So 550 - 600  an hour sounds great, but with 6 people not very economical.
I'm interested to know how other shops handle this?

[Frog]

Frog, we never let the shirts fall in a box.

Well, if the interest in threads we've had about dryer bins are any indication, you are in the minority.

[Gilligan]

Yes, we also have issues being that we are TIGHT in space here.

Keeping up, especially with 50/50's or Poly's give us issues as we try to spread them around to let them cool down quickly.  So we will make at least 4 stacks.

Then we are also trying to keep them separated by size groups as well... all this taking place on the SIDE of the dryer because the back of our dryer is literally 1' from the wall.

[jvanick]

when we print poly we always have a catcher... they use 2 long banquet tables to separate out into cooling piles...

depending on the job we'll have a guy clearing the tables and reboxing as well.

[bimmridder]

The minority grows. No boxes or bins here. Only people.

[blue moon]

Frog, we never let the shirts fall in a box.
Someone catches them, lays them flat if we are printing the other side or folds them in 10's for shipping.
They get creased falling in a box, I also have the person at the back of the oven check the print and shirts.
I'm just thinking that it doesn't help to print fast if the person at the back of the oven cannot keep up.
Yesterday we printed 3000 shirts front 2 colors and back 5.
Printing speed about 550-600 an hour, we had 2 printers, 2 people behind the oven, one person getting the shirts ready for printing and one checking inks etc.
So 550 - 600  an hour sounds great, but with 6 people not very economical.
I'm interested to know how other shops handle this?

Maxie, something does not make sense here. If you are producing 600 shirts per hour (Actually producing 600 rather than printing at 600/hour and producing 350) you should be able to make money with that. At $1 per shirt you are making $600 per hour. With 6 ppl, that's $100/hour per employee. Not sure about the cost of living in Israel, but this should be a significant markup. What am I missing here?

pierre

[Maxie]

Pierre, This thread is not about the economics of running a shop, we'd have to get into how long set up takes, also break down, how many hours a day we print, etc.
I have worked for about 10 years with a manual and one automatic. Next week I'm getting a new oven and 12/14 S Type and I'm trying to work out how to staff 2 machines.
Hopefully the person preparing screens and inks will be able to do this both machines.
Each machine will need 2 printers if thy are working together but will one person behind the oven catch for both printers or will we now need two people behind the oven?
I am interested in hearing about how other shops work.
If the same people are printing and sorting the shirts behind the oven I can understand having them fall into a bath, if not I don't why you'd want to do that.

[blue moon]

Pierre, This thread is not about the economics of running a shop, we'd have to get into how long set up takes, also break down, how many hours a day we print, etc.
I have worked for about 10 years with a manual and one automatic. Next week I'm getting a new oven and 12/14 S Type and I'm trying to work out how to staff 2 machines.
Hopefully the person preparing screens and inks will be able to do this both machines.
Each machine will need 2 printers if thy are working together but will one person behind the oven catch for both printers or will we now need two people behind the oven?
I am interested in hearing about how other shops work.
If the same people are printing and sorting the shirts behind the oven I can understand having them fall into a bath, if not I don't why you'd want to do that.

for what it's worth, our plan is to have only one press running at a time for the most part (when we get the second press). Thinking is we'll have one being set up as the other is printing and then switch. It would only require one extra person and you can still keep one person in the back (instead of two) and you should be just about doubling your production rate. I figure we are setting up and tearing down about 40% of the time so by moving the crew back and forth we should gain at least that much in production. The additional person would be pulling as the current puller is a good printer so he would move over and the lead printer would be doing the setups and tear downs. This works well during the transition period as you are building up the sales to fill the new capacity. Again, this is my thinking right now, we'll see how it works out.

pierre

[Colin]

Printing at 45+ dozen an hour one guy should be catching and also be your last line of QC. 

If you are running at 40-45 dz and hour on press one and a second press with one person loading and unloading it themselves (approx 300 an hour).  The catcher should be able to keep up with both presses.  But they Will NOT be able to do any real QC.  They will be busting butt to keep up.

I look at it this way:  What is your shops reason to have a catcher at the end of the dryer.  Is it simply to catch/box/fold as quickly as possible?  Or do you want them to lay out the shirts nice, neat, and clean, do real QC, trim any unwanted threads in the garment, etc?

I have seen both roles in different shops.  One shop gets paid well for their work, the other does not.

[alan802]

We've been able to run at 1000/hr and our better catchers can keep up, but it's not easy.  I've had some that could handle as fast as my printer could run and then a few others that struggled with 600/hr coming down the belt.  A good catcher is worth a lot in most cases and the bad ones that we've had can cost the shop several hours per week in lost production.  Many times I've had to stop what I was working on and help catch and box up a job and there is nothing more frustrating to me than having to have 2 people to do a 1 person job. 

We ran a 3K piece job last Tuesday and I had a temp back there catching and he was not able to keep up and because of that I ended up spending about 3 hours re-stacking/counting/bundling all 3K shirts and boxing them up myself.  He was unable to stack the shirts neatly and slowing the press down had virtually no affect.  So I had to take a stack of several hundred shirts high and then down-stack them neatly, then bundle them by dozens so essentially our catcher did barely more than had we just let the shirts fall into a basket.  If I had been catching everything would have been in neat 12-count bundles and easily boxed up since the vast majority of boxes were full 72 piece cases.  It would have taken about 20-25 minutes after the print run to box up 3K shirts.  There have been plenty of runs where the production rate was slow enough for the catcher to bundle in dozens and box them up so that the job is completely finished about 30 seconds after the last shirt is picked from the belt.