"He who marches out of step hears another drum." ~ Ken Kesey
How do we do it, the pause pedal. I?ve been a press op most of my career and are not new to 1000+ hours. Getting to that rate and staying there on a blue wasn?t that hard, until you had any problems with the load. Choice was to let it go, yank it off and let the no sensor catch it or flip to finish, load next and flip back to run. Easy but it was a missed shirt and lost time. Now you?re running solo, sometimes you wait for the next board, sometimes your stopping when you get a bad load then it?s switches and missed boards and time again.the pause pedal.. if need just that much more time to load, step on the pedal and the press waits for you.. step off and back in it. No skips no wasted board at the cost of a fraction of a second. Step on it a little longer and I can add some fresh glue or go into finish ad glue then when it comes back start the load as I go push all the inks and back to unload without stopping the press. It?s a real beast in solo mode as now the press goes as fast as you. With a double base or double stroke HSA or WB work you can set the perfect pace and just go.
You?re not going to like this.. 3000 shirts is a piss poor day honestly for a 10k pc run. That?s 3.5 days of solid work.. gotta go faster! Goal should be 5500 per day if they walk into everything ready to go. A 3 man crew should easily hit 4500 per shift if it?s the same print all day and thats with 2 breaks, a lunch and moving their own product. Sportys run about 72 dz an hour max.. that?s 864 an hour.Run for 7 hours and you?ll print 6048 shirts. I?d love to tell you what we Spin the Roq?s at with only 7 people all together running 4 machines and two dryers but you won?t believe me, you have to see it to believe it. The crew runs solo in the 350-400 per hour range and we exceed 1000 pcs per hour when we team up and help unload. We knocked out 10k shirts the other week with front, back in 3 days. We ran at 850-1050 per hour all day till it was done then went right into the next job up and running 10 minutes later. Shop was over 100, it was high 90?s outside and we all just did our job. The name of the game is prep, make sure the next job is ready to go and help the press turnover and get going ASAP.