General Press Size - Thoughts on Future

[brandon]

Hey everyone, just wondering what others are thinking about the upcoming digital changes / DTG on our auto presses and how long till presses start getting smaller with less heads. I know you still need several heads for flashing, specialty inks and applications, but wondering if in 10 or so years if the days of 20 + heads and ovals will be gone. I mean I know those presses will still be running strong but just wondering if they will still be made at today's volume. I guess I am just wondering what others are thinking about how many years we have till the digital head is a standard feature on the press purchase.

[balloonguy]

Good question. I am curious what others think. I don't see dtg making a huge impact in 10 years. I think the technology is still too slow and there is not enough demand. I don't think they will ever get better than 45 - 60 shirts per hour. That is great when you have 150 shirts to run. When the NFL needs 100k dtg just can't do it...

[Croft]

it definetly looks like it coming but pretty slowly, I have a few friends in the graphics industry we graduated and started working in 90 , the change that has happened in the graphics printing was devistating and they had to reinvent them selves because as scanner operators and film strippers they became obsolete by the early 2000's , they warned me and it did look like inkjet technology that was coming out would wipe out the screen printing industry because even then they were envisioning presses that looked like big printers.I'm 50 now and think I will probably retire still printing in a similar fashion to what I do now. Everything leading up to pushing ink through the screen has changed but the basic ink through mesh is unchanged.

[GraphicDisorder]

We are still a long away before DTG will take over this industry. Be it on press or on it's own.

Until DTG can run on every type of garment easily, it will never happen. Literally.

[Nation03]

I think the traditional presses will still be around for quite some time. Like everyone said, until speed goes way up and ink costs go down, I don't really see it happening. Ability to match exact pantone colors will also be necessary.

[Colin]

Brandon - were you watching all the stuff at SGIA?

Digital on press is getting faster - pre-treat on press is getting better - wash durability with a screen printed base is better and developing.

Long Beach will be the show to go and see what the leading edge is going to be for digital on press printing and the speed of that printing.

However..... you need to run a big shop to justify the price tag.  I don't think that part will change for 5-10 years minimum.

[brandon]

Hey, thanks for all the responses. I am aware of all the different brands and what their pros and cons are to an extent. Some very neat stuff out there but definitely not on our radar anytime soon. Next press purchase will be a "standard" industry press for sure but I am thinking years down the road as I was saying about 10 in my original post. I think by then or hope by then price has gone down and speed up. It would be nice on sim process jobs to do 144 and be done. And so on. But yeah, was just seeing what others are thinking. I know the price tag now is unattainable for most but thinking things will radically change in about 10 years. And of course if any manufacturer wants us to try one let me know haha

[mk162]

The changes you are seeing on the screen printing side will keep printing around longer as well.  The advancements are slower than the digital side for sure, but most of them are aimed to reduce labor, which is the biggest cost for many shops.

Auto reclaim, LED screen imaging, auto rinse, better registration systems, auto coaters, etc all make a shop cheaper and more efficient to run.

[Sbrem]

Personally, I don't expect to be in business in 10 years (I'd be 76) but I can see the question's validity. But, as Brandt says, DTG needs a lot of fixing to take over screen printing. It sounds like a great thing, but I don't see the quality yet in the prints, though I've had some impressive results from my vendor, depending on art. The first time I saw one was from Kornit, and it was a terrible print, blurry, black text surrounded by yellow that had turned green, etc, etc. To be fair, I believed it to be poor file prep, or hoped it was, for a 200K + printer.

Steve

[3Deep]

I was very surprise when I bought my Anatol Mini years ago, I was looking at the the big presses but didn't have the space until Anatol call with that mini and it has just about every feature as the bigger presses.  I'm thinking a 10 head press could really be the go to press with a small footprint and still give you a nice size print.  M&R didn't have anything back when I was looking for a press that would fit what i needed and just like that they have a smaller press now because there is a market for it.  If I could have got a 10 in the size I have now I would really be set for years to come and space wise I'd be good too, printing and flashing on the same head is already out but I think it could be better over the next few years.

[mimosatexas]

We have an 8 head, and we average 2 screens a job (2 whites, or white and color). We honestly don't do a lot of high color count high volume stuff, and we do DTG in house for the low volume stuff. That said, I want more heads almost every day. It lets us setup a bunch of jobs at once and just crank through them through the day vs having downtime for press changeover. That and we do get requests for stuff that would be made easier with more heads (mainly more cool down time). For our market i think have 12 or 14 would be awesome. I dont see us needing more than that though.

[Gilligan]

Hey, thanks for all the responses. I am aware of all the different brands and what their pros and cons are to an extent. Some very neat stuff out there but definitely not on our radar anytime soon. Next press purchase will be a "standard" industry press for sure but I am thinking years down the road as I was saying about 10 in my original post. I think by then or hope by then price has gone down and speed up. It would be nice on sim process jobs to do 144 and be done. And so on. But yeah, was just seeing what others are thinking. I know the price tag now is unattainable for most but thinking things will radically change in about 10 years. And of course if any manufacturer wants us to try one let me know haha

It's almost like no one listens to the original post and just wants to hear themselves talk. Lol

[kingscreen]

I'm still trying to figure out what the real benefit of on-press DTG is.  Videos I've seen, they're screen printing 3 hits of White, then DTG on top.  There can't be a huge benefit in speed/set up there.  Maybe I'm completely wrong.  As far as the original post questions, I personally don't see large 20+ color presses getting any more popular.  DTG will catch up whether it's 10 or 20 years from now.  It just will.  For those of us with that many working years left in us  , it's definitely something we have to keep in mind.  We don't own a DTG and don't really see us adding one anytime soon so maybe I also fall under 'just hearing myself talk' - 

[mimosatexas]

When I was looking into our press it seemed like every additional head added about $5k to the cost, so every 2 head jump from 6 to 8 to 10 etc added $10k to the cost of the press (some brands were less, some more, but that was about average).  My thinking at the time, and still is, that you just need to figure out how many jobs youll get during the life of the press that you wouldnt without those extra heads and if it would cover the cost.  We were limited to an 8 color due to space restrictions, so we were deciding between 6 and 8.  We made up that extra $10k off of one 3000 piece job 3 weeks after getting the press that needed all 8 heads to finish.  Was an easy decision.

We do a crap ton of DTG and a crap ton of screen printing, and while we are a small shop in a lot of ways, the differences are stark and obvious.  DTG is great for full color on small volume.  it helps us do on demand printing for hundreds of designs on a wide variety of shirt styles and colors with minimal setup and lots of flexibility.  It is an essential tool for that part of our business.  That said, for higher volume work where you are having to prep screens for printing bases and pretreatment etc even if the on press DTG was able to keep up with screenprinting there are still so many other issues with the process vs screenprinting traditionally that have to be considered.  I think it has a niche place in some shops, basically another specialized tool that will help make certain jobs more efficient and profitable, but for the current cost of the tech, I don't really see why it would be used now, and it will take a long time for the price to drop to the point of shops seeing it as a no brainer tool to be added to the arsenal. 

[brandon]

Thanks again everyone. I'm thinking that if in 7, 8, 9 years or so when these things can print on a discharge underbase and any other substrate needed and price is at say 60K and can do 300 an hour I'll buy one. Being a small shop in the States with lots of orders at 50 to 500 pieces I could see having two "standard" autos and one DTG auto. Plus all the other equipment advances in tech. That would be enough to serve our niche market.