Auto In the House Finally

[Inkworks]

Well my used 12/14 finally arrived and we had a heck of a morning getting it off the truck and into the shop. Of course it arrived one hour earlier than I was told, while I was still at home getting the (young) kids ready for school as my Wife was working an overnight shift, It only went down hill from there.....First of all it was pouring rain to the point of causing flooding in some cities in the Valley. Second the guy down the street who I had arranged to do the heavy lifting with his big forklift decided the rain was a deal breaker for him. Not that I could really blame him, I was going to pay him for his trouble, but he is a timber cutter with his own sawmill, not a forklift guy for hire, Third of all the centre hub was 80" wide, not 74" as I had been told. My double doors are exactly 74.5" wide when opened, and 78" wide with the entire frame removed, that left cinder blocks to be cut and removed....in the pouring rain, while the two Russian truck drivers waited.... understandably not impressed. An emergency call to a equipment mover one town away yielded a pro with a  good forklift with fork extensions to do the big move, that took almost an hour for him to arrive, which left time for my contractor buddy to do emergency "alterations" to my doorway. Luckily he wasn't busy becaus he got flooded out of his jobsite.

After all that was taken care of, the move went slow, but smooth and predictably. I think it took two years off of my life from the stress. I thought I had everything arranged and ready to go, forklift, operator, pallet jack once inside, but it all went to crap and I take that personally when it's something I'm in charge of.

Anyways, it all appears good now, the machine appears in very good shape, was very well crated and I'm stoked to go auto for myself. I've worked on other auto's before so the learning curve shouldn't be a problem, and the machine has a bigger print area and more colours than my local competition which should give me an edge on many jobs, as well as two full size quartz flashes. I've got a certified Tech who I've known for ~20 years coming in Tuesday to get it assembled and purring like a kitten, he's also bringing me an 8000watt Olec light source for my 4' x 6' vacuum frame, as all I have right now is a flip-lid 3k Nuarc that can only do 20 x 24" frames... Did you know if you over-ride the magnet safety on a flip-lid and tilt it ~60 degrees you can shine it on a wall-mount vacuum frame to do bigger screens of course it takes 10 minutes to expose at that distance.... the 8K light should fix that up. I've got a pallet of used Hix re-tens to get stretched up, but we'll have 40 rigid frames back from the stretcher next week for the meantime. Good thing as I have some big runs coming down the pipe and the 6/4 Ranar was going to be the death of us... Going to have to update that boat-anchor to a Vastex 6/6 or Anatol thunder in the next year or two too, nut and bolt off contact adjustments suck big time, as do the lash-filled "micros" I can set it up reasonable quickly, but the other guys can't. It does hold registration once dialed in though.

Did I mention we're running "hair-straight-back" busy while all this is going down? 12+ hours days, printing wine glasses like no-tomorrow, 2000+ printed, cured and packed in the first 5 hours today, and we've got 5000 more to do early next week while the Auto is getting brought to life. Thank goodness people still drink in a recession! 

geez I need to go fishing....

[beanie357]

No rigging job goes without hiccups. You perservered and made it happen. A good "rolodex" is usually the answer to most problems.

Who the H told you a 6" size difference? Send them the masonary invoice.

GL with ur new press!

[alan802]

Did I miss what kind and model press it was?

[Inkworks]

The shop doesn't have 3-phase, lot's (400amps) of single phase though. It was tough to find a press that didn't need either 3-phase, or a huge compressor....which usually need 3-phase. So I ended up with a used 2006 (post asdf era) Progressive Falcon E with 2 full size (20 x 28") Quartz flashes and youth and adult platens. Bought it from a nice guy out of Texas, and have a local tech for them that I trust.

[T Shirt1]

Congratulations!!  Finding a good, preowned 14/12 or 12/10 at a reasonable price is quite an accomplishment.  Enjoy.

steve

[royster13]

Way to go Jon.....I am going to get over your way one of these days....

[Inkworks]

Got all the heads hung, outriggers on, pallet arms on, tomorrow we'll tweak it, lube it, zero the heads and set run-out and fire it up. The tech took off his coveralls after an hour because it was so much cleaner than most of the used presses he's installed. The thing sure dominates the shop now. We even found the original spare parts pack in the box of goodies, two full chopper sets, linear bearings etc.

So far so good, keep you fingers crossed for us when we put the power to it.

[Admiral]

Take pictures!

How many prints on that press?

[Inkworks]

well we got it up and running today, had a few hurdles, but all were resolved fairly easily. The thing is a beast. Z-bar with a dial indicator showed all arms within a .002" of each other before tweaking, under a thou after.

It wouldn't rotate CCW at first, but we found a loose wire in the control panel and a quick call to Workhorse yielded the correct location for it, which is good as that is how the dryer is set-up for unloading. It all seems tight, straight and clean for a used press. I'm looking forward to the first job on it. I still have to convert the flashes to single phase.

One of the thing I found strange was that the air and power needed to be run in to the bottom of the machine. I didn't like that idea at all, so we drilled a few big holes in the top-plate and routed the electrical and air to come down from the roof and down the centre of the machine so we wouldn't end up with a trip-hazard on the floor, even with a proper wire cover it would have sucked.

Props to my Tech from Vancouver, he's done all sorts of TAS, M&R and Workhorse auto's but this was his first Progressive, and he was impressed with the build and design, not saying it's better than the above, but decently built and solid.

Pics to come.

[Inkworks]

Well, after a busy few days playing catch-up on orders, I finally got the platens all levelled and the shrouds on all the servos, as well as figuring out the controls etc. I had one issue with the servo-index settings, turns out for 16 x 22" platens it still needs to be set for "extra small platens" I had it on "large" and it wasn't stopping perfectly lined up with the forks. 16" x 22" isn't small in my world, I guess that puts the our new print size possibilities into perspective though....

I've also figured out how to change the quartz flashes from 3 phase to single.... can you say 4 gauge copper feed....

I just got a message back from a member on our flyfishing forum and he has a 45cfm Devilbiss air chiller he's willing to give me! talk about luck! I told him I owe him big-time. Used 30cfm's seem to be around $700-$1000 around here.

This weekend I'll get the Olec 8000watt exp light wired up, the 20 x 22" flash wired up and set the off contacts on the other 11 heads. Monday I'll need to hit the industrial electrical supply shop for some 4 gauge copper and a 100amp breaker for the 20x28 flash.

Looks like this week I'll be stretching the Hix retens and setting up for some upcoming runs, I have 6 jobs of 5-7 colour wildlife prints, full back, chest and both sleeves coming up, as well as some big spot-colour jobs.

Anybody have 14 M&R sleeve/double-sleeve platens or ~20 x 28"s they want to part with?

[Inkworks]

Take pictures!

[Prosperi-Tees]

SWEET! Looks like a really clean machine.

[Dottonedan]

Awesome to have a press that big. Now all you need is some good art and seps to show off your capabilities.

Congrats!

[Inkworks]

Awesome to have a press that big. Now all you need is some good art and seps to show off your capabilities.

Congrats!

You're on my list Dan, I'll be posting of some of the wildlife prints I'll be doing. The two artists I work with are t-shirt/index colour guys, but are often busy doing their own stuff so I've made a note of your contact info. One thing I am not is an artist, graphic guy yes, but not art.

I hope with good art and seps, and my background in graphic and FFC screenprinting process & controls will translate to some nice work coming off the press.

[alan802]

Sweet!  Did you clean the machine or was it like that when you bought it?