Automatics...

[GraphicDisorder]

Love our tri-loc, we often register 6-7 color jobs as fast as you can walk around the press and often need no micro or maybe 1 head a touch.  I find that priceless. 

[whitewater]

is the triloc only with the m&r?

will it work on other presses?

[alan802]

The tri-loc will work with just about every auto press out there I think except for the mhm.  I know it will work on ours, it should work on the anatols, at least I would think they would have made their presses to accept that tool, works on the Printex.  So the one's I'm not sure about would be the Brown and Lawson and Anatol.  I'm sure Paul will let us know if their presses will accept the tri-loc regi pallet.

[blue moon]

The tri-loc will work with just about every auto press out there I think except for the mhm.  I know it will work on ours, it should work on the anatols, at least I would think they would have made their presses to accept that tool, works on the Printex.  So the one's I'm not sure about would be the Brown and Lawson and Anatol.  I'm sure Paul will let us know if their presses will accept the tri-loc regi pallet.

MHM will not take the trilock, but it has it's own system that is arguably the best one out there. It is much easier to use than the others and it does not slow you down at all.

Few weeks ago, when in a hurry, we tore down a 7 color job, cleaned the squeegees and floodbars, popped in the new screens, loaded the ink and registered the next 7 color job in about 8 min. Three ppl in a hurry to go home on a friday, no better motivation. Registration was within 10 thousands of an inch!

There is a little bit extra you have to spend on the bushings for the screens (abou $8 per frame) and about 2-3 min to install them. After that there are no traditional clamps to hold the screens, they are held in place by the pins and you can take the frames out and put them in without loosing the registration. Additional benefit of the system is that you can adjust the micros on the fly (very production friendly, linear adjustments just twist to move. Nothing to unlock or release, just turn the knob.).

After using the frames with the pins, I would not go any other way. If MHM went out of business, I would  buy a used press with bushing system before buying anything else. It is hard to believe until you actually spend some time with it . . .

[Homer]

The tri-loc will work with just about every auto press out there I think except for the mhm.  I know it will work on ours, it should work on the anatols, at least I would think they would have made their presses to accept that tool, works on the Printex.  So the one's I'm not sure about would be the Brown and Lawson and Anatol.  I'm sure Paul will let us know if their presses will accept the tri-loc regi pallet.

MHM will not take the trilock, but it has it's own system that is arguably the best one out there. It is much easier to use than the others and it does not slow you down at all.

Few weeks ago, when in a hurry, we tore down a 7 color job, cleaned the squeegees and floodbars, popped in the new screens, loaded the ink and registered the next 7 color job in about 8 min. Three ppl in a hurry to go home on a friday, no better motivation. Registration was within 10 thousands of an inch!

There is a little bit extra you have to spend on the bushings for the screens (abou $8 per frame) and about 2-3 min to install them. After that there are no traditional clamps to hold the screens, they are held in place by the pins and you can take the frames out and put them in without loosing the registration. Additional benefit of the system is that you can adjust the micros on the fly (very production friendly, linear adjustments just twist to move. Nothing to unlock or release, just turn the knob.).

After using the frames with the pins, I would not go any other way. If MHM went out of business, I would  buy a used press with bushing system before buying anything else. It is hard to believe until you actually spend some time with it . . .

can one of these systems be modified for an M&R system? pics? . .now I'm interested. . .

[tonypep]

Pretty sure any auto with side clamps can't take the tri-locs. Which rules out Anatol.
tp

[Baron265]

Pretty sure any auto with side clamps can't take the tri-locs. Which rules out Anatol.
tp

Not so. The side clamps just need a small modification.

[blue moon]

The tri-loc will work with just about every auto press out there I think except for the mhm.  I know it will work on ours, it should work on the anatols, at least I would think they would have made their presses to accept that tool, works on the Printex.  So the one's I'm not sure about would be the Brown and Lawson and Anatol.  I'm sure Paul will let us know if their presses will accept the tri-loc regi pallet.

MHM will not take the trilock, but it has it's own system that is arguably the best one out there. It is much easier to use than the others and it does not slow you down at all.

Few weeks ago, when in a hurry, we tore down a 7 color job, cleaned the squeegees and floodbars, popped in the new screens, loaded the ink and registered the next 7 color job in about 8 min. Three ppl in a hurry to go home on a friday, no better motivation. Registration was within 10 thousands of an inch!

There is a little bit extra you have to spend on the bushings for the screens (abou $8 per frame) and about 2-3 min to install them. After that there are no traditional clamps to hold the screens, they are held in place by the pins and you can take the frames out and put them in without loosing the registration. Additional benefit of the system is that you can adjust the micros on the fly (very production friendly, linear adjustments just twist to move. Nothing to unlock or release, just turn the knob.).

After using the frames with the pins, I would not go any other way. If MHM went out of business, I would  buy a used press with bushing system before buying anything else. It is hard to believe until you actually spend some time with it . . .

can one of these systems be modified for an M&R system? pics? . .now I'm interested. . .

tri lock is an M&R product. I would imagine it would work on your Gauntlet. Rich (244) probably has some experience with it, try PM'ing him . . .

[ZooCity]

We don't run an auto yet but I did a lot of hard thinking on pre-reg and came to a couple conclusions:

The whole point is to do your registration off-press and keep that machine spinning.  It's not necessarily any more/less time consuming to align screens on press than off, just a division of labor.

Your press needs to be accurate enough and kept so to really effectively have a pre-registration system work.  Otherwise you just have a pre-alignment system and you might as well diy a quick system for that and not worry about every film being perfect.  I think it's go big or go home on this- commit systemically to your pre-reg system and doing your registration off-press or don't.  There's a lot more to it then the devices that align the positives and frames. 

Tri-loc and the Newman Pin Lock use carrier sheets and pins to which each film is aligned.  Both systems share the benefit of forcing you to examine how each film stacks up while you are registering on the light table.  Another advantage of the pins/sheets is you can library those sheets (if done properly) for re-orders, throw them on the pins and go.  Disadvantage on both is the carrier film causing light scatter behind the positive, which is already causing scatter.  Even if you use the short sheets to avoid this it's adding some underexposed area to the screen.  Shouldn't be a huge issue with post-exposure but long-run discharge/wb could exacerbate this for some.

Tri-loc has a jig that must be secured to your expo glass.  The same three points from the jig are there on your registration platen.

Newman Pin Lock does not require anything on your glass and uses it's titular pin system with swing out arms mounted under a platen to align the frames on press.

Both are specific to the width of your screens.

The MHM system is freaking awesome looking to me.  Built in reg system + linear micro adjustment that doesn't need locked?  Yes please. The auto-reg presses they make are probably mind-altering to use I would imagine and a brilliant concept. 

In our case, I couldn't find any other reg systems that can accommodate 25" wide frames or seem to be accurate enough to justify purchasing rather than fabricating yourself.  I settled on the Pin Lock system but it's not cheap and the unfortunate reality for us is that our chameleon is not accurate enough to justify the expense of the system: we have side clamps but don't have air-locks, need to use M3 adapters to clamp our frames, and I've noticed that, with the weight of our screens on the press the micros will walk out of registration frequently during heavy production.  We're also constantly fighting to keep everything parallel because we're indexing this heavy machine with our platens as there's no where you can grab the press that won't contribute to knocking the platens out of level.

If this lengthy post is too far off-topic, somebody could move it to a new category and we could carry on a discussion there.  I'd love to hear more thoughts on this. 

Thanks as well for starting this thread Whitewater, we're getting to the point where manual production ain't cutting it anymore and this thread has, in part, helped me narrow it down to the fact that I want us buying new.

[alan802]

On the subject of pre-reg systems, I've built several over the years and I have half of the newman pin lock system.  I have the swingout pallet arms and I have been thinking of a way to build a DIY with the pin lock system, but haven't had time to sit down and do it.  Personally, I think if I can come up with a way to use that pin lock system without carrier sheets, it will be better than using a 3 point stop block system.  I'll keep everyone informed on the progress of this project.

Back to auto talk.

[whitewater]

About Brown auto's..they are electric while m&r use a compressor....

why is one better than the other?

wouldn't it just be a lot less expensiver to just get the all electric one instead of the compressor and what not?

[alan802]

About Brown auto's..they are electric while m&r use a compressor....

why is one better than the other?

wouldn't it just be a lot less expensiver to just get the all electric one instead of the compressor and what not?

I think that having an all electric press is fine and all, but I think you'd lose some control you have over the print process and the print settings.  Our press uses air to lift the carousel, and it also uses air in the squeegee/floodbar chopper cylinders to control overall print pressure.  I think having control of the air pressure within those chopper cylinders is very valuable to dialing in the perfect print pressure.  I'm not sure how the all electric machines accomplish this. 

I don't know if m&r or anyone of that caliber would be interested in building an "all electric" machine.  I know this subject has been touched on before but not into much detail.  Using a combination of air and electricity is the way most major manufacturers of production minded machines go about it but I'm not certain of the actual reasoning behind it.  I'm sure there are factors such as cost, reliability, quality, production capabilities, all to varying degrees that have guided most manufacturers to build the machines the way they do today, I just wish I knew exactly why that is.   

I'm not trying to put down the Brown Electraprint, I admire what they do and the niche they fill, but their machines aren't as heavily geared to big time production shops as m&r, rpm, progressive or anatol's full lineup of presses.  I think that using the right combination of air and electricity to power the machines produces a better screen printing press, or at least what I know about automatics lends me to believe that to be true.  The all electrics are perfect for that smaller shop that does "smaller" runs and has limited production space and limited air requirements.  I've seen some mighty fine prints that came from a brown electraprint so I know they are fully capable to producing a quality print consistently.  I certainly have no idea what kind of production numbers the brown's are capable of, or any other all electric press for that matter, but the robust numbers that air/electric presses can do are staggering and I would be willing to bet a small chunk of change that the all electrics can't produce that type of heavy production over a long period of time.

Whether or not the Brown or an all electric equivalent is the right fit is very shop specific.  My comments above aren't meant to say the Brown can't handle doing thousands of prints a day, several hundred thousand prints a year because I don't know for sure, but I know for sure you could do that with a diamondback, sportsman, horizon, stratus, titan, revolution, falcon, hurricane, etc.  Now would the shop considering a smaller entry level machine need that type of production capability that some of the other presses can provide?  Should you consider what kind of production numbers you'll need to do in 5 years? 

If the first year you have the auto you're only doing one job a day, 5-10 jobs per week, 36-72 pieces, almost any auto on the market would handle that, but in 2016 you might have a completely different business and could be doing 25-30 jobs a week, 100+ pieces per order, 5-6 colors on darks consistently, and I'm just not sure some of the smaller entry level autos would be the right choice then.  I think they could probably handle that workload, but not as well as a more robust machine could.

So much to think about.  So Whitewater, what type of business do you see yourself having 5 years from now?  I think you can buy an auto for what you need right now, but it's such a big expense, an investment that you might want to buy based on what you think you'll need 2-3 years down the road.  I know lot's of businesses never reach those goals they set for themselves, and you can always buy enough press to get you through till it's time to step up to a bigger one, and that might be the safest way to go about it.  I think we bought ours with both thoughts in mind.  It would handle anything we needed it to do then, and knew that it could handle a larger workload as well when we needed it to.

I realize I probably didn't clear anything up and didn't answer the question as to why one type of press is better than the other, but oh well, I love talking autos.

[Sparkie]

I just had a Brown ElectraPrint installed last month. I am a small one man shop and the ElectraPrint is a perfect fit for me.

For production numbers, to this point I've cut my print times by about one/third. I'm still learning the ins and outs of this machine and I'm confident I will do better. It will print faster than one man can pull and load shirts, so it's only as fast as I am at any given time.

The squeegee pressure is adjusted manually with a turn knob at either side above each squeegee. Squeegee angle is adjustable by loosening 2 set screws and adjusting the angle by hand. I'm still learning optimal angles and pressures and it's getting easier/faster/more accurate with each job.

The only bad prints the ElectraPrint has produced thus far have been due to operator error. There is a slight learning curve when moving from manual to auto so make sure you have a few extra shirts for your first few orders.

I have no other auto experience but in the end it's my guess that the ElectraPrint requires a little more hands on approach on for settings and adjustments than does an air assisted auto. All-in-all I am very pleased with my ElectraPrint.

Do your research and see as many auto's in action as you can. If you're ever in the Cleveland OH area, let me know and I'll be happy to let you take the ElectraPrint for a spin.

[alan802]

Good info Sparkie

[whitewater]

Thanks guys...

I really don't want something I have to upgrade in a couple years. I've built my business from the basement of my apartment. I am rocking out at the moment!

Last year i had an employee work 40 hours a week on the manual, but just couldn't produce any more to make the business more profitable. So I downscaled and I am back to myself. (with a screen reclaimer). I am sucking it up and taking the money I would have spent on the employee and using it for a downpayment on an automatic.

I do have space issues at the moment but I will just have to deal.

I don't want to sell an automatic and buy another one a few years down the road...It just seems like a pain in the ass.