eighty screens in eighty minutes (DTS cons and pros)

[tonypep]

Just for giggles I timed myself (one of the screen guys is out) 2-person crew imaging, exposing, washout. Arms tired.

[Colin]

Nice turnaround!

[tonypep]

It's why DTS will probably never work for us. I have the need for speed. Film storage for literally tens of thousands of files is a bitch though. If I was doing a startup I would definitely consider it.

[Socalfmf]

Tony...with DTS you don't think you could have done 90 or 100 in 80 min?  I would think DTS is faster than looking up film....

[JBLUE]

Sam how long does it take to print a screen? Lets say a 11.5 by 11.5 image area with about 75% coverage of ink.

[tonypep]

I have only seen DTG at trade shows and they were way too slow for what I need. I'm shooting four auto screens at a time. I believe there are 2 screen versions but not heard about larger ones. Pricetag for that would be pretty steep as well.  Our retail clothing lines are all re-orders except sales sample season. My head dryer op files in  between jobs so thats not a bottleneck. Many of the one color Talkies are discharge so we wash and library those screeens. All other biz is 95% new. The other thing that concerns me is that our philosophy as well as others is that film output is a quality checkpoint. Had this discussion at JSR.
Still I'd love to have someone drop a demo in for a side by side real time study.

[Screened Gear]

Tony...with DTS you don't think you could have done 90 or 100 in 80 min?  I would think DTS is faster than looking up film....

Lets see a video of your DTS printing a screen.

[alan802]

I was looking for videos of a DTS in action and there was not a single one in a shop, in a real world environment.  They were all sales type videos from the manufacturers.  I'd love to see videos of all of the DTS machines that are running in shops.  I've heard that they usually don't just plug in and work right out of the crate.  Seems like there are bugs with many of them, especially the cheaper models.

[mk162]

Alan, the same thing happened with DTG machines, the cheaper you go, the more problems you have.

[tonypep]

End of the day 11 racks of 20. About 3 hrs

[Donnie]

pffft... I once did eighty push ups in eight days.

[inkman996]

It seems in Tony's circumstances CTS would only be viable if they changed their procedures so that all screens are printed at least one day before they need to be exposed.

We try to have all screens done and ready atleast one day in advance but even for a shop our size it never always works out that way.

[Screened Gear]

It seems in Tony's circumstances CTS would only be viable if they changed their procedures so that all screens are printed at least one day before they need to be exposed.

We try to have all screens done and ready atleast one day in advance but even for a shop our size it never always works out that way.

Most of my screens are hardly even dry from being washed out when they go on press.

[jsheridan]

There is nothing 'fast' about DTS or Auto coating machines.

There is however gobs of quality and precision that spill over into easier production settings.

[alan802]

The vast majority of their work is already done with all the film already printed out and ready to shoot, so switching to DTS now would be a step in the wrong direction for a fairly long period of time.  We do so many repeats that it has me wondering if we'll benefit as much as a newer shop without 5K jobs catalogued via film hanging on the wall.  It would take an average of 2 minutes to print that screen via DTS or 10 seconds to tape the film on the screen.