eighty screens in eighty minutes (DTS cons and pros)

[tonypep]

I think Mark and Flying colors have it about right. But two DTS machines would take a while to pay off. I know my financial guys/gals would argue that "a 7K Gauntlet would pay for itself in 2 weeks why would we want a digital whatchamcallit which has a much longer pay back and doesn't generate revenue?"
It's not necessarily how I feel but thats how the discussion would go. Yes we have the space and the Biz for it.
And Sonny the idea of having backups is ridiculous for so many reasons. And the point I'm making is that in our shop a single DTS will not be able to keep up with four autos and three manuals. Printing backups would put it even further behind. I'm beginning to understand what Brad was talking about. 

[bimmridder]

This may be straying a little off subject, but the possibility of a CTS going down and shutting you down can be worked around. Regardless of if we are CTS or film, we have a buffer system. We always have minimum 1.5 days worth of screens made and staged for press. If our imaging system fails. I know I have plenty to keep us going while repairs are made or other means of making screens  are secured. (Here in town, I know at least a half dozen shops that can and would make screens for me in a jam) Either way. part of your imagine system could fail, be it film or CTS. You need a back up. I also have a new in the box Epson printer for this very reason. Just my thoughts without jumping into the hold CTS vs. film debate

[screenprintguy]

I'm stoked Dave, our I-Image ships out from M&R today woooooooooooooooop!!!! Got a new room built for it over the weekend. This was also a good excuse for me to get my private office for design. I hate being out in the open as I've been trying to focus on design and seps. Especially when working on Sim process seps, the emb machine chattering in my ears and customers wanting to yap. Now I get my quite time, well except for the print head on the DTS 

[Flying Colors]

Looks like I cannot figure out the whole quote thing so I will not embarrass myself further - In response to Inkman's comment about keeping our glass in we were able to configure that.

On our MSP 3140 we moved the light as far down as it would go.  We used angle iron and threaded rod to create shelves that hold the screen between the glass and the light. If we need to use the glass for whatever reason we can just move the angle iron out of the way and expose that way if needed. Buy doing this we cut our exposure times way down. With two people working it goes at a good clip. Not 80 screens in 80 minutes fast but it moves along.

One person images and throws it on the shelves to start exposing while the other person takes it off the shelf and rinses out. If all of the screens and art are ready we can get through our daily workload, 60-80 screens in 3-4 hours depending if we have 1 or 2 dedicated to the process and also dependent how many screens we gang designs. If we are ahead we will pull the helper to do other things.

[3Deep]

This has been a long winded topic just to much to read, but some really good points on all sides.

Darryl

[alan802]

Alan, I did not read all thru this thread and if you posted your numbers I apologize but would you be willing to share your calculations as it pertains to the ROI in your shop?

Basically, on all "new orders" we would save about 270 seconds (4.5 minutes) by using a DTS versus film on a 3 color front, 3 color back, spot color job on darks.  I ran our numbers based on our Epson 4800 since we are having it refurbed versus a $40K DTS that is one of the faster models.  Shops with imagesetters would see different ROI's since they are much faster than inkjet and have different costs in keeping them running. You can run the numbers with any combination of job you might have and get completely different numbers.  We would see 150 seconds (2.5 minutes) of labor savings on a one color job on lights, or a white design on dark garment with a low piece count with DTS.

Now on repeat orders where the film is printed only the one time, we would lose about 150 seconds (2.5 minutes) per job, again, a 3/3 on darks.  The savings we would see on press setup would be negated by waiting on the DTS to print the screens.  On an average week we are doing about 65% repeats.

Now we have to figure in consumables to get our ROI but the savings would have to be huge to get the ROI I'm looking for.  We only spent about $1800 on film and $700 on ink, $250/year is what we've spent to keep the 4800 going.  Let's just round that number up to an even $3000/year to use the film.  Based on the numbers I've compiled, the ink/wax for the DTS is anywhere from $.08 per screen up to $.40 (Kiwo's calculation).  One shop says they are around $.11/screen average and another shop is around $.08/screen for wax.  A screen with film on average at our shop has about $.60/screen.  I'd feel comfortable saying the DTS will have $.15/screen for a savings of about $.45/screen.  We would see about $8/day, $40/week, $2000/year savings by using DTS over film based on only doing 20 screens per day.  100 screens per day would give you $11,250/year savings just on consumables. 

So when you start trying to compare consumable savings with labor savings you start to get a clearer picture of whether or not DTS will benefit your shop.  If we did mostly new jobs, then we would save about 2 hours a week in labor which would allow us to do a couple more jobs per week.  If we only did repeat jobs then we would lose about an hour of labor per week.  If you have a busy shop, if your regi system doesn't allow for quick setups and you're doing 50+ screens per day you could see several hours of time savings EVERY DAY and then you would be saving maybe $6-7K on consumables so your ROI would come quickly.  So if we are getting 3 more jobs done per week and our sales staff fills that gap, we now need to figure how much we profit per job, on average.  Each shop is different, we shoot for the 30% margin on jobs with our pricing calculator.  So if we had $225 profit for those extra 3 jobs per week, then we could possibly see a one year ROI.  It's much more complicated than that however, we all know we get down on price to stay competitive, we've all ended up losing money on jobs, we've made a killing on other jobs, you get the picture.  Our shop does so many repeat jobs that our ROI could possibly never happen at all.  So I've ran the numbers every different way possible and on average, we are around 30-36 months on some calculations and I've got to 18 months on some scenarios.  I just don't like having to assume some of the most important numbers to the equation, like profit per job (that doesn't technically exist yet) and jobs (that don't exist yet) to fill that new hour or two that is available.  It's certainly possible that business could suffer for some reason and you would really be in trouble.  There are a lot of unknowns and assumptions that you need to consider.  This really is a fantastic subject to discuss. 

[RICK STEFANICK]

Duplicate what?

Screens.

Seems ridiculous to me for anything other than hot jobs or super long run or something.

THATS CRAZYLAND.. SHOOT DOUBLE SCREENS!!sonny, no you didnt  lol

[tonypep]

Alan looks like you did a thorough job and that seems a fair analysis although others will show different numbers for sure. Me I don't care for either scenario plus to boot it won't keep up with production. You accurately point out that what works in shop A may totally monkey wrench shop B. This is very true about so many methods and applications and equipment. Which was the genesis of the discussion. To be clear I think this technology for many shops; just not all.

[Spreading Ink]

Interesting thread.  I know now why I don't generally spend as much time on boards these days as I was addicted enough to read it all last night and was up way past my bed time!   Good thing it was a Saturday!

The technology for DTS/CTS looks really good, but I don't see how we could make it work in our shop - we have four Anatols.  1 has side clamps, three with front and back clamps like M&R.  Two of the presses have a capability to print all over prints and were designed from the ground up to have this capability - our 8 color trident is huge - about 26 foot in diameter.  The 16 color Pegasus will do them as well with a direct double index and becomes a 7 color press when in this mode.

We employ a large variety of screens sizes as well 23x31, 25x36, 25x42 and 60 x48 - even if we could consider this technology we likely would not be able to get away from film.  We do a lot of re-orders as well and have a large film library to support them which we pare down about 1 to 2 times yearly.

We burn 23x31- 4 up, 25 x 36, and 25 x 42 - two up and all over screens - one up.

If anyone knows someone making one of these units that would support the large variety of screen sizes and we employ I'd be interested in looking, but I just don't see how one of these would work well in our environment and with the reorder work and the time it would take to image some of the large prints we do I can't see how it would benefit us enough have an ROI worth pursuing. 

I can see the benefit for some shops - just have never been able to see how we could make one work in ours.

[ZooCity]

? on DTS screen exposure:  why do you not have a blanket behind the screen (on the squeegee side) to prevent scatter?

Seems to me that you would have all kinds of light scatter behind the screen doing it like this.

[Gilligan]

? on DTS screen exposure:  why do you not have a blanket behind the screen (on the squeegee side) to prevent scatter?

Seems to me that you would have all kinds of light scatter behind the screen doing it like this.

I've thought the same thing.

[BorisB]

? on DTS screen exposure:  why do you not have a blanket behind the screen (on the squeegee side) to prevent scatter?

Seems to me that you would have all kinds of light scatter behind the screen doing it like this.

I've thought the same thing.

You mean something dark to reduce reflection of light back to screen?

Boris

[ZooCity]

? on DTS screen exposure:  why do you not have a blanket behind the screen (on the squeegee side) to prevent scatter?

Seems to me that you would have all kinds of light scatter behind the screen doing it like this.

I've thought the same thing.

You mean something dark to reduce reflection of light back to screen?

Boris

Yes

[mk162]

So after seeing what I saw in AC, here is my take...

if you are doing a decent amount of screens...say 25-50 a week, DTS should work for you depending on your other systems and procedures.

I saw the new M&R, I like it.  They dropped the epson print heads and switched to industrial Ricoh heads.  VERY SMART MOVE.

The Douthitt unit was nice too.  They use a wax based head, again, non-epson and built for industrial applications.

If I had to chose, it would probably come down to price between the 2.  There was another one there, but it used Epson 7800 heads and I'm sorry, I am just not a huge fan of epson heads.  I feel they are too finicky.  Also, Epson is REALLY clamping down on head distribution.

[alan802]

How many different DTS units were on display at the AC show?