Hi Jon/Daryl,
Jon, yes we buy some pigments in fives - not all, but some - we regularly buy drums of discharge bases too - all over prints take a lot of ink in the screens to print (the screens measure 59 x 48 it takes a bit of ink to get them running. We print water base/discharge daily (and plastisol most / a lot of days) as well. We had done some water base and discharge prior to getting into doing all over prints (wow - five years ago now this spring), but they really are a necessity for doing a good job with those prints and it was just a natural progression to use them more and more. We have several clothing lines that are done with almost 100% water base inks, all of our operators use them and it's just a part of doing business around here.
Daryl, yes - the shop is pretty red except for that 'old' stratus which is still purple people eater color
All of our presses have quite a bit of work thrown at them and they perform really well. Our 16 color can do all over prints as well (although with only 7 prints heads) and our 8 color Trident was made to do them so it's a pretty large press - about 26 foot in diameter. The newest press is a 20 x 28 print area belt driven indexer - there is a video of it (yes our actual press) running in Chicago for it's pre-delivery testing on the Anatol TV link at the bottom of their webpage. We haven't had it installed a full week yet, but so far we are loving it - and the operator loves a lot of the features that come with a belt driven indexer.
Daryl - not sure about the ink question? Made it to full which on our inks? Sorry if I am being dense - tired tonight - didn't get out of the office until after 10 last night and gave up today about 7:30pm - there will be plenty more work to do tomorrow and I was just kind of done for the day
Dave