Images Magazine Digital Edition August 2018

www.images-magazine.com AUGUST 2018 images 33 TIPS & TECHNIQUES Study the numbers To show you the value of a perfect screen let’s look at some numbers. This is an example, and I’m sure your shop metrics will be different. Example shop –Week 1 Automatic press – Sets up ten print locations per day on average. That’s 50 for the week. Average colour count for each order is three screens. It takes about nine minutes per screen to set up, but nobody is really checking. Some jobs take longer as there are registration problems with the screens. Order size is somewhere between 50 and 144 pieces, so for ease we’ll call the average order size 100. The press prints at an average of 400 impressions per hour. Manual press – Sets up eight print locations per day on average. That’s 40 per week. Average colour count for each order is two screens. It takes about ten minutes per screen to set up as the printer is still fairly new; he often needs help to get the registration right too. The manual handles orders less than 48 pieces, but the average order size is about 35. The press prints at an average of 65 impressions per hour. The production team works eight hours per day, but with breaks and lunch, they are available to print seven hours per day. 7 x 60 = 420 minutes. Auto calculations: • 10 locations x 3 screens x 9 minutes per screen = 270 minutes for screen set-up per day (4.5 hours) • 10 locations x 100 piece quantity/ 6.66 impressions per minute (400/60) = 150 minutes for printing (2.5 hours) • 150 minutes printing x 100/420 = 36% uptime printing (64% downtime) for the day. Only 36% of the day is spent actually printing shirts • Total average impressions = 1,000 per day or 5,000 per week Manual calculations: • 8 locations x 2 screens x 10 minutes per screen = 160 minutes for screen set-up per day (2.7 hours) • 8 locations x 35 piece quantity/1.08 impressions per minute (65/60) = 259 minutes of printing (4.3 hours) • 259 minutes printing x 100/420 = 62% uptime printing (38% downtime) for the day. Better than the auto, but still only 62% • Total average impressions = 240 per day or 1,200 per week Remember, your shop is only making money when you are decorating a shirt. So, for downtime – the time spent not printing a shirt – would 64% for an auto or 38% for a manual be acceptable in your shop? Probably not. So let’s fix that by tweaking just one thing: screen set-up time. Let’s say the shop did an awesome amount of work digging into the challenges associated with its screens, and with improvements and some training, it got set-up times down to an average of five minutes a screen. Shop floor maths –Week 2 Auto calculations: • 10 locations x 3 screens x 5 minutes per screen = 150 minutes for screen set up per day • This adds 2 hours to the production day (270 – 150 = 120 minutes) • 150 minutes print time before + 120 minutes of new availability = 270 minutes for printing daily • 400 per hour impressions x 2 hours = 800 extra impressions available per day • Total average impressions = 1,800 per day or 9,000 per week • Extra 4,000 impressions per week x 52 weeks = 208,000 extra impressions per year Manual calculations: • 8 locations x 2 screens x 5 minutes per screen = 80 minutes for screen set-up per day • This just added 1.3 hours to the production day (160 – 80 = 80 minutes) • 259 minutes print time before + 80 minutes of new availability = 339 minutes for printing daily • 65 per hour impressions x 1.3 hours = 85 extra impressions available per day • Total average impressions = 367 per day or 1,835 per week • Extra 425 impressions per week x 52 weeks = 22,100 extra impressions per year These are example averages and real production numbers are more complicated. They do, however, show how reducing your screen set-up time can get you an extra 230,100 impressions per year without buying any new press equipment. Push for lower set-up times If you have any sort of volume in sales and have a packed schedule, pushing for lower set-up times of under five minutes per screen on average is how you justify that computer-to-screen (CTS) system, registration system or other capital expenditure in the screen room. A CTS system works great as all of the screens for an order will be perfectly registered to each other when they are imaged. Using it in conjunction with a registration system means they simply lock into place with minimal effort. Do you know your average screen set-up time? Or, like a lot of shops, do you just guess? Telling yourself, “We do okay”, but not measuring this step is delusional management. How do you do that? For starters, let’s look at things from a general perspective in the screen room. There are five main steps in creating a functional screen: • Tension • Reclaiming • Emulsion coating • Imaging and exposing • Rinsing Without craftsmanship in these processes, things will fail in production and you’ll spend a lot of unnecessary time adding some sort of band-aid to the problem. Tension This is the number one factor for screen success. Why? Think about it. What is easier to shear ink through: a screen that acts like a trampoline or one like a hard sheet of glass? The higher the tension of your screen, the less effort (pressure) will be required to pass the ink through the screen and onto the surface of the shirt.