Some years back, we helped an old friend at Athey Graphics set up an operation in a cute little resort town on a lake in Oklahoma. The area is called Monkey Island and sits on the shores of Grand Lake. (Now that's just fun to say‚ Monkey Island.)
A recent client was fairly proficient at basic four-color process on white and was getting good results. However, since we would be focusing on dark and black shirt printing during our visit, the salesperson let the cat out of the bag. So, before we even started the learning curve, the sales staff had already sold a job. Typical isn’t it? It would be okay though, we had a template to run through the whole process. Sometimes things just work out.
What better describes the reinvention of an old graphic than distressing? Customers have continued to love the look over the years. But we couldn’t do the same ol’, same ol’. It had to be a bit different to be special.
If there is anything better than beers and gears, it might be liquor and chrome. We are, as you know, experts and quite experienced at most anything of this nature. After all, we are screen printers. It seems as though we developed a theme over the years, for better or worse. We have a client, who, to us, is a pretty big customer. In fact, one of our largest. These guys happen to hold several substantial western brands. That said, as you might expect, there are a number of shirts being printed for these brands, and we get to print plenty of them.
Busy, busy, busy. What with running production, exhibiting and teaching at The NBM Shows, writing for Printwear magazine and the travel associated with the consulting arm of our business, you might think there is just no time for relaxation. Not so fast, friends. As the saying goes; all work and no play….
As you may or may not know, we are an alpha and beta test site for many manufacturers in the industry and try to stay sharp by experimenting with any combination we can think of. We generally incorporate many products into our own research and development on a regular basis. One, a new (at the time) base that was supposed to be very hard and have a rock-like texture, eventually found its way onto a number of young men’s preprint lines we were working on.
As ya’all know, we love to write about a few of our favorite things. Aside from wine, women and song (a.k.a. liquor, ladies and rock ‘n’ roll), we also share our passion for a little horse power here and there as well. Those passions are shared with another we write about occasionally to keep everything in proper perspective and balance our lives.
Have you ever considered where we’d be without smart phones, tablets, personal computers or the Internet? In this digital age, we often take the technology that changes our lives and our businesses for granted. But what does “digital” mean to us as screen printers?
As you may, or may not know, we recently spent a week with the first Printwear Shop Makeover winner in Plymouth, Mich. We spent five days with our new friends Nancy, Rose and Gary at Heritage Logo Works. While streamlining the process and dialing in some new techniques, we also worked up a project interesting enough to make it into our Software to Substrate monthly column.
One of our long-time clients is a very well-respected brand in the biking biz, as it were. We have been working with Primal Wear for well over a decade. They were the original folks with wild full-color graphics on polyester bike jerseys. While, so far, we have yet to dabble in the full garment sublimation game, these guys pretty much set the bar for this category years ago. Our position in the relationship has been to translate that wonderful art to T-shirts in a way that keeps the original’s integrity yet is printable and cost-effective.
We have been using our new I-Image STE for about 2 weeks now and it works great. Installation and training was a breeze, could not have been easier. It is the biggest time saver we have ever added to our process. We are printing and exposing screens in less than 90 seconds. Not only does it eliminate film cost completely, it produces screens faster and reduces setup time at the press. On top of that we are holding greater detail than ever before.
Once again M&R proves why they are the leader when it comes to printing equipment. Great job guys!
M&R makes the most high quality screen printing equipment in the world. Even with that said, parts get old and can wear out. Usually, at the worst possible time. It’s times like those that we’re glad we chose M&R as our equipment manufacturer. Even years after the sale, we can count on M&R 24/7. They are part of the fabric that is Ink Brigade. An instrumental partner in our success.
A frantic call in the middle of the night is always met on the other end of the line by an experienced member of their service staff who expertly diagnoses my issue, and starts the process of solving our problem.
No matter the age, or oddball part, the parts department makes sure I’ll have what I need the next morning. My printing crew hardly misses a beat and we don’t miss the deadline. That makes for happy customers and makes me appreciate M&R more and more every year. We rest easy knowing people like Dan Goldberg and the rest of the service and parts departments are working hard for us behind the scenes every day.
The Sprint 3000 is superb and we are really, really happy with it. We've got the recipes dialed in for our inks now and it's running great. We have noticed improvements in the finish on our plastisols, too. They seem to be coming through much softer. Assuming it's because we are much more efficiently curing than with the electric curers!
Our new i-Image ST is the biggest improvement to prepress we’ve ever seen. It’s eliminated our need for film, and unlike film, digital images are easy to store and retrieve, making blown-screen replacement a snap.
i-Image ST has improved our screen quality, increased screen-generation speed, and reduced cost. Screen production is way up because we’ve cut exposure times by 75%. And i-Image has virtually eliminated post-processing screen touch-ups. We could never produce screens of this quality—or at this speed—the conventional way. Our CTS screens are unmatched.
Multi-screen jobs come out perfectly registered, and since i-Image ST pre-registers screens for Tri-Loc, our entire prepress process, from screen prep to registration, has been cut dramatically.
Our i-Image ST will probably end up being one of the fastest returns on investment we’ve ever had.
We have had our Gauntlet III in production for nearly 3 months and have been thrilled with the machine. We have already put over 120,000 impressions on the machine and it is still going strong. We have found that the individual off-contact for each printhead helps with various printing techniques. It is also a plus to be able to adjust in 1/16” increments when needed. Our first job was a 9-color on dark apparel with a 17” print stroke and one flash. We were able to run the machine comfortably at 920 pieces per hour. The addition of the laser for print placements has saved us valuable time where we used to mark our pallets with a T-Square. The touchscreen interface is very user friendly and easy to make adjustments when needed.
Having a built-in maintenance schedule [M&R’s Maintenance Minder™] for the machine is another perk and allows management to easily assure that the presses are being properly maintained. We have not had any problems to date with the machine but are at ease knowing that all parts that we could ever need are able to be overnighted to us.
Overall, we have seen an increase in our production numbers due to the efficiencies gained with the newest technology on the market. We are able to run as fast as we can clear a screen and dry our underbase.
Simply put, the Gauntlet III is a beast and is built to run 24/7/365.
