Bulk Production Query...

[pisquee]

Everytime I have to do an order of mugs, I'm standing at the bench, with 3 presses in front of me, swapping mugs in and out of them, and wondering how many presses you can have before you hit diminishing returns.
I mean - how many mug presses can 1 person operate, taking into account the time it takes to cut transfers, and stick them around mugs and press them. Moving from 2 to 3 presses significantly improved how many mugs I could make an hour, and I can see time in between the succession of the 3 presses finishing, that a fourth could fit in without problem.
But how many is too many? at what point do you have two presses starting/ending at the same time to make too much of a juggling act?
Wondering how many presses people operate at one time on the forum.

And, then, this leads me into thinking about oven production - not the small JML halogen things, but big ovens - domestic kitchen electic fan ovens size I suppose. Anyone here using big ovens. At what stage does it become a viable option in terms of amount of mugs - how much time does it take to put the wraps on the mugs - obviously you need two sets of wraps so that you're wrapping one set whilst the others are cooking - but, if say that cooking the mugs once in the oven takes say 15 minutes, how many cooked mugs can you warp to cool and then prep another set in that 15 minutes to make it a constant workflow?

sorry for this being a bit rambley and not straight to the point - but I keep thinking about this is needed to get it off my chest to see what others are doing.

[socialgiraffe]

Hi Pisquee

With the UKheatpress machines I personally think that 2 sets of 5 at a time could comfortably be controlled at anyone time. This would mean that the paper has been cut beforehand (I cut mine by hand and about 20 sheets (creating 60 mug prints) at a time). You can do 48 per hour on a single 5 head so I would think you would probably hit 80 per hour with two units. This includes wrapping them in their bags and packing them back in the boxes.

With ovens I did look at the one sold by Serigraph and determined that it produced about the same amount per hour as two "five" machines. The only benefit being that the oven takes longer so you have time in the middle to do other things while its cooking, the disadvantage is that if the machine breaks down you are stuffed as it is one machine.

Now, I have recently got my hands on a 3d machine for another project, but one of the reasons I took the punt is because it will do 12 mugs in about 10-12 minutes. When I get round to testing it I reckon I may be able to run that machine as well as 1 five head which I think could increase the per hour rate to over 100 and with two 5 heads and a 3d machine could increase the rate to almost 150 an hour.

This would be one operator on their own

[pisquee]

I cut the transfers from the roll paper whilst printing, as part of the job, rather than do that as a seperate job. We print the transfers in batches to transfer when needed.
What put me off that 5 in one, is that it appears to be the same press as we currently use, just adapted to run 5 presses from the single controller. With our workflow, having the press times staggered allows time to cut the transfers and wrap the mugs as we go, with all 5 going at the the same time, this would be a very different process, but one to consider.
12 mugs in 12 minutes sounds good for the vacuum press, but add to that the time to cut out and wrap the 12 mugs, what's the time in reality?

[socialgiraffe]

Hi Pisquee

Reading your thread, it appears to me that the "hold up" would be at print and cut stage, So personally I would consider picking up a cheap Ricoh (sorry for swearing at you LOL!!!) pre cutting the sheets to your requirements in bulk and use the Ricoh for mugs only. More expensive on ink etc (we all agree on that ) but the speed should compensate.

I have never had an issue with one controller for five mugs as times and temps are not an exact science with dye sub.

Not sure on the vacuum as I have not tried it yet. Firstly I need to get some wraps etc which I do not think is going to be in the near future.

[pisquee]

hmm, not sure I'd want to go back to a 4 colour system, especially an office printer, if we could get roll paper of a 10cm width... or perforated in 10cm strips!
I don't really see the cutting as a hold up as such, I know there's still time of me waiting for mugs, so could definitely move to 4 presses, which does kind of fit as most of our mugs are sold in sets of 4, just wondering at what point I'd get to where there's too many presses running to keep up with!
The mugs are printed on the roll in sets, and the printer cutting off between sets, so there's minimal manual cutting involved - probably comparable to someone getting a few mugs on an A4 sheet..

[pisquee]

... gonna put some numbers into Excel!

[socialgiraffe]

Fair enough

So in answer to your original post, I think you could operate about 6-8 single head presses at any one time before it gets a tad complicated, however I would say that you will need to modify them to have lights as well as the beep when they are cooked

[Andrew]

Wish I could clone SG and have a few of him working for me. I allocate one person to a 5 head press and each person then gets out about 60 per hour. This is cutting the paper and taping etc as well so the full job from start to finish. Doing more than that would be a struggle. We can pick up a bit of speed now and then on easy prints (logos onto white) as they often work in teams of 3 or 4, so it becomes more streamlined with one cutting, one taping etc rather than hopping back and forth.

[arthur.daley]

SGs production rate should have increased as he now won't be nipping to the door for a crafty puff or perhaps the failure rate due to shaky hands has balanced out the increase ;o)

Have to say that when I called in to SG Towers I was mightily impressed with the number of machines he could run at the same time, talk to me, deal with an errant printer and pop out for a fag all at the same time. I guess its all down to a well practised routine, well set up equipment and bucket loads of experience.

[pisquee]

Fair enough

So in answer to your original post, I think you could operate about 6-8 single head presses at any one time before it gets a tad complicated, however I would say that you will need to modify them to have lights as well as the beep when they are cooked

Probably gonna modify them, and seperate the control unit from the actual press, and mount them onto the workbench, to try and get a better layout for working - the control unit wastes a lot of space and doesn't need to be next to the press, could be below the bench or raised up.