Please find some links and notes from the 2 Regular Guys Podcast. We discussed some of the common screen printing mistakes in your shop that occur frequently. We’ve touched on this subject before, but this week we dug a little deeper into the mistakes and the solutions. These solutions are tried and true production friendly resolutions that will help you as a screen printer today. So put down that YouTube Video and learn from an industry Veteran, Terry Combs.

Sponsored by: Equipment Zone and Siser N.A.

Our regular listeners know this, but 2 Regular Guys are all about garment decorating, a bit of fun, and no rants or lectures or selling. We are not doing this for our employers, but rather for our industry. For the past 4 years, 2 Regular Guys have been the first and the most listened to garment decorating industry podcast on this planet! We are humbled by all of you tuning in each week. We work hard to bring you information that will make your business better, and our industry better. Take a look at our incredible weekly guest list and you’ll understand where this industry goes for news, interviews and the heartbeat of garment decorating. Thanks for listening!!

News

2017 Impressions Awards - Decorators of all sizes and experience levels are invited to submit their work. The 39th annual contest will be judged at the Fort Worth Imprinted Sportswear Shows (ISS) event, which will be held Sept. 22-24, and winners will be announced Sept. 24.

Common Screen Printing Mistakes

Last time around we talked about these common screen printing mistakes:

Using the white underbase as a color in your image

Using a single mesh count for all jobs in your shop

Flashing between colors on a multicolor job

Proper mesh tension is important

Improper curing that shows up after you deliver

While the list from the earlier show was geared more toward new or small shops, but certainly not limited to this, let’s talk in this show about common screen printing mistakes in shops from the smallest to the largest.

Scheduling Mistakes - Most shops juggle orders, they don’t schedule orders.

I’ve mentioned scheduling a little bit on our show recently, but it is truly an area of concern in the majority of shops. Bottom line, most of us juggle the schedule and don’t use our understanding of capabilities and some basic math skills to actually schedule our production.

The most difficult part for owners and managers is in accepting what your current capabilities are. Wishing and hoping for better production numbers won’t help you when it comes to your schedule today.

And, there is a finite number of hours in every week that is your production time. If you have two 15 minutes breaks a day and you work 40 hour weeks, you have 37.5 production hours per printing device in your shop. If you’re a small shop where the printer spends every morning coating and burning screens, pulling and counting shirts, and taking out the trash, that time is deducted from your available production time.

Every shop has Direct Production Time and Indirect Production Time.

Indirect Production Time is preparing art, coating and burning screens, shipping boxes out the door, and everything else that does not involve directly working with a manual or automatic press.

Direct Production Time is what we’re concerned with here. This is Setup, Printing, Breakdown.

Setup is the time from reaching for the 1st screen of the day, setting up the press, and someone saying, “You’re all good, let’s print.”

Printing Time is the actual printing of the order.