Feeding the Monster

During 2020 - 21 those were some strange days both personally or financially. Through the difficult days it created an opportunity for me to run a printing press completely on my own and it made me think about the operation of decorating shirts with an automatic screen print press.

Most of us approach the behemoth in the corner with either trepidation, respect or occasionally fear! I have become so accustomed to these machines that I refer to them as monsters. They sit in the corner of the print room, all blinking eyes and hissing orifices. Squat shadows just lurking, ready to reach out and pull squeegees, throwing platens round with explosive force.

Many people have asked me what is the best way to run one of these behemoth contraptions and I offer the advice that we must “feed the monster”

Obviously people now look at me a little strange, and take a precautionary step backwards when I impart this wisdom, but I persevere relentless. Imagine the machine as a monster, it sits there and when we require it to perform a task we have to keep it fed with raw materials. The monsters diet is not varied. It eats ink and it eats shirts. If we stop feeding it ink, the monster stops, sits down with a monstrous humph and blankly refuses to do any more of your bidding.

Load up all the screens with fresh ink and the dutiful creature will start to spit out perfect little artistic secretions that we all love to collect on the table at the back of the dryer.

Shirts (panels, hoodies, polos, paper bags, skateboard blanks or even face masks) are the food that our lovable metallic beastie consumes the most of. A large stack of blanks will satiate our monster all day long, but beware, this hungry clanging beast can consume up to 1000 blanks an hour, so we must endure to make sure the monster is well fed.

Running a machine on my own due to social distancing, highlighted this to me. I could produce a constant 400 pieces per hour, but this figure was negated every time I had to stop the monster to prepare its limited diet. Feeding the monster with ink required me to force the creature to have a nap (press stop), open up a fresh pail of monster food and pour the nutritious liquid (this breed just loves water based ink) into the belly of the beast (screen). Freshly satiated once more, after washing my hands and assuming the position right in front of the ogre’s touchscreen face. I wake it from its slumber (press start) and off we go again.

After only fifteen minutes the monster starts to protest again! We are running out of blanks. Our little monster was behaving so well, producing water-based pieces of heavenly registered prints, it was even starting to get comfortable with the temperature of its many arms. Just as predicted the monster sits down on its pneumatic haunches and demands to be fed more delicious little nuggets of 185gm organic ring-spun combed cotton panels. It has expensive taste! again the nap button is pressed, and the dutiful monster’s green eyes turn red and it sleeps.

The table is filled with new fresh blanks waiting to be consumed by the monster press. The process takes longer than expected as the size of the food changed,  and we try our best to keep the two sizes separate on the small feeding table, the pile is high now, almost too high as  it now makes it very difficult to keep the previous high pace of consumption. The monster is happy again and it continues the relentless excretions.

As any responsible pet owner understands, owning a monster is not just a matter of shoveling raw materials in one end and picking up the secretions at the other. We must maintain our little octopus shaped behemoth, food is essential, but the monster also requires maintenance, we need to perform tasks that are not purely essential to keep the little darling hurling perfection down the dryer.

Maintenance is the term for all the little things we need to do, the monsters nails need clipping, its fur needs brushing and its breath could strip dried on Nylobag.

Keeping the pallets glued and permanently sticky is maintenance, this is performed while the monster is awake and performing at a premium. It must be carried out before it creates a problem and done quickly enough to not interrupt the steady flow of print firing from the mouth of the monster.

Registration of all the colors in a design also falls into this category, we are often printing onto fabric that moves, through a tightly stretched piece of fabric, with ink that changes viscosity according to whether Saturn is in the house of Aquarius, add to that a good dose of heat and pressure, spin the whole concoction round the arms of a monster and it’s a wonder we ever get any prints that pass the scrutiny of the  QC lady (another breed of monster that needs much further investigation). It requires constant and minute guidance often making on-press adjustments that require the red to be moved left at the back by one and a half quarks.

Heat management also falls into this category, our delightful monster just loves to vomit out priceless printed products when the temperature reaches that goldilocks zone, not too hot, not to cold and not full of porridge. Maintaining this is all part of keeping the monster happy and well fed.

Owning a monster and making it perform daily can be achieved with just one responsible owner/operator, a fact I have experienced first-hand. It does not give the most optimum number of prints per day. The optimum approach to keeping the monster fed and happy is to allocate the tasks to separate individuals.

An operator to feed the beast, and one to remove the delicacies it produces are essential, one more at the end of the dryer to keep the unspoiled charms in perfect order would create a perfect team.

One more person to perform the maintenance would keep the monster operating at the optimum rate.

Staff are becoming more and more expensive and the product price is constantly being squeezed, as a result I often see monsters being kept in superb conditions with the cleanest environments and the best ancillary equipment, only to be fed by a single operator. This may seem like a good use of resources but the answer to how to get the best from your monster is exceptionally simple.

Feed your monster, keep it fed and it will be the best monster you ever owned.