The 2014 show season kicked off with a new event. The NBM Printwear show was held last weekend at the Los Angeles Convention Center. This event was small but we are excited by any chance we get to talk face to face with our customers.
This was the premier event for this year's show specials. We want to heat things up a bit with free flash cure units and screen dryers.
The next show opens today in Las Vegas. This is the PPAI Show. We are exhibiting in the Decorate Pavilion with our ElectraPrint Junior and TRXi Curing System. This event gives us the opportunity to talk with a wide range of specialty producers. This sparks our creativity.
The final event for January is one of our favorite. The Imprinted Sportswear Show held at the Long Beach Convention Center. We have a row of booths to present our full line of production machines. The DragonAir will be on display as well as some old favorites like the MasterPrinter and NumberPrinter lines. We look forward to seeing all of our friends on the West Coast and any others who use these events to escape the cold of winter. If you are looking to expand your printing capacity now is the time to get a great deal. Stop in to any of the upcoming events and ask for details.
The year in review. It is all about product innovation.
For those of you who know us well, you understand that we are always about new ideas and innovations. It is what excites our staff and increases our sales. When our customers present new production issues or new opportunities become available, our creativity is sparked and the whole company starts looking for solutions and ideas. 2013 offered an array of production situations that have spurred the development of new products and enhancements to existing products.
Take a look at the entry into a new market.
Not only did we create new products, we created a new division. BrownDigital directs its efforts toward digitally printed garments. Not the digital printers, but solving the production problems that have arisen from that new technology. The idea of digitally printed shirts is growing but making them faster and in less of a hobbyist style is what BrownDigital is all about.
The first product line created in the new division is the DragonAir line of curing systems. These units use DragonAir Core Technology to created a heated chamber to cure the pre-treat and the ink from digitally printed garments. These units are also proven to cure conventional inks, water based inks and discharge inks.
Here is a look at product innovation.
The excitement of the year started with the TRX software development that drove the DragonAir line. This touch screen curing system control software offers amazing features and benefits not found on any other system. TRX and TRXi units allow repeatable production environments, analytics on that production and access to control from remote locations. This software was merged with the production proven UltraSierra X-Series line of conveyor ovens to create a new line of curing systems.
The next product that our engineers tackled was adding Sniper LazerLoad to the ever-popular NumberPrinter. This enhancement is for simplifying the shirt load process. Double digit numbers that include a "1" and single digit prints have always been a challenge for shirt-loading in high volume shops. This new features gives line up guidelines to make the printing easier and faster.
The final enhancement that our engineers have worked on is the new wrench-less, quick-release squeegee and floodbar system for the ElectraPrint automatic textile printers. This feature makes screen changes faster, squeegee load faster and pressure adjustments unnecessary.
Thankful as ever.
We are forever thankful for our loyal customers, our new customers and our awesome staff. With new questions from our customers, our engineers get to design new stuff, our plant staff gets to build new things and our sales people can talk about new solutions. It is a great circle and we look forward to what 2014 will give us the opportunity to create. Keep asking and watching and you will see some cool stuff.
Anyone you talk to in the industry will agree that athletic numbering is one of the most difficult jobs to do. This
explains why it seems to be a vanishing breed. We understand why people get frustrated and decide to use transfers,
contract the job out, or order the uniforms numbered by the manufacturer.But avoiding numbering jobs, or finding the easy way
out, costs many shops easy money.
Let’s take a look back to when you were first opening
your shop.Why did you open a screen
print shop over a retail transfer shop? There were probably a couple of reasons:
The final look of the garment
The feel of the garment
The longevity of the final product
Customer satisfaction
Now with that being said, when shops receive their $45.00 Dri-Fit
Jersey how can they justify placing a transfer on it? How do you match the colors? The look, feel, longevity of the final product will decrease customer satisfaction. Not what you were looking for when you started this business.
Next comes the ordering of the transfer!The average print shop has at least one
high school in their That means at
least two sports per season with 2-3 teams.So let’s call it 6 teams with 15 kids each. And, of course, they all want
to pick their own numbers, Gone are the days of 1-15. Oh yeah, and at least one of the teams wants an
off the grid color. That makes a total
of 90 athletic shirts plus the parents that will want one!
town.
Sounds confusing doesn’t it? ….. So let’s take a look at
what we need per team.
Alright, Team A needs home and away shirts with Kelly Green 8" numbers on the back and 4" on the front. This would be your order to the transfer people.
9
- #1’s
two 8” packs of 5 for a total of $7.30
and two 4”
packs for a total $7.30
2
-#2’s
one 8” packs of 5 for a total
of $3.65
and one 4” packs for a total $3.65
2
-#3’s
one 8” packs of 5 for a total
of $3.65
and one 4” packs for a total $3.65
3-#4
one 8” packs of 5 for a total of $3.65
and
one 4” packs for a total $3.65
1-#7’s
one 8” packs of 5 for a total of $3.65
and one 4” packs for a total $3.65
2-#8’s
one 8” packs of 5 for a total of $3.65
and
one 4” packs for a total $3.65
2-#9’s
one 8” packs of 5 for a total of $3.65
and one 4” packs for a total $3.65
2-#0’s
one 8” packs of 5 for a total of $3.65
and one 4” packs for a total $3.65
Freight=$4.95
Total
cost=
$65.70
And now it is time for Team 2…. Don’t worry we won’t go through that again. You get the idea.
After all is said and done. Each team will cost you anywhere from $40.00
to $75.00 in just the transfers.
If you are to screen print
the numbers you have the ink that matches, the quality will be higher, and the time is
the same. The cost per print is $.06. Total cost of materials for direct printing is $3.60 - $5.00.
If it were up to us, we would
gladly put the extra cash in our pocket!
The truth is print shops have struggled
in the past to accomplish number printing by not having the correct set-up and decided that transfers are easier.Unfortunately, it is most
likely due to printers try to jig up a press, make our
own stencils, or burn 15 screens to get the job done.Any of these three options would make us look
the other way as well.Athletic numbering machines have made huge advancements and have finally made it printing numbers
in house worth another look. If you operator can walk up to a printing station as easily as he can walk up to a transfer press and produce the job for 1/4 of the cost, then the machinery is paid for quickly and you make more money.
Hey, making money was the real reason that you opened this crazy business.
I walked through our south warehouse last week and noticed some
screen printing dryers that appear to be a little older. After checking a few
serial tags I quickly realized the dryers are older than I am. Many of these dryers still work and cure
shirts as efficiently as they did in their prime, however, like hammer pants, that still
function like they did in the 80’s. It might be time to change your style.
Disclaimer****If you are still wearing Hammer pants,
using a pager, or believe the Internet will not catch on, please disregard the rest of
this blog.
Curing technology and dryer efficiency has not changed much
since the 80’s, and dryers are not featured on What Not Wear so how do we know
if it is time to repair or replace our current curing system.
The following is a couple of questions you can ask yourself
about your dryer and I will let you determine the results.
Determine the Type
Is
your dryer gas or electric?
a.If
Electric continue
b.If
Gas we will tackle that in a later blog post
Size does matter
Does
your current dryer slow down production. Simply
put, drying technology is the same today as it was 25 years ago.There are only two variables in the curing equation, Heat and Time.
The higher you run the temperature, the faster you can run the belt. However
this is a thin line, if you only cure the outside of the ink and not all the
way through, the ink will fall off, or the shirt gets to hot and combusts.In a perfect world we would like less heat
and more time. If you cannot achieve a good cure at a slower speed it is possible
you need a larger dryer.
If you are reading this, chances are, you aren’t using a MACII
Will the electronic upgrade impact your
business? If
your dryer does not have a digital thermostat you have very little
control.It would be like turning the
heat on in your house and never adjusting the temperature, simply opening doors
and windows to achieve a comfort level.The new digital style controls are not just flashy lights, they have
function to:
a. Control the heat by turning on and off panels
(More efficient)
b. Warn
the user if a heater goes out or another part is not functioning correctly.
c. Allow
for precise belt times in the oven
d. React
to outside elements, by adding intensity or removing intensity from the dryer.
e. High End Dryers
TRX-3611
Remember
and store programs
Graph
shirt profiles
Run
an analysis on every job
Accesses
for account and maintenance from off-site
and loads more stuff.
Even Madonna
understands the importance of new fabric
How
many new fabrics are you encountering?
1980's
As
the consumer markets push polyester, wicking and many other fabric styles, your
dryer has to keep up.
Belt
Speed -- Items
require very distinct belt speeds, is your dryer capable of 30 seconds and 5
minutes?
Do
you have adequate forced air?
New
inks and fabrics require air movement to achieve a proper cure without burning
the substrate.
It is equivalent to convection air in a oven.
A substrate can
stay in dryer longer with air movement and not such direct Infrared Hear.
The above is only intended as quick thought, as complicated
as curing technology sounds it is very simple.I am not going to argue with anyone that a Fiero will not get you from
point A to point B.Just about any
commercial grade dryer with function and properly cure shirts, however, sometimes limping along with the old one costs you more time, reputation and
headaches than biting the bullet and replacing it with a new one.
I just finished lacing up my roller blades, strapped on my
Walkman and am hoping that dancing on the hood of Billy Idol's car won't scratch
the killer Firebird paint job.
It is exciting when new technology takes a foothold in our industry. The garment decorating business has been changed in the last 10 years by the strong emergence of the direct-to-garment digital printing. This technology is presenting new challenges to the shop floor. What makes this so exciting is that our engineers are presented with the challenge of creating something new to solve problems.
They don't get to do that very often in the garment decorating business.
So what is so different?
The requirements of the digital printing world are similar to the ones demanded by discharge printing and water-based printing. These technologies have been around for years but, until recently, they have not been major factors on the production floor.
With the expansion of digital printing as serious production machines, the needs of the high-volume shop have shifted. This is where the learning begins. Our engineers have had to file away all of their knowledge of curing plastisol inks and delve into the problems associated with water-based curing.
Problems, you say? No. Challenges are a better definition. Or maybe, in engineer speak, new parameters such as:
longer cure times
wet garments that are hard to get to temperature
scorching issues of 100% cotton
shrinking of 100% cotton
water vapor evacuation.
This is where engineering gets fun. At least that is what they tell me.
Solutions?
So the crack engineers at Brown started with the UltraSierra2 X-series ovens and started testing. First, they added the TRX software for more control. Very cool. So we now have TRX curing systems but they did not resolve all the problems for the specialty garment decorator.
TRX-3611
More air was essential. The DragonAir Core Technology was developed. The team added additional air flowing in the unit over the heaters. This was great. Better results, more production. But still not right.
DragonAir Core Technology original
DragonAir Talon
The air was not staying hot enough and it was exiting the chamber with the water vapor. Not very efficient. The the Core Technology was enhanced with recirculation air and filters to keep the air clean.
DragonAir Core Technology latest revision
Ok, we were almost there. But the production rate was still below our expectations. These units have to cure large volumes of shirts for the discharge and digital people to see any improvement on the production floor. The shirts were taking too long in the chamber. Why, you ask? Because they are so wet when they are placed on the belt that they can't get up to temperature fast enough. And they cooled the chamber, so the heaters were working too hard. Answer? A heat bump. More Power.
Final result?
Brown Manufacturing Group, Inc. has employed top notch engineers since they began. Our people are known for producing curing systems that rate as some of the best in the world. They are reliable, consistent and they do what we say they will do. And this is no exception. The DragonAir line of curing systems will cure digitally printed shirts, water-based printed shirts and discharge printed shirts at a serious production rate with solid results.
DragonAir Griffin
And what else?
After messing around with our new toys, we discovered the other applications that it is a perfect fit for. Specialty printing of plastisols. With the ability to recirculation and filter air, cause a rapid bump in the garment temp, and have precise controls using TRX software the DragonAir is the answer to plastisol printing issues. Think of how these features would apply to polyester garments that have dye migration. What about foil and reflective inks or high-density and puff? We see applications for this curing unit throughout the garment decorating business.
So we are excited.
Our engineers are almost giddy with the fun of developing a new product line. Our sales people are telling anyone and everyone about the DragonAir. They even created a division just for digital and specialty printing. BrownDigital.
What size is right for your shop? Call us. We will figure out that problem as well.
The 2014 show season kicked off with a new event. The NBM Printwear show was held last weekend at the Los Angeles Convention Center. This event was small but we are excited by any chance we get to talk face to face with our customers. 
The next show opens today in Las Vegas. This is the PPAI Show. We are exhibiting in the Decorate Pavilion with our ElectraPrint Junior and TRXi Curing System. This event gives us the opportunity to talk with a wide range of specialty producers. This sparks our creativity. 
The final event for January is one of our favorite. The Imprinted Sportswear Show held at the Long Beach Convention Center. We have a row of booths to present our full line of production machines. The DragonAir will be on display as well as some old favorites like the MasterPrinter and NumberPrinter lines.
