Tips for saving time and money in your print shop

Tips for saving time and money in your print shop

As we all know, times are tough, and unfortunately, they will only get tougher as we enter winter. Many of us are worried about our businesses surviving with the cost of living and energy prices going up. Therefore, we have put our heads together to come up with plenty of tips and tricks to help you save money, time, resources, and energy when screen printing. Hopefully, you might make use of one or two and it will help ease the pressure.

Ink room

• Use standard ink colours, and avoid spending time on mixing Pantone colours (unless the customer pays extra)
• Use a quality white so you don’t have to print it more than twice
• Use finer mesh counts where possible, especially when printing on underbases – this will decrease your ink usage.
• Use an ink mixing system for accurate and fast matching of Pantone colours. This also prevents ink waste from over-mixing.
• Order in bulk, we offer better deals on bulk buys saving up to 15%
• Clean used buckets and reuse

Screen Room

• Use an LED exposure unit rather than an old 3-phase unit, saves a heck of a lot of electricity!
• Turn off fan heaters when not drying screens
• Clean multiple of screens at a time not just one at a time
• Use a dip tank for reclaiming screens. This saves time and labour, plus it’s far better for the environment.
• Use efficient screen processing chemicals. This will prevent downtime on-screen breakdowns during print runs.
• Use products that can do two jobs at once. For example, Easiway 701 cleans and removes stains saving both time and money.
• Never use packing tape on screens takes MUCH longer to remove
• Use the sun (if it’s out) to dry your screens
• Top and tail your design on screens – you could potentially get up to four designs per screen

Print shop

• Keep your print shop and equipment clean – this saves time on cleaning spoiled garments from ink marks or dirty hands.
• If you can print, dry or cure garments outside of ‘normal’ working hours, the electricity is usually cheaper as it’s off-peak between 10 pm to 7 am
• Be prepared and plan. Order in advance to prevent rush orders which saves on next-day postage
• Turn your flash cure and dryer off when not using it’s a very expensive way to heat the printshop!
• Plan your print shop layout. The better it flows the easier it will work.
• Look after your machines, regular servicing and a few minutes of care at the end of the day will prevent downtime and costly repairs in the future.
• Save time cleaning pallets and cover them with pallet mask instead.

On press

• Use Tri-Lock pre-registration system, to set up multi-colour jobs in minutes!
• Use water-based glue instead of spray tack, it’s cheaper to use but also will not damage your machine or lungs.
• Use a spot cleaning gun to save garments marked garments
• Cut up used T-shirts or misprints to use as cleaning cloths
• If you’re not printing turn off all equipment

In General

• Cross-train your staff so skills are shared throughout the print shop. Saves time in the long run if help is needed in other departments.
• Pay your staff what they are worth, it takes about 6 months for a new employee to settle in which is 6 months of you teaching and not doing your job!
• Recycle where you can
• Sign up and watch out for suppliers’ monthly deals and discount codes
• Automate where possible, machines don’t take time off or holidays
• Buy nice or buy twice, cheaper isn’t always the best route