- [Bruce] Hey Print Hustlers,
Bruce from Printavo,
Simple Shop management Software.
Really excited to be able to have
a couple of guests today,
on this week's podcast.
We've been doing a lot of research
and after Print Hustlers Conf, I wanted to
chat more about this,
so we'll just hop on in.
We've got Matt Marcott at Printavo,
thanks for being able to
take some time to join us.
- Of course, yeah.
- [Bruce] And then we've got Lon Winters
from Graphic Elephants out in Colorado.
Thanks again for taking some time out.
I reached out to both of you guys,
Matt, actually super excited
to be joining the Printavo team,
but Lon hasn't just yet,
but we're working on that.
(laughing)
But we had a really good conversation
at Print Hustlers conf.
I felt like we went into
a little bit of a tangent,
but around computer to screen
direct, dark to screen,
whatever you like to call
it and the benefits of it.
And so I wanted to just
be able to talk about it.
And I know Matt, you've
worked with it heavily
at shops that do have
it, that don't have it.
Selling it, all that,
and especially you Lon.
As I've talked to so many
shops and I always love to ask,
what is a piece of equipment
that you wish you would
have bought earlier?
I would say 90% of shops
say computer screen.
- For sure.
- [Bruce] I mean, which is crazy,
like it's not the second
auto, it's not the start auto.
It's not like anything else,
it's usually always that.
So just diving in, I mean, Lon,
what do you feel like from a high level
are some of the large
benefits of making that leap?
- I'm sure through your
articles and conversations
at Print Hustlers, as well as other places
that the big stuff is easy.
You're replacing film
with director screen.
It's the general ROI
that you can put together
with some of manufacturers
is pretty straightforward,
but what we found
and I'd go into that same group
that you're talking about.
What piece of equipment do
you wish you'd owned earlier?
I would, for sure, be in that same group.
We bought ours I'm gonna
say five or six years ago,
i-image with the scanner, onboard scanner.
Of course, the minute we installed it,
they had the onboard
Starlight on the back, so.
(laughing)
We had to upgrade right
away, but ultimately you're--
We bought it out because
I thought I wanted it
rather than needed it.
We grew up doing film,
four-color process, SIM process,
paying a thousand
dollars for a set of film
from Coudray and Sarah
Chrome and you know,
the best separators in the world.
And the thousand bucks a job for film
and then wrestling the film on screen
with stencil systems, 20
years ago, 30 years ago,
versus what's available today.
We got pretty good at it, but
I'm an old school film guy
and the hard round dot I can
get on film versus inkjet.
We transitioned through the inkjet phase
and for the thermal ink
jet and the ink jet.
And we know we had some
compromise in our dots.
I go from hard edge
dots to little amoebas,
and we transitioned through that
and learned how to deal with it,
but then they were argument
on the inkjet to screen,
whether it's wax or water based ink,
the splatter and all those.
There was just some, I
wouldn't call it negativity,
but it wasn't--
The people that were buying in
20, 25 years ago were bigger.
And then you'd hear horror stories.
Yeah, we installed one
and we sent it back.
We installed three, we
had to send two back.
They were in here every other week.
We were blowing heads about
they're $10,000 ahead.
So we really hesitated and finally,
being kind of a lifelong loyal dog,
we were talked into purchasing
the i-image and I wanted one
because I wanted to do more
accurate screen making.
And the easy things that
we talked about that change
were all on the ROI sheet.
But what we found was it was
way more about the intangibles
and the additional
ability to do other things
and be that much more
productive with the setup,
in that all the things
like dust on the glass
and scratches on the
film and the dumbest ones
where you lost one of the pieces of film
and you made all the screens
except for the one film.
And so you're reopen the
film and it doesn't fit
to all the other screens
and all those stupid shit little things
that add up to setting up a
job in and out for an hour
and then going, oh, shoot,
we gotta take it down
cause we gotta start all over.
You know, it's the little things.
Burning a piece of film on your flash.
Just not realizing that
that's something's missing
or something got wet
or all of those things.
And then the fact that
your registration system
goes from being okay
and if I do it myself,
I can make the film work.
But as soon as you have
additional people doing
each piece of a registration
system, it's 80% accurate.
And when it's off,
it's way off and you'd
better remake a screen.
I'd venture to say we're in
the top upper 90 percentile
on accuracy with the
preregistration system.
Cause it all makes it all
the way through the setup.
So where we maybe were
averaging seven, eight, nine,
10 minutes of screen
and when you're doing a
13 pillar SIM process job,
that's an hour and a half,
hour and 40 minutes set up
and you take that down to two
or three minutes of screen,
realistically, just
because it's that accurate.
And that's a hard sell.
Matt knows more about this than I do.
It's hard to tell people,
oh, your registration time
is gonna go from 10 minutes of screen,
you're gonna cut that
in half or in a quarter.
And people don't buy it.
People don't believe it until you do it.
And then you're like, oh,
we could never go back.
Knock on wood, we only have one.
I'd hate not having redundancy,
other than going back
to film if we have to.
But the idea that it changed
our world of accuracy,
as well as productivity.
And what we do with benchmarking in R&D,
it's that much more critical
that we get from one
project to the next project
and we can't be fiddling
around with stupid things
like lost pieces of film.
- [Bruce] You've been
nodding a lot over there.
- Yeah, no, I'm kind of like
remembering horror
stories of things, right?
So one of the first shops that I ran,
we had, and Lon, I'm
sure you remember this,
the I-screen, the up and down one.
It was nicknamed the I-scream
because all you could
ever do with it, right.
You just want to sit there and shake it,
try to fonzie it to make it
work, it never worked right.
And then we went to like
the ski jump model, right.
Where it was like--
- Rocket ship.
- Exactly.
And that one finally, I
still run in the shop,
it finally started to work.
I still, I was on this
one, I was like, okay,
I've got guys on the production floor
been printing for longer
than I've been alive, right.
I've been printing for a number of years.
You can't tell me this is gonna be faster
than the experience, right,
when it comes to set up.
That immediately was
blown out of the water.
I had Roberto come in.
He comes in with a Trylon JAG
and I'm like I see this
guy's gotten exactly that.
Like we were doing a lot
of like SIM process work
or a traditional process work
that oftentimes was like
seven or eight colors,
so it was kind of process, right.
And he goes over there and
just knocks them right in.
I was like what?
- Magic.
- Exactly, I was that.
And then I got to transition,
doing the sales consulting side.
Taking a lot of the guys that
maybe hadn't been doing it right,
they had been making films,
had the bellow camera
systems 30 years ago.
It's sometimes it's hard to be like, okay,
the amount of math science
that went to making into a good film,
you can't tell me that
you can do that better now
with a rip software and
a machine spit economic.
It's not gonna be there.
And that was the majority
of the fun that I had
with those gigs, right.
Okay, game on, let's find out.
And exactly that, taking somebody who
maybe was like the king
of the castle of this job,
that was the only one that
could go register these jobs
and then throw a 13 color
job at a newbie in the corner
and give them a good registration
system on their press
with a screen off of a computer screen.
It just, it's there, it hits.
There's some little
variables you gotta control,
but if it takes you
five minutes of screen,
that's still faster than
you're gonna usually get
trying to do those really
fine detail prints.
It's fun hearing your growth from that
cause you've been around doing
it longer than I have, right.
And I can totally relate and
you can see that difference of,
okay, what are the things
that are not on the ROI sheet
that are given by the manufacturer?
And what does that save?
Film saving and finding film?
That was like one of
the biggest pain points
that was never really
accounted for, right?
You lose a film and it's a pain.
Not only do you have to
try to find that film,
but when you find it, is it
got a crease in the middle?
Does it have water spots?
what's wrong?
Somebody sneezed on it
and now it's ruined?
Oh, that's the worst, right,
and it happens all the time.
Or, okay, the artist quit
and it's on their computer.
We don't even have the art file.
None of these screens are gonna be good,
let's go back to square one.
All those things, those
intangibles that you talked about
that are huge time savings
that it's a no-brainer for me.
- Envelopes lined up for film.
And then if you'd misfiled something,
I mean, you've got thousands of envelopes,
if it didn't get filed in
the right place, it's gone.
- I had to hire a high schooler
every summer to go through,
I'd print out what we printed that year
in that year's time since the last summer
and if we hadn't printed it,
they had to go through
thousands of these files
that are wedged together on these racks,
pull them out and like
pull out these films.
And I'm just watching
them recycle or throw away
like just dollars and dollars in dollars.
So we were using an image center,
we weren't even just making film.
We had an actual image center.
So it was even more expensive.
It's not like we see oh, a dollar a film
for an 11 by 17, right?
It was multiple dollars,
it had to go through
a full solution to create
that image on that film,
the transparency.
So it was a giant, I'm
just watching dollar
drip out everywhere and it's
like, oh, this is brutal.
So yeah, going CTS, I
found that a lot of shops,
obviously the auto is the first thing
they wished they would
have bought earlier.
And then, like Bruce said,
it's never a second auto,
it's never an abroad machine,
it's not even like, they're
awesome production manager,
it's we should have gone
sooner with that CTS, right.
Just being able to do that and output that
and find that time savings
and then train people
to be amazing printers
that much faster, game changer.
- What do you think is
the biggest hold back
of people going?
Cause you guys have both
either consulted with shops
or sold equipment to shops,
what do you think is the biggest
stopping point for shops
for making that commitment?
Is it the cost?
- It's an investment.
I think there's still a
lack of real understanding
of what productivity really means.
We're still sort of stuck
in how fast the press
goes round and round.
And I grew up with that.
You were a weenie if you
had to double stroke,
you're even bigger weenie
if you have to run it around twice.
So it was all about 900 pieces an hour,
a thousand pieces an hour.
Well, that doesn't matter
when your runs are 60 pieces on average.
If you've got 20,000
pieces, sure that matters,
but I don't remember the last
time we ran 20,000 pieces,
it's been a long, long time.
So it's a complete and total mind shift
of managing to the job
and managing to get X number of jobs out
based on your averages
versus how fast the press
goes round and round.
So, that's important
and it's a piece of it,
but the magic becomes how
quickly you can get a press up
and get a press down.
So when I work with shops
that are looking at their second automatic
or they're looking at, you know,
I need to increase my productivity by 40%,
it's so I guess easy or
seems to be easy to them.
Well, I got three machines,
I need to increase my productivity by 30%.
I just add a machine.
It's like well, okay, that's
the easy way to look at it,
but I'll bet if we streamlined
for free for us with CTS
that you probably can get twice as much
out of your three machines
versus adding a fourth machine based on
take your setups from 10
minutes to five minutes
or seven minutes to three
minutes, whatever it is.
But if you can cut your
setup time by chasing around
the imagery that's plus
or minus an eighth inch
on bigger jobs in particular,
that means if your average runs again,
I always do the easy math,
if your average runs are a hundred pieces
and you expect 10 000 piece runs a day,
you only got to find
a few minutes per job,
to add another job to the day.
So then you get 11 jobs out today
and then it easily becomes 12 jobs.
And if you start managing to the jobs
instead of managing to
the number of pieces.
I mean, we all kind of grew up that way,
on your production board,
you fill in the numbers.
I got 3000, I got 3,500.
Well, that's great if you have
one setup and say, one color.
It's not so great when
you've got 10, six colors
you gotta get done for the day.
It changes the whole
dynamics of the industry,
what we do and how we manage
it, is totally different today
than it was 10 years ago,
20 years ago, 30 years ago.
It's just, it's a different business
and I think business owners
look at it from back a few years ago,
instead of looking at it today.
I might've mentioned that
during the conference
that we won't even set
up a new automatic shop
without putting at least CTS in,
if not automatic developing
and automatic coding.
There's no reason to learn the film game,
if you don't have to.
So why put the X number of
years in dealing with film,
let's just start out
where you take the screen
off the machine, develop it
and put it in in press.
I mean, it's a whole lot
easier learning curve
with people getting into the business too.
- That makes a lot of sense to me.
One of the things I noticed a lot too
is a lot of times the shops
are just so busy, right?
They're so busy, kind of chasing
the tail, chasing the work,
chasing those jobs at the door
that they have never really
done that ROI, right.
They might've had the rep come in
and try to sell them something,
but, obviously, they're a salesperson.
I mean, I've been a sales
person and consultant too,
so they're chasing their own goal, right.
But when they actually break down that ROI
to include all those intangibles
you're talking about,
it is one of the easiest sales to make.
And looking at like adding a press, right?
There's a lot more that
goes into that press.
You gotta run the electric for it, right.
You have to get flashes for it, right.
You have to make sure you have
a dryer space open for it.
So many peripherals that get added on
with the idea of adding a press.
You can look at, okay,
well, what else can I do?
And exactly that,
fixing what has to always
happen with that screen.
A screen always has to be reclaimed.
A screen always has to be coded,
a screen always has to be imaged.
Getting those things to be
repetitive is more sustainable
and more repeatable is huge.
So for me, I honestly found
the most success with,
I don't wanna say easily
selling direct to screen,
but honestly it kind of sold itself
once you actually got them
to look at those figures
and analyze those numbers.
It wasn't they weren't doing their job,
they were just so busy doing
other parts of their job.
No one is really breaking it
down for them that simply,
to showcase that, exactly what you said,
I can add one to two more jobs a day
on your current precedence.
So for a fraction of the cost
you look at to get another auto,
we're gonna be able to add
X amount per week per month.
What does that actual gain to per year?
You're now looking at
the profit margin, right?
So the ROI on it compounds so much easier.
And so I've always found
exactly like you said,
that going with a coder,
going with reclaim machine,
the post rinse machine,
and then of course a CTS,
it pays for itself in dividend
and it makes everything so much easier.
And like you said too,
why get to becoming a pro
at the film game anymore,
when it's all automated, right?
Skip those steps.
It feels weird because I actually
did cut Ruby link, right?
I remember like pulling out half on grids.
It doesn't exist anymore.
Most people talk to me like what?
what is Ruby Link?
And like, that's crazy.
I wasn't even in as long
as you've been in it.
So it goes even farther, but
it's all become so automated
and so repeatable.
After that first auto,
get it, get the CTS.
- Everything you do in our
business and probably in life,
you get something, but you
gotta give up something.
We are getting more consistency,
more speed, automation,
repeatability, a little bit easier,
a lot of bit easier training.
We're still going back to the inkjet.
We still don't get an absolute hard dot,
but you get on contact imagery
instead of film imagery.
There's so many things that you gain
that I kind of got over
the hard dot thing.
And the kind of work that you can do,
that most of us are doing,
many of us are doing with CTS,
maybe you could still make an argument.
Even the guys that own Sarah Chrome,
who are old school film guys,
who held out on the digital direct forever
are running or run CTS.
There's just too much upside.
You give a little, but
you're gaining so much more
that it becomes a no brainer.
What's funny about what Matt's saying,
how many sales guys from dealers,
when a company owner says,
hey Matt, I need you to
quote me a new 14 color.
Oh, and I'll need a
dryer and three flashes,
are gonna go, you know
what, you don't need that.
What you need is to
spend $30,000, not 160.
So that's part of it too.
As shop owners want to
increase their productivity,
and I don't even think it's on purpose,
but who on the manufacturer or dealer side
is gonna go, oh, I can't do that.
What you wanna do is automate
a couple of things over here
and spend a little less money
and not take up all that space.
We can increase productivity
over there at another time.
So there's kind of that balance too.
So sales guys and manufacturers
didn't necessarily know
how to sell it either
because they're kind of selling against
some of their other equipment.
- I don't think any of
us really value our time
as much, right?
And maybe that's because you
start by not valuing your time.
And that's what you're
so trained to do is like,
something happens, just do it.
This comes up, just do it.
Right?
- Sure.
- But there is that business
transition of, okay,
we got to stage one, whether
it's half a million dollars,
whether it's a million,
whatever you felt like
starting to hire people
and starting to grow.
And then getting to that next stage,
it's not the same things
that we got to that first one
where it's like just
time forcing everything,
just spending 12 hours a day doing it.
It doesn't scale to the next step.
I always just find it interesting
just because of that mental
shift is so hard to make,
whereas this aligns
exactly in the same way,
where it's like hard to
value all that time spent
that went in to the
pre-production aspects,
to the artwork aspects, the registration.
All those things together.
It's just like, oh well,
the cost of this piece of equipment is X
and the cost of this new press is Y
and we just need to print
more, force more through.
- I think part of it too
is you're seeing that
people feel like they're being
overrun by robots, right?
So I've worked with some of the
most talented pre-press guys
that can come very close, to
within like parts of an inch
to actually line up film
on multiple screens,
day in and day out, right?
So you take that guys are
doing that job really well
for 15, 20 years, you
start telling him like,
hey, I can bring anybody off the street in
and then have them make a perfect screen,
just by getting some automation,
they're gonna hate you, right?
So that's part of it too.
You don't want to feel like
you're putting them out of a job,
but that's also part of
what you're saying too.
They spent so much time
that sometimes, subtly,
they think that the only
way to be successful
is to put in the time.
And that's not really the
equation for success, right?
So getting them to flip that
switch and understand that
I'm not gonna replace you.
I might replace like
one or two other people
that you kind of have turnover
and churn in the employee
all the time, right?
Your reclaimer that might
kinda get changed out
a couple of months.
we're gonna create more
sustainability also,
with your employment, right.
We're gonna have one person
creating almost perfection
out of a whole department.
It's cleaner, it's easier,
it's more sustainable,
it's more fun.
You're not breaking your
back all day anymore.
You're moving around
hitting buttons on machines
and making the machines
do your bidding, right.
It's doing what they want.
That's part of it too, is
taking a lot of this mentality
out of automation being a negative.
It's not a negative, it's
not gonna replace the jobs
that are really vital.
It may clean up a little bit
when it comes to the one or two
peripheral bodies that you have
that you really don't need,
but you need them to do a dirty job.
They don't wanna do that dirty job either,
so avoiding those things or changing that
only strengthens that person.
But it is hard to change
the psyche at first,
like you said, has been
doing those 12 hour days,
making perfect screens the
best way they could for so long
to now see this new era of automation
to change things completely.
But every industry has to see it, right?
So I think we're just definitely seeing it
and it continues to evolve
now in our industry.
- That's the first piece probably
that starts the automation process.
Matt, you've probably had
some customers like this.
If you get them, talk to them,
then finally pulling the trigger on CTS.
Next year, it's automatic developing.
The following year,
usually get them on
automatic coding right away
with the CTS.
And then it's automatic
reclaim and it's automatic--
I mean, ultimately you
take a four, five person
screen department that's
maybe running a hundred,
125 screens a day and you
whittle it down to two
that are running 200 screens a day.
Those are real numbers,
that's not something I'm just making up.
We've seen it in multiple operations
and they may be transitioned
the automation they resisted,
finally got CTS and then
quickly they automate
a lot of the other pieces of it
because they realize, in our business,
the biggest line item, our BNL is labor.
There's a ton of unskilled labor, as well.
Now you can take that guy
that's got all the experience
and say, hey, this is your new
toy, this is your new baby.
You don't have to get the loop out
and look at film all day
but you're gonna have to
keep this thing humming
and keep the other guy running.
And the automation piece of it,
push this button and that button,
push this button, push that button.
End up orchestrating a screen department
or a free trust department,
rather than having
somebody cleaning screens
and somebody coat and
then somebody developing.
All those things end up
taking almost a body,
a day if you're doing roughly
a hundred screens a day.
- And hopefully the
savings on the ROI on that
also has a trickle down effect
to that employee, right?
If you're cutting three
bodies out of the labor cost,
you're gonna be able to pay
off that equipment faster.
You're gonna get better ROI overall
and better margins overall.
So when it comes to the end
of the year, when it's like,
hopefully I can get a raise,
ideally, there's more money
in the pot for that raise.
So it's not replacing the people,
it's strengthening the
people that are there,
giving them a better career
and lighter on their bodies.
So it can seem scary,
but once it has the time to
filter through your shop,
it's got dividends all over, right.
The financial aspect for the company,
the automation for the company,
the drop in the extra labor.
And like I said, hopefully adding to
the income of those people
that are now running that
and have more pride in it too.
I found that people had a lot more pride
when they had these nice big
machines around them, right.
As opposed to when they're
in the dark back room,
covered in spray off, right.
And like wreaking of chemicals.
And they're like, here's your screen?
It's like oh my God, right?
So they have a lot more
pride in their work,
the area is cleaner.
I think we all know that
always makes you feel better
about the work you're doing.
So just, every time you look into it,
there's more and more benefit for it.
- Sure.
Well, and as a business owner,
and this isn't the case all
the time, but much of the time,
when you pull the trigger
on a 30 to $90,000
piece of equipment,
you tend to want to
take better care of it.
So all of a sudden we might
climate control of the area
it's going in.
We might paint the walls, we
might run a little AC in there.
We might put some tile on the floor
and all of a sudden we've
got a much higher end
kind of a pre-press
department, as opposed to the,
as everybody will call it, the back room.
And then you start taking
customers in to show them,
check this out, this is pretty cool.
Cause your clients don't typically
know how any of that's made,
but to watch it print directly
on the screen is pretty cool.
- They're always more
impressed that way too
They're never impressed
with the old school way
where you're like, you're making the film,
you're lining it up.
That's really more impressive.
They're like, oh, sweet robot.
And you're like, okay, that's fine.
(laughing)
- When do you guys feel
like it's the best time
to make that leap?
Like a good best practice?
Is it first auto's purchased?
It's paid off, maybe?
I mean, there's a couple
aspects here, right?
Financial prudence, I'm
sure volume is a big one,
but what would you say you recommend?
- I can speak more to the specifics
of the manufacturer's
ROI on number of screens.
That's kind of how they approach it.
If you do X number of screens,
then we can get you an ROI
in one year or two years, whatever.
And I argue that they're
super conservative.
I think that their numbers are
higher than they need to be.
I don't know if you should
even be automated without CTS,
why bother?
And this is just opinion,
I don't have the data
to necessarily back it up and support it.
But I think you can be in the
neighborhood of 25 screens
and make sense of it.
The lease payment on it is minimal,
especially if you're a
small automated shop.
Then you're opting for the $35,000 unit,
not the $90,000 unit
You can get it paid off pretty darn quick.
Especially at a startup.
If you're a single automatic shop
and you've been a single
automatic shop for 10 years,
maybe it's your next purchase,
but I'm not gonna begrudge you
for not having it up to now
cause I was that guy too,
I held out a long time.
But it seems to me, if
you've got enough volume
to automate the printing process,
you've got enough volume to automate
the screen making process.
Maybe not entirely, but at the very least
the CTS piece of it.
And I'm maybe over-simplifying that.
And that maybe has more
specifics on the numbers,
but that seems to make
the most sense to me.
It's not my money,
they're writing the check,
so it's easy for me to make
the compelling argument
that this is where you really need to go.
We have a customer in Utah
that, for whatever reason,
listened to everything we told them to do
and started with CTS and
they had a single automatic
and now they've completely
automated their front end
other than reclaim, they
just don't have the space.
And they're up to three automatics
and they've grown the company three times
since we first worked with them.
So it makes complete sense once you do it
with that automation piece of it in mind.
Then it just kind of,
it grows into the next
thing, the next thing,
the next thing.
- Yeah, I couldn't agree more.
I mean, one of those rules
of automation rising,
it costs money to make money.
When I was selling this equipment stuff,
if you're doing 50 screens
a day, I can, 99% of time,
get the ROI for you to be
within a year to two years,
almost always.
But I agree if you're doing
20 to 25 screens a day,
it's still worth it.
And they're still amazing machines,
it's just good to have one print
as opposed to two or three,
it's not going to have
the starlight built in,
it's still a great machine.
So, in most cases, I couldn't agree more.
it should be the next purchase
you make right, with a coder.
I do like to package those
together, get the coder in there.
It's more reliable, more consistent.
If you are a manual
and you are running all day long printing
and you're actually putting
up 25, 30 screens a day,
get it before you get that auto, exactly.
Build those good habits
on the pre-press side.
That way, when you do get the auto,
You don't have to sit there
and worry about your
micro-adjustments so much.
You'll have to learn
those things, of course
but you'll able to have more consistency
and get it in there.
So I couldn't agree more it,
25 is usually a point where
it's worth looking into it.
At 50, I think it's almost
always been a no brainer.
I think it's, it's almost
always been a no brainer.
I couldn't get somebody
to show profit on that
within that year, year and a half.
- That seems to be the standard
with the manufacturers,
is somewhere around 50 screens.
To argue the 25 screens or less than that,
you gotta buy into the
intangible pieces of it.
The immeasurables that you
can't necessarily put on paper.
And I'm sure that's why the manufacturers
are hesitant to give numbers to lost film,
meaning you can't give that a number.
Aggressive, forward-thinking
shop owners can look at it
if they buy the intangible piece of it
and make sense of the other
things that can't necessarily
be put into numbers.
If you want to go pure numbers,
the easy ROI is 50 screens a day.
- Interesting.
There's a lot of options, right.
There's Dout Hits, Seminars,
XL's, there's i-Jets, Sat--
I mean there's just a fair
amount of options out there.
I've seen also discussion,
especially online, around wax versus ink.
Is it a kind of environment decision
or what do you feel like is the best way
for people to be able to make that leap?
As unbiased, obviously, as you
guys both can, but you know,
to help people to evaluate
which one's best for them?
Especially with that wide price
range that you talked about?
- I've seen all the test prints
and I can tell you that a wax manufacturer
might compare their very best output
to an ink manufacturers very worst output.
To any Tom, Dick and Harry,
you can go oh my God,
I'd never be able to use
this, this looks fantastic.
I think that a wax dot is probably better
than an inkjet dot,
but I think I can get a
pretty damn good ink jet dot
by slowing down the equipment.
Not the manufacturer wouldn't
want to hear me say that,
but that's what I've done
with a lot of our clients is,
they sell it on speed and we slow it down
when we work with them.
They front by directional,
we try talking them into
the fronting unidirectional.
They print on high-speed, we
try to print on low speed.
We try to increase their passes.
So I can take the ink jets very best print
and put it against the wax
and it can stand with it,
but I would still concede that the wax dot
is a little better.
So if you're a dot Nazi, then
that may make more sense.
Now there's not an entry level price point
on a wax machine neither.
I think minimums 60 or 70.
And that's just a dot, I think I know.
- Right around there, yeah.
- Their heads are a little
more expensive, they come down
and I like all those guys
and we've done a ton of work with them
and some of our clients
and even bought some
and installed them in startups.
It depends on what your needs are,
as to whether one is
better than the other,
based on a better dot, a harder dot.
Neither one of them are hard dot
to a traditional web image
shutter piece of film,
but the wax dot is a little
bit probably cleaner.
and all those kinds of
things on the ink jet,
you can get very good dots.
It takes a little bit of work
and you can't expect to run--
If you're only doing a
hundred screens a day
where you're running your machine
like you're doing 600 a day.
There's a balance there.
- There's a lot of preference to it.
But like you said, at the end of the day,
I do think that a wax dot
that drives and hardens
is going to be a harder dot,
but there's a lot more variables
that go into purchasing
a piece of equipment
than just which one's
gonna give me the best dot.
First of all, are you
going to actually care
about how good that dot is?
Are you going to be trying to win awards
with the best print?
Because if you are, you're
not going to actually have
any real production value, right.
Those shops, you know better
than all of us, right,
it may take you a day to
finally get that one Holy grail
surely you're going to submit
to that context, right?
If that's what you're gonna do,
then maybe you do want to
be a snob about your dot
and you wanna go with a wax.
But there's more to it still, right?
Which one do you prefer?
Who were you near
when it comes to being
able to have it serviced?
That's a big one, right?
When people come to me and
say who's the better press?
Who's the better this?
Who's the best thing?
Who's that?
Who you near, who's gonna support you?
That's gonna always be my default answer.
My opinion doesn't really matter.
If you're within the top
scale of the best of the DTSs
that are out there,
who do you like, who supports you?
That's the right answer.
I'm not so much like you, I
don't care so much about the wax
versus the ink quandary that's
out there, the argument.
I care about getting things done, right.
do you wanna spend a lot for perfect?
Or do you wanna get what
you actually need as a shop
to go through?
I'm personally going to always be a fan
of somebody getting two
of the cheaper units,
to have the redundancy,
over ever selling them
one of those larger units
that may be able to push
through a higher amount,
a higher dot or have exposure built in
or any of those things, right.
But I'm more of looking at
the shops, where they are
as opposed to where they
think they want to be.
Most shops, they'll kind of
go, I can afford something,
let's get the best there is.
Well, if you're driving two blocks,
you're not gonna buy a Porsche, right?
Meeting your expectations
where they actually matter.
Make sure you have the equipment
that's going to be
serviceable and work near you.
serviceable and work near you.
I think that oftentimes
it's easy to get kind of
caught up in this higher level
of this dot madness
when most of the time it
doesn't actually matter.
You're holding a good
enough dot on either one.
But I would also agree with you that
I'm gonna always tell
you, run unidirectional,
unless you're doing like a--
This shirt, fine.
Bi-directional is fine.
You're trying to hold
anything, half the time,
it's gonna be unidirectional.
So don't buy into the salesperson
telling you about how fast it's gonna go .
With anything, who cares about exposure
that's eight seconds?
Are you gonna be moving
screens every eight seconds?
No.
Right, so aim for
reasonable and realistic,
But I do have a question for
you that I'm not sure about
cause I have had no experience with it.
The future with lasers,
have you seen these?
Cause that seems like
a promising prospect,
but it's so new, right?
The original ice-cream, God awful.
It took how long to get good?
So I'm assuming lasers are
probably in the same spot, right?
- I think it's really cool.
amazing dots.
And this is what they're
wrestling with right now.
And I they've got,
Zitron working with them,
on trying to figure it out,
understanding the curve in reverse
because they're printing
the negative space.
So measuring gain is probably
impossible, just in concept,
So measuring gain is probably
impossible just in concept
So our typical linearization is done using
the output positive onto the screen
and then trying to correct
the curve to come within
what our tolerances are
that we're trying to build
for our linearization.
Now the only thing like
the manufacturer will do is
give you the settings to
linearize to the output
onto the screen.
But what I thought was cool
about the laser piece of it
is they're not gonna be able to do that.
So they're gonna have to
go to press and print it
and measure the actual
print and try to linearize,
which my suggestion, when we were talking,
is what if you gave them
a custom linearization
because there's no way your prints
are gonna be exactly like mine.
Screen G, mashed out,
there's a million variables.
- Dencile, yeah, all that.
- But what if they had
a few dummy settings
that if you fall within these things,
they send you a test kit.
You output, you print, you send them back
and they linearized to
your actual printing.
So there could be a real
upside sell to that,
that we would linearize to you.
We're not just gonna give you
a bullshit set of settings
We're not just going to give
you a bullshit set of settings
So it could be really cool
because if they can figure out
how to measure that piece
of it, which they can,
it's just do they wannna deal with that?
Or do they wanna try and
take an average somewhere,
Or do they want to try to
take an average somewhere,
bring it back or print itself,
bring it back to the screen
and adjust accordingly until
they get that piece of it.
At least in the can, to be able to sell.
And I know they made
some mistakes with glass
in the first place, that
was kind of a big duh moment
for them when they, oh yeah,
we should take the glass off of this.
And now the unit that's
commercially available in the U.S.
is only a two up unit.
And price wise, if they can figure out
how to get it to a single unit
and get it in the 30, $40,000 range,
cause I think it's at 90
now with the double up.
And they had a couple going into beta
and I'm sure this whole thing
has slowed a lot of that down
and where they're at in their development.
But it's cool.
I would say that would
be the next cool thing
if they can figure out, conceptually even,
how to measure the gain and the loss.
- I just like thinking about the people
busy arguing about wax versus ink
and all of a sudden they just get lasers.
(laughing)
- It's really cool.
I like the idea, where they're at with it,
I haven't talked to the Saudi
people in quite a while.
- Cool, thanks, I was just
curious what your take on that.
I've seen somebody I admire
a lot, as well as you,
Richard Greaves, working a lot with that.
So I'm always trying to
see if I can find out
a little more information
because it's cutting edge.
It's new.
I like seeing where that's gonna go.
I mean, cause lasers are
freaking cool, right?
(laughing)
If we can get lasers to actually
be a part of our process,
like get me in there, that's awesome.
- Yeah, sign everybody up.
- It's also so far from what I understand.
I haven't played around with them,
I've only talked to people that own
some of the larger format ones, is speed.
They're faster than the DLP,
but they're still working on speed.
And I think that comes down
to, if I understood it right,
the conversations with Saudi
was we can make them faster,
but it's gonna increase the price
because it becomes quality of the laser.
So we add lasers or add quality of lasers.
we can create more speed
and that's why they're
going with a double op
instead of a single.
Just like I said earlier on
there, you get something,
you gotta give something up, so.
Won't it be cool to get you a trade show
and see where they're at with all that?
- All right, soon hopefully.
- Trade shows, that's
an interesting concept.
(laughing)
What else do you guys
feel like is next for CTS?
- I'm probably nervous about it.
Our CTS is paid for
and I'm nervous that the
technology is gonna change
rapidly enough because it's digital.
I don't think our manufacturers
would play this game
because we're too small of an industry,
but pull the ups game
and all of a sudden they wanna support it
and you can't get parts
and you can't buy the yank.
You gotta buy the new one.
I hope we don't end up down that path.
But when you're talking digital,
I'm sure that everything's different.
MNR's got something different.
I don't know where they're at with it now
and whether they'll roll it out or not,
but to replace what they're doing.
I mean, even like you
started out with, Matt,
the evolution of their CTS.
The I-Screen to the Rocket
Ship to the I-image ST
and Matt knows this, I'll
share this with the world.
Wanna know what ST stands for?
Second try.
(laughing)
So even M&R knew that their first try
wasn't a real good solution.
But I worked with a customer
just a few years ago.
There was one of three of
them down in El Salvador,
still running I-screens, they love them.
So they probably own every
I-screen in the country
or that they manufacture.
- All the ones that are left.
Godspeed to them (laughs).
- When will we not be able
to get new print heads
or things like that?
- I don't know if I
worry about that as much
and I mean, I could see that happening.
And that's another one
of those peripherals
that we talked about earlier
and it goes to thinking about
going to jet film versus the
direct screen is Epson, right?
How many people will all in
one fell swoop, like 1430s,
no longer get any support or
any parts of GIT one, right?
I think that we're gonna see
the singularity of everything
that kind of happens, right?
Like you build upon new technologies
and new technologies emerge.
I do think lasers are probably a ways out
because there's too many parts to that.
But I think we're already starting to see
a lot more bootstrapped companies
that aren't just the big, heavy hitters,
making good options when it
comes to CTS game, right.
Not only wax, but laser
jet or ink as well.
I think we're gona see
more people come out,
more players from across the world
introduce themselves into the new world.
And we're gonna see that price
point continue to drop right.
I mean, I-image ST you're talking about,
that came out with it with
a 70, $74,000 price point,
I believe at first.
And then all of a
sudden, four years later,
there comes the S and that's at at 32,000.
I mean, it's a 34 now.
But those price points
keep coming down because
of singularity, right?
You improve upon something and
then you can mass produce it,
make it cheaper, get more feedback.
New equipment becomes available.
New resources become available.
That keeps going down.
So I'm actually really
excited about seeing
what else comes out and how
much more affordable it might be
to help more shops become able to compete.
That's one of the most fun
things I like about this industry
is I'm seeing the ability
to not just have to be
the big eight auto six manual shop
that can afford this stuff.
You can actually now be the
three, four manual shops
starting to afford this stuff and compete.
So I'm looking for to see who,
what other players come to the table
and what they bring to the table
when it comes to new emerging technologies
to make this more
attainable for everybody.
- That's awesome.
- Another thing, thinking about the future
or what's coming down.
It doesn't apply to everybody out there,
but the matching up CTS
with hybrid running,
just making your screens with
the digital onboard inkjet
on an automatic press.
I mean, that's happening and
it's happening fairly fast
around the world and starting
to really take off here too.
So you have to be able to
digitally build your screen
to match your output.
They gotta be able to talk to each other.
So at one point, I'm
sure you could write down
or figure out how to
make film to match up,
but I matching film to
each other is hard enough.
So the CTS is probably the
only way that you're able to do
a digital hybrid tech
screen printing as well.
- Yeah, I haven't thought of that.
I think that we're gonna
see that emerge even more,
including on manual presses
here in the very soon future.
So yeah, I hadn't thought of that aspect.
It's a big, big part of it.
- With most of these
factories or manufacturers
not spending a whole lot
of time in people's shops,
I have a feeling we're getting
some developmental things
that we could see
that were sort of just pie
in the sky maybe a year ago,
that are gonna get fast tracked
like a less expensive digital squeegee,
like a 20 something thousand CTS
or just trying to find expanding markets
where they can put more products
in more printers' hands.
- Less time at the trade
shows, more time in R&D.
(laughing)
- Silver lining here (laughs).
- We are very excited
to be back at the shows,
but no, it is interesting align.
A company so focused on different things
to be able to stay afloat and everything.
That's been awesome, thanks guys.
I really appreciate it, Lon,
for being able to join us today
and share some of your insight,
especially as you even talked
about having struggling,
making that shift over.
So this has been hugely helpful.
That's Lon Winters,
you can find him at graphicelephants.com.
Lon does a ton of consulting
work for small, medium,
large shops all over the place.
You can be able to reach out
to Lon, so much experience
he'll be able to share.
And we'll actually drop a link down below
for his Print Hustler's Conf talk,
which was really, really great as well.
- So you couldn't have cut out that part
when I was struggling with
getting the screen up?
- (laughs) You know, it's, it's
hard with the split screen.
It really is, especially, and
then you're also sharing it
and it was live like, nah, it was awesome.
- I've seen him for years in shops,
he's the best at what he does.
That was the only one I've
ever seen him like he is human,
look at that, all right.
- Actually I had a couple of deaf guys
say that nah, it was awesome
cause I could actually
hear you and read along
and so I knew what was going on.
(laughing)
- Heck yeah, I'm done.
Thanks again, Lon.
- You bet, it's my pleasure.
Thank you guys.
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