Images_Digital_Edition_March_2020

www.images-magazine.com 34 images MARCH 2020 MARKET INTELLIGENCE Pressing the button If you’re planning to splash some cash on a new automatic screen printing press before the end of the tax year, take a moment to read Tony Palmer’s personal experience with different presses and his expert advice on how to choose the best machine for your business B uying a new screen printing press is a huge investment. For some it’s just adding capacity to an existing print shop, whereas for others it’s a leap of faith into the unknown, often with finances promised, but not guaranteed. Once the decision to purchase has been taken, all that remains is the big question: “Which press?” There are lots of considerations to take into account, from brand and price to the configuration and type. They all do the same job Automatic screen printing presses come in all types of shapes and sizes – I have run presses that are all electric, all pneumatic and even all hydraulic. All of them printed T-shirts. All held a rubber blade against a stencil and pushed ink through holes while laying down colours in succession. If you took one printed T-shirt of the same design from every press that ever existed, ranging from the very basic early ones to the latest all-singing-and- all-dancing press that can set itself up, and you lined them up on a catcher’s table at the end of the dryer, I would challenge any printer in the industry, myself included, to tell me which shirt was produced on which machine. My first experience of screen printing was on a four-colour automatic press that was possessed by an evil spirit with a deep hatred of all living things. We used it to print three-colour Yankees panels on bogey-green fleece that halved its mass once the panel was removed from the glue. The press was an oval configuration that required the operator to walk into the moving pallets and load – the trick was to get out of the machine before it whipped round the corner at lightning speed and inflicted the worst case of squeegee rash upon the innocent loader. In the interests of safety, a pressure pad was located just before the point where the last pallet accelerated into hyperdrive around the corner of the machine. This pressure pad would allegedly stop the machine and save the loader. As I mentioned, this particular press was possessed and was in the throes of repaying a debt for a crime performed in a past life, therefore the pressure pad would perform many functions, including starting the machine, making it perform a double index (the manufacturer said this was impossible), activating the squeegees... almost all functions, in fact, except stopping the machine. The press would start without warning and all the loaders would receive a ‘love bruise’ at the base of their spine whenever they had the misfortune to arrive late and be assigned to the beast in the corner. However, although this machine had several severe personality disorders, it still printed garments. Yes it was difficult to use, yes it inflicted pain, and yes it really did need a priest, but it knocked