Images_May_2020_Digital_Edition

www.images-magazine.com 41 images MAY 2020 DRYERS, CALENDERS & HEAT PRESSES This month, we talk to Ashley Grimshaw about Inkthreadable’s new mug heat press and how it’s working out for the company Telling it like it is: heat presses Inkthreadable: Schulze Mug Turbo 15 Automatic Heat Press from Xpres Tell us a bit about your business Inkthreadable is a print-on-demand supplier through which small, medium and enterprise-level businesses can sell clothing and accessories without the need to hold stock. What heat press have you bought, and why did you buy it? We’ve just installed the Schulze Mug Turbo 15 Automatic Heat Press. Each machine is made to order so there’s about a four- week wait before installation. We bought it to replace our old mug printing set up, which was great for small print runs, but as the company has grown we found it was time to expand our mug printing capacity. Howmuch did it cost? £35,000 including VAT. Well worth it. Why did you choose this model? We explored different options, including using silicone wraps in ovens and tunnels, but none of the options explored were futureproof. We needed a solution that allowed us to handle current volumes Print operator Courtney Finch with the Schulze Mug Turbo 15 Automatic Heat Press without producing waste, but had capacity to scale with our growth. The Schulze Mug 15 Turbo allows us to operate mug production within workflows we’ve developed and are already familiar with, such as those used for printing T-shirts using our Kornit fleet. What are its main advantages? It has loads of great advantages! The biggest one is the speed it presses; once in full-swing it pops out a mug every 15 seconds or so. Each mug takes approximately three minutes to press just like any other standard press, but the Schulze has 15 presses loaded by robotic arm in sequence, and so they’re retrieved from the presses and fed to the operator in sequence too. Other advantages include a built-in cooling system so the mugs are cool to touch when unloading; pre-heating plates so the bottoms of the mugs are warmed before the transfer is pressed; and a conveyor system to deliver the printed mugs. What’s it like to use? The Schulze press is quite simple to use; in fact, it’s probably easier than standard presses to use since the software and hardware of the press does most of the work for you. Once you’ve wrapped a mug and sat it on one of the preheat plates, that’s your job done until you grab a printed mug from the conveyor to unwrap it. The press takes a while to get going, and only hits peak performance once all presses are full. At that point, the robotic arm is constantly in motion either moving a waiting mug into a press, or moving a printed mug onto the conveyor. The best advice, depending on your set-up, is to wrap your mugs before you get printing, because once it’s in full-swing you won’t have time to wrap any, unless you’re a two or three-person crew! What is it mainly used for? Inkthreadable is a print-on-demand supplier, so typically we print very high quantities of low volume orders. However, the Schulze press has such a high capacity that it’s opened doors for us to move into printing bulk quantities alongside our day-to-day on-demand orders. What machines do you use in combination with the Turbo? We use an automatic transfer wrapper to speed up the mug wrapping process. Once the transfer is printed you just slip it onto the wrapper, position your mug and press a button! Per mug it’s not a massive time-saver, but over days and weeks of mug pressing it saves us hours. And helps us wrap mugs as fast as the Schulze press can print them. What would be your advice to others thinking of buying a mug heat press? Buy the press that’s right for you. The Schulze Mug 15 Turbo is perfect for Inkthreadable’s needs, but if you’re just getting started it’s probably not right for you. Look at different equipment in action before you commit to any spending. www.inkthreadable.co.uk Ashley Grimshaw, content and marketing manager