Shop practices can make or break a print shop. Bad or outdated practices can end up costing your shop more money than you realise. Working smarter and making good investments into the right products and equipment can reduce waste, save costs and improve workflow.

We understand how intense running a print shop can be with customer deadlines to meet, managing staff and running a business, all your time and mental energy is depleted. This blog post dives into, what we believe, are some of the best shop practices to implement!

1. Clean up

Cleaning up as much ink as possible from your screen once you finish a print job will help you reduce waste and costs. This will speed up your screen cleaning or reclaiming process, and possibly let you use less product to clean the screen.

If your dark room has a dip tank, you’ll notice by having less ink on screen it allows the solution to breakdown ink and emulsion faster as well as prolonging the life of the cleaning solution in your tank.
Using the most efficient products to aid in quick and easy clean up around your print shop will help in reducing costs (and no, they don’t need to be big things!).

For textile printers, using app paper/pallet tape on your platens will mean that you are back to clean platens very quickly, as opposed to using a product to break down your adhesive and scrubbing the platens to an inch of their lives!

Using something small like ultimate clean up cards for quick scrape off of your squeegees, screen coaters, etc. and disposing can mean that you are done in 10 seconds instead of a minute.

For solvent based printers, making sure that you are using the best screen wash for ink breakdown can change how long it takes to clean down your screens and equipment.

2. Concentrates & 2-in-l’s.

Concentrates:

Any type of Concentrate is pricier up front, however, when broken down to a per usage cost, it works out to be far cheaper and will last you far longer than ready-made solutions.

We carry emulsion remover and degreaser concentrates that dilute with water. Some of these solutions dilute up to a 7:50 ratio – l litre of solution can mix up SOL of product to use. We worked out the cost break down for emulsion remover concentrates for comparison:

*Based on dilution recommendation from TOS. Prices current 08/09/2023.

While the above is just one concentrate example, concentrates are available in prepress chemicals, colour pigments, and ink additives, but did you know that some products can be diluted as they are and still be effective?

For example, most table adhesives can be diluted down a certain percentage while still providing the required adhesion – Keep this trick handy next time you need that little bit extra!

2-in-l’s

2-in-l’s are the best products to speed up workflow. Why not de-haze a screen while degreasing it all at once rather than performing both tasks separately? It’s a no-brainer switching to these 2-in-l products.

3. Around the shop

Misprints:

Misprints on garments or other substrates are a common thing -mistakes happen ever to the best printers – be it a registration issue, the incorrect ink, or other issues. We recommend keeping those mistake pieces as they can serve as a test print for other print jobs.

Misprinted garments are especially useful as you can convert them into rags to clean up around the shop, or for use for training tools for other staff. Let those misprints serve your shop rather than costing your shop.

Scrap tee we use to test ink coverage, opacity and adhesion. These random little bits come in handy.

Workflow:

Using equipment such as a work cart to move inks, screens, and garments around are a huge productivity booster. It may not seem big, however, saving a few minutes here and there will add up very quickly. Get prints going on press faster instead of wasting time running around. Also, it’ll require less energy from you too!

We mentioned Dip Tanks earlier in this blog. We’ve noticed so many more shops making the investment in Dip Tanks + dip tank solutions. They’re just the perfect addition to literally any shop size. Soak your screens in a dip tank while you take a breather for 5 minutes or move on to other tasks and come back later to reclaim your screens. You’re delegating a task to an inanimate object that is literally working for you -winning!

Other Practices:

Little things add up to big things over time, an example of this is how much product you use per job. By reducing how much product (e.g. tape, ink, ink removers) you use per job, you’ll be able to save more for the next job and the job after that.

Saving 70% of product (across a few products) per job will extend to saving thousands of dollars across the year.

Reduce waste without losing quality is the perfect rule to have.

Our Recommended Best Shop Practices to Save Costs

Product Recommendations

1. SAATI ERlO or ER25 – Emulsion Remover Concentrates

Despite the increased upfront cost, you will be saving a lot more in the long term. Get the most out of your products by moving toward concentrates – the best bang for your buck products.

2. American Eagle Haze Remover

IA fantastic 2-in-l product, remove haze from your screen while degreasing at the same time – win some time back instead of performing those tasks separately .

3. Dip Tank + Franmar One Step Clear- Emulsion & Ink Remover

This is going to be your favourite go-to combo. Automate part of your process so you can take a breather or smash out other tasks while the dip tank does the work for you – great for taking time back!

4. App Paper

Available in a range of widths for various platen sizes. Simply peel off your platen once the fluff build up 1s too much.

No more scrubbing platens down for hours, simply peel and re-apply .