Good Equipment?

Originally Posted by Eric

Hi All,

I was hoping to get a little insight into the screen printing world. I am an embroiderer and have been doing embroidery for quite a while. Currently we sub out all of our screen printing, well, despite the economy we had a decent year. So therefore I am looking at buying a screen press & setup myself.

I attended ISS long beach and there were TONS of screen printing equipment people there. Enough to totally make my head spin! I anticipate our volume to be about 500 shirts a week, at least thats about what we have been subbing out on average, however, we don't push screen printing, cause once we sub it we make very little money. Once we get an operation set up we will push the screen printing seriously.

I want to buy a good setup, not something cheap enough to get me started. I was given quotes all over the road from $15k all the way up to $40k. Our shirts seem to be mainly single to 4 color designs, I was thinking a 6 color? We have one customer that does a ton of White ink on Black T. They all kept saying that this required a nicer press that would hold better registration.

I guess I'm asking a general opinion question here. What do I need? I understand exposure and dryers and all that, but what is a good press to buy, that isn't too cheap, and can handle it if we grow. I plan on buying something that might be slightly overkill in the beginning but hopefully we grow into.

Some names I have info from are:
Brown
Workhorse
Atlas
Vastex
M&R
MHM

Any of these stand out above the rest?