October 27th, 2010, 01:46 PM
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#2 (permalink)
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Senior Member
- Join Date:
- Feb 2009
- Location:
- Round Rock, Texas
- Posts:
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Re: Rate New Screen Presses
Can't believe nobody has replied on this one yet.
I'll start off by saying there are only a few autos out there right now that will be more trouble than they are worth. They are cheaply made and don't have the right engineering or features that are conducive to having a good auto. I won't mention their names but my omission of them will be good enough for most to figure out which ones they are.
1. We own a 10 color RPM Revolution. I researched autos for several years before we bought so I've compared and contrasted most every auto out there dozens of times and spent hundreds of hours looking at each one and trying to find out which press was the best for the money, and which press would be the best for our shop.
2/3. We had a proxy sensor go out on our press at about the one year mark. The press came with an extra sensor so I replaced the bad one with the replacement part and all is good. This happened at about 5:15 on a Friday afternoon in the middle of a job we had to get done because our customer had an event on Sunday. I called Rick (the owner of RPM) on his cell phone and with his help, within a few minutes we had tracked down the bad part and within 15 minutes, I was back up and running. Other than that, we haven't even had an air leak yet. This press has been about as bullet proof as any press I've heard anything about. I talk to lots of shops and I'm on most every forum out there so I know when people have issues with their presses and most every press has a couple technical issues with it in the first year of production, and some have 6 or more service calls on them in that time frame. I know some of our competitors that have newer presses that have literally spent thousands of dollars on service for their machines within the first 2-4 years of production. That could happen to our press, but the previous 16 months and 250K impressions without much of anything happening, I am confident that the RPM is one of the most reliable machines on the market.
4. When I see almost every other 10 color press on the market cost more than what we paid for ours, I know we got a hell of a deal. Sometimes when I tell people a ballpark of what ours cost, they are amazed that we got that much press with that many features for cheaper than the other presses with less features and inferior mechanical and electrical engineering.
5. Servo Indexer, AC printheads, central off contact, tool-less sq. and fb. adjustments, quick changeover pallet system are a few features that I could not live without. Some of the features of our press are in the digital makeup of our printhead controls which I love. I love being able to put an exact number to basically every setting that the press has. Squeegee pressure, off contact distance, squeegee angle, independent print/flood speed, all the quartz flash settings, and other settings can be set to an exact number which can really come in handy on difficult jobs that require precise settings. When you get a job setup perfectly, you can write all those settings down on the job folder and duplicate those settings exactly the next time you print it.
7. I got every option that was available for our press. I guess there are a few things that are on some of the really high dollar presses that would be nice to have like maybe a touch screen lcd main control panel, more production rate info within the operating system, easier to change independent printhead off contact (the RPM is easier to change than most but I've seen other ways to change it that are tool-less), slightly larger flash unit area, maybe another inch or two in width, and that's really all I can think of at the moment. If I remember anything I wish the RPM had I will come back and edit.
8. One thing I would like to tell you is to be very careful when talking to press sales people and what you take as fact or BS. Many sales people don't know the competitions press well enough to speak about them and they will also say some really nasty mistruths or lies about their competition to sell you their press. The lies might not be about the press either, it could be about service or even the other companies financial strength or lack there of, or maybe legal status as it pertains to a lawsuit or something to that affect. Do not underestimate the lengths they will go to when trying to sell their press over another brand. If they resort to negative campaigning about their competition, then there is a good chance that their press doesn't compare to the press they are dogging. I'm hoping this has gotten better recently because of the attention that has been brought to that subject but just in case it hasn't, there it is one more time.
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Re: Rate New Screen Presses
