Building a room for our new flatbed printer, any tips or suggestions?

[Krissy Louderback]

I don't have a flat bed but we did build a separate room for our printer and for outgassing. We hooked up and exhaust fan and instead of hooking it to our central AC and have the fumes circulate, we put in a window shaker for climate control.

 

[Gino]

Nice machine.

Anyway, ask them for a floor print of exactly what your real estate is gonna take up. For a 5' x 10' you're either gonna need 2 people or a machine to put some of your big stuff on a machine like that and rather carefully. It would be nice to know where you will be putting this stuff on and getting it off, if using full size sheets. Even pre-cutting things, sometimes you will be called upon to do bigger than expected sizes, so best to be ready out the gate with those things. Also, pre-cutting things is not necessarily the way to go. That'll be a lotta start and stop and re-alingning things, where doing a full sheet of 10 up would be a lot more economical from many viewpoints. That's the way you do your offset stuff, right ?? No different.

 

[markdarian]

Anyway, ask them for a floor print of exactly what your real estate is gonna take up. For a 5' x 10' you're either gonna need 2 people or a machine to put some of your big stuff on a machine like that and rather carefully. It would be nice to know where you will be putting this stuff on and getting it off, if using full size sheets. Even pre-cutting things, sometimes you will be called upon to do bigger than expected sizes, so best to be ready out the gate with those things. Also, pre-cutting things is not necessarily the way to go. That'll be a lotta start and stop and re-alingning things, where doing a full sheet of 10 up would be a lot more economical from many viewpoints. That's the way you do your offset stuff, right ?? No different.

The plans they gave us recommended a 12.5' x 23' work area. That seems extremely tight so we're gonna expand that quite a bit as several people here have recommended.

Storage of the full sized sheets is the reason why we're considering pre-cutting. It'll be a huge hassle getting those giant single sheets on and off the bed. We can put a corrugated template for let's say 10 boxes on the flatbed, and just pop the pre-cut pieces directly onto the open sections of the template. We'll be able to do 5 boxes on one side of the flatbed, and unload/load 5 new boxes on the opposite side while the others are printing. Ideally we'll be able to print nonstop.

Plus the summa cutter has a conveyor, so it can easily take a 4x8 sheet with one operator and roll the cut boxes and the waste material forward.

That's our thought process anyway, do you think that makes sense?

 

[Gino]

Personally, ours is a hybrid, but I can't imagine not having at least 8' out from all sides and angles of a machine. Ya need to get in quickly to see something, to remove something, to do whatever..... ya don't have time to be neat about it.

 

[White Haus]

We'll be able to do 5 boxes on one side of the flatbed, and unload/load 5 new boxes on the opposite side while the others are printing. Ideally we'll be able to print nonstop.

Just a note on this, as soon as you pull anything off the bed you'll lose your vacuum suction. I'm not familiar with Vanguard printers but unless you've got something like a XL Arizona with double bed size, you'll probably have to wait until the full bed is done to start pulling pieces off. Depending on the start/home position of the gantry, you'll likely have to wait until it completes the print, then moves the gantry all the way home until you can safely start moving pieces around.

Don't mean to burst your bubble, just thought I'd mention it in case you're counting on a certain level of productivity.

Good luck with your research, sounds like you guys are doing this right.