Just In How We Make Over 3 million Decals and Stickers a Year at FireSprint

[FireSprint.com]

Here's a little bit insight on how we do it at FireSprint. We're probably doing more wrong than right, but whatever it is, it works for us!

Thanks for watching!

 

[Johnny Best]

Great interesting movies of your process, congratulations on your success.

 

[Graphic Extremes]

Thank you for all the information you make available to us.

 

[Pauly]

Great video!

Im curious on how you do kisscut stickers and sheet stickers as i find when you start introducing more steps you can make the workflow quite complex.

E.g,
Kisscut stickers - We'll kisscut on the summa and thru-cut on the flatbed cutter.
Sheet stickers - kiss cut on the summa and sheet them using the fotoba.

I have thought about using both summa + Graphtec, but i haven't worked out how to achieve that yet.

 

[victor bogdanov]

E.g,
Kisscut stickers - We'll kisscut on the summa and thru-cut on the flatbed cutter.
Sheet stickers - kiss cut on the summa and sheet them using the fotoba.

Any reason you don't just do the kiss cut and thru cut on the flatbed? Even if it takes a bit longer I like to just cut them on one machine

 

[Pauly]

Any reason you don't just do the kiss cut and thru cut on the flatbed? Even if it takes a bit longer I like to just cut them on one machine

It takes far to long to do it on the flatbed.

Heres an example:
We do a lot of A3, A2 sized sheet stickers.
for a full 30m roll of various sizes, it would take about 8 hours on the flatbed cutter.

With using summa, we can get 1x 30m roll down to 2 hours of kiss cutting and about 1 hour on the flatbed.

I actually have 2 Summas S3 TC160's which means i can get 2x 30m rolls cut in 2 hours, and 2 hours on the flatbed.
Which means we've increased our throughput by 8x

 

[bpp]

Here's a little bit insight on how we do it at FireSprint. We're probably doing more wrong than right, but whatever it is, it works for us!

Thanks for watching!

Are you kiss cutting the same decals that you are thru cutting first on one machine then bringing over to the next machine to thru cut? I don't see any weeding in the video

 

[SlikGRFX]

Many thanks for showing us your setup. Interesting that you are using UV for all your decals. Would you be willing to share which brand/type of laminates you use?

Thanks!

 

[John Hughes]

Here's a little bit insight on how we do it at FireSprint. We're probably doing more wrong than right, but whatever it is, it works for us!

Thanks for watching!

Hi. John here from the UK. Great little video.
We’ve just bought a Colorado.. great bit of kit but wondered what type of laminate are you using?
It seems we need specific lam for UV ink?
Thanks

 

[Pauly]

Many thanks for showing us your setup. Interesting that you are using UV for all your decals. Would you be willing to share which brand/type of laminates you use?

Thanks!

What else would you use in a high volume production shop?

Uv is the future of print.

 

[FireSprint.com]

Any reason you don't just do the kiss cut and thru cut on the flatbed? Even if it takes a bit longer I like to just cut them on one machine

For us the big reason is floor space and equipment cost.

We can put a full roll of different kiss cut jobs on a graphtec and let it run unattended with a take up roll. Sometimes we have sticker sheet rolls that take 8 hours to kisscut. It takes 120v and about 12sqft of floor space. It’s also under $10k. Our zunds are 15x that in every way and don’t run unattended.

From there, it’s still about floor space and equipment cost with thru cutting. Yes the zunds are faster, but only about 10-20%. I can have one operator run two graphtecs or one Zund.

The flatbed cutter have their place. In fact ours run at capacity all day long. Just not for small stickers.

 

[FireSprint.com]

Hi. John here from the UK. Great little video.
We’ve just bought a Colorado.. great bit of kit but wondered what type of laminate are you using?
It seems we need specific lam for UV ink?
Thanks

We run Drytac laminates. But we have also run general formulations 400uv. Both work fine. We will get just a little halo-ing from time to time but it’s minimal and mostly work out with a bit of heat.

 

[SlikGRFX]

What else would you use in a high volume production shop?

Uv is the future of print.

Solvent if you want wide gamut. Latex if you want fast drying. Latex white is also decent.

What’s the benefit of UV if you are going to laminate it anyway?

 

[Graphic Extremes]

Only benefit I see is quicker lamination.

 

[victor bogdanov]

What’s the benefit of UV if you are going to laminate it anyway?

Colorado = cheap ink and fast. Would be the main benefit over the other technologies

 

[Pauly]

Solvent if you want wide gamut. Latex if you want fast drying. Latex white is also decent.

What’s the benefit of UV if you are going to laminate it anyway?

Out of all the properties, uv has a smaller gamut.
Other than that,
It has no dry time. No outgassing.
Colorado white is better than latex.
Other uv white is okay, latex still has a nicer white.

But... UV like the Colorado or other higher end machines.
Cheaper to run, cheaper inks, faster to print.

1 Colorado = 2x hp 800w

The Colorado laminates fine with a heat assisted laminator. With a little bit of heat to reduce silvering.

 

[geezer]

Thanks for making and sharing this video!

 

[Pauly]

Only benefit I see is quicker lamination.

You dont need to laminate colorado prints. The ink is that durable.

 

[Graphic Extremes]

You dont need to laminate colorado prints. The ink is that durable.

Fire Sprint is laminating them I thought

 

[victor bogdanov]

You dont need to laminate colorado prints. The ink is that durable.

Yea 99% of stickers I print on the colorado I don't laminate. 6 mil matte vinyl with gloss print looks so good. Everyone loves the stickers But there are customers that want laminated because they heard it's better even though in practice on a handout type sticker it makes no difference.