Tips to minimize Stenter downtime and keep your staff productive before you restart and run.

No matter how diligently you perform preventive maintenance, you will not be able to avoid every equipment failure. However, when it does happen, there are some ways to be prepared.

Minimize downtime

If your shop is large enough to support a full-time mechanic, please hire one. The downtime of the printing press or dryer will stop the entire printing line, in contrast, the cost of the machinist will be reduced. Full-time mechanics can spend the remaining time on preventive maintenance to ensure that downtime is still a rare event. If you are a contract printer with a meager profit, one or two hours of lost production may still cost you between $300.00 and $600.00. A full day of waiting for technology to lose production is extremely expensive. This is not just a monetary cost; downtime can also cause you to miss deadlines.
If you are a small shop with a few automatic printing machines, it is still important to have someone with certain mechanical and electrical skills on hand to help diagnose the problem. Many problems can be solved by calling an M&R service technician-if your staff knows how the equipment works, how to read the voltmeter and the parts of the equipment, your problem can usually be solved faster. Press to be called.
Service technicians consider the manufacturer's service and support when purchasing equipment at work. When something goes wrong, no matter what time of day or day of the week, you need to ask for help when you need it. M&R has a 24/7/365 service department, allowing you to contact service technicians around the clock. M&R also provides training courses to teach your employees about equipment repair and maintenance. M&R trainers teach you basic electrical, pneumatic and mechanical systems.

Make a plan in place

. When you have unplanned downtime, you need to have a plan that is very flexible and adapts to different lengths of downtime. As an employer, you want your employees to continue to be efficient, and if it can be avoided, you want to avoid sending employees home. No employee wants to lose wages, so prepare a task list for these moments.

The first item in the list should be a task to prepare for the upcoming work. In this way, when you restart and run, you will complete the preparations, and the workflow will be faster, helping to make up for lost time.

Start arranging upcoming work. Mix inks, choose clothes, and then screen capture, record, and mask. Set aside the clean squeegee, anti-spill strip, and ink knife.
Prepare a pallet of the appropriate size. Clean the printing tray. Remove and replace the pallet with a new layer, peel off and fix the pallet in advance.
Provide additional help in the finishing department. Help with folding, marking, labeling and bagging. Set up and adjust your Amscomatic folding line so that you are ready for the next job when you are up and running.
When production restarts, these steps will give you an idea.

While waiting for maintenance, you can also do other things.

Clean! Covering your Flat Screen Printing Machine, floor, and work area with ink will result in waste and lost production, so please use this time to clean your shop. When your printing machine is clean, wipe it with a thin coating of WD-40. This will make it easier to wipe off the ink and lint accumulation next time.
Help the screen cleaning and recycling department. Dirty screens, squeegees and flood bars always seem to be backlogged. Just remove the tape from the screen to save time. Your projection room staff will appreciate your extra help.