 Re: Tuf Freedom Automatic Press--Pros-cons
Do you know what year it is? The Tuf's haven't changed a whole lot over the last decade considering some of the major advancements in features that have came along. They have stuck with simplicity and ruggedness as their main selling points. The control panel and print adjustments are easy to use and operate. There isn't really any frills or cool features but they are just about printing. They fill a niche and are perfect for some shops. I guess it depends on what you're all about. I prefer something with more time saving features and gadgets, as long as they don't take away from reliability and require more maintenance.
The only thing that most people would put in the "con" category is the v style squeegee system, which I'm sure you've read about. I don't like them and would prefer the chopper style any day. I would very much prefer a servo driven indexer and ac printheads as well, which probably aren't available on a used freedom. You don't have many controls on the printheads but the main control panel will swivel around the press, and I think the print stroke is managed by bumper stops instead of proximity switches. They may have changed that by now, but I would consider that a con if they still rely on that technology to stop the print carriage.
I saw a brand new freedom running at the last show I went to in September and it was running with the flashback flash unit. It indexes pretty quickly for an air machine and was capable of running pretty fast as long as you weren't running the flashback on the printhead that you were printing on. The flashback is a good feature as long as high production numbers aren't a concern. Using it as a stand-alone flash unit would be 4-5 times faster than using it in the same printhead, maybe even faster than that.
So, basically what I'm saying is they are a very basic auto that is capable of printing anything you wanted, and it should be reliable and easy to operate and maintain. Operation is very simple and any limitations it has can be worked around. Maybe someone who uses one everyday will chime in and shed more light on the subject. | 
