Holy crap those are some big runs! Last summer when I worked at a print house we managed about 400 pcs two color prints an hour (could've been a bit more). We had two guys on the press and one guy at the other end of the conveyor dryer stacking 'em up. I have no idea wether that's optimal speed or not but it required a lot of focus and we couldn't have done any more even if we had tried.
Edit: and if we had done this for 10 hrs we'd be dead already. So we had runs of 1200 shirts altogether...
We regularly print over a thousand impressions daily - usually with a couple of setups. It can be done. As for the 230 mesh - you are on the right track. We have a job we often do that has a very large spot color in a custom mix gray - we put it on a 280 to save on ink - it works fine to do this and in fact we often do stuff for clothing co's that goes through 280 so you should be able to do 230 with no problem. If your inks won't run through the 230 you might reduce them slightly, but really I wouldn't think you have to do that, what inks are you using?
It's fun doing longer runs and less setups - lets you stretch your legs a bit!
Have fun!
Dave
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the most we've printed is 10,000 and we just landed a 30,000 shirt order, that will be fun.
O.k, so where does one go to land 30,000 unit orders??? That is awesom! seriously, who do you primarily market too? I need to start marketing to people who need more than a few dozen to a few hundred per run.
1700 pcs today. Almost there. Another 2-3 gallons of black ink. 4 more screens to burn. 4 more set-ups.
1 color change, 80 dozen more shirts to do- front AND back.
I see tees in my sleep! I am ready for this to end.
Well we finally finished Wednesday morning. If I can get 1.00/shirt I'll live. Spent a lot on supplies, ink, and labor. Not to mention the cleanup, the 14 screens we burned, the 8 or 9 gallons of ink we used, and the tying up of our shop for 5 whole days.
I'll do it maybe once a month to keep us sharp and stretch that Diamond Back out.
Oh yeah my new dryer came last night! A dollar short and a day late. But we needed it!
Ask me how we ran 20-40doz shirts through my old dryer and the ink didn't fall off =
In my opinion, the most important and most commonly overlooked part of running an auto quickly and getting a lot done is the......press assistant. If you have someone slow or inexperienced as your #2, downtime can double/triple that of having two good printers running the machine. Also, the puller should be in charge of heads/screens (on an 8-color) 5-8 and the loader 1-4, in terms of staying inked-up and lint-free. It's not that tough getting 3500 prints from an automatic press in a day, you just need to minimize downtime.
Re: Full throttle 
