Automatic press.

A screen-printing carousel whose pallets are moved station to station by a servo-driven indexer and whose printheads pull the stroke themselves, as against a manual carousel where an operator does both by hand. They are configured by colour count: M&R lists its Sportsman EX 4045 in 6, 8, 10 and 12 colour models with a 41 x 46 cm maximum image area. What the machine buys is labour per piece, because one person loads and the press sets the pace; what it costs is setup, because every colour is another screen to burn, register and reclaim. Shops buy colour stations they cannot hold in register, or a press their loading and their dryer cannot feed, and an automatic idles at exactly the rate you can put shirts on it. The number that decides whether it earns its keep is the run length at which setup is amortised, and that moves with changeover time rather than with the impressions per hour on the spec sheet.