The Gallery Stretcher will increase your production level and it is certainly more efficient than stretching by hand. However, to truly increase production you need to stage personnel and equipment with a streamlined work flow and with staging areas that are easily accessible by all personnel.
The secret to high-production is properly utilizing personnel with no wasted motion. Your production line should be laid out with work flow in mind. The following terms refer to positions in a typical production line for the specific task of stretching printed art on canvas.
The Operator
There can only be one person operating one machine at a time, this is the most basic configuration for small shops that stretch only a few canvas a day. In this configuration an accomplished operator can produce about 30-50 stretches an hour. In this configuration the operator does everything including the starter course, trimming the excess canvas and finishing the corners. Many larger print shops prefer to have several operators with machines pulling from a staging area with stacks of printed artwork. In this case the production level would be multiplied by the number of operators.
The Starter
The key to a good stretch is having the “starter course” perfectly aligned, this task can be performed by the Operator but some of the larger print shops have a designated person for this task. Their job is to pull from a stack of printed canvas, align the artwork on the stretcher frame and affix a course of staples to one end. The Starter then moves the partially completed artwork to a staged area with a soft separator to protect the artwork against rubbing. The Operator can than pull from this staging area. This is ideal for print shops that have 2 or more machines.
A Pod
A Pod is the name one of our customers gave to their production line. It consists of a number of key personnel with a specific task to perform in a given space. A Pod works as a unit that pulls artwork from a stack of prints. A Pod typically includes a Starter and an Operator. The Starter pulls from a staging area, creates the starter course and then places it where the Operator can easily reach it. The Operator conducts a stretch, makes the folds and passes it to the final stage. The final stage is where the corners are finished, trimmed and boxed. A Finisher can be assigned this task, but this is also a task that can be performed by the Starter. What makes these Pods so efficient is that each Pod pulls from a common staging area and places them where other Pods, if necessary, can pull from.
Putting It All Together
A large print job might require several Pods working together around several workbenches. In some cases there may be more than one Starter and a Finisher feeding a number of Pods. The throughput of these Pods is dependent on many things but the overall efficiency is far greater than what a single Operator can produce. We have some customers that have as many as 10 machines working in shifts producing more than 6500 stretches a month. Your production level is dependent on the number of machines you have and the number of personnel assigned to perform this task.