Some printing videos I found

[Jobu]

Thanks for posting these Steve. I am the board member who has been picking Steve's brain about the printing process and now I can say a public "thank you" for all of the awesome answers like this!

Another question after watching this: How long might it have taken to print a single card assuming it was business as usual? A one-day process or does the prep, inking, setting up the machine, drying, etc mean that it would have taken multiple days?

[steve B]

Originally Posted by Jobu

Thanks for posting these Steve. I am the board member who has been picking Steve's brain about the printing process and now I can say a public "thank you" for all of the awesome answers like this!

Another question after watching this: How long might it have taken to print a single card assuming it was business as usual? A one-day process or does the prep, inking, setting up the machine, drying, etc mean that it would have taken multiple days?

Any one card would have been part of an order for thousands. The whole order would have taken several days possibly longer.

I think the sheets per hour rate was around 800 for these presses. Maybe a bit more.

Each color would have the plate/stone mounted, press inked, samples run and adjustments made, then a certain number of sheets run. If ALC ran multiple shifts they'd probably hand off the operation to a new crew at the shift change. If not the press would have been shut down and cleaned before the crew went home. Unless they ran simultaneously on multiple presses figure around 6000-8000 sheets a day. With 6-8 colors, that's roughly a week for printing the fronts maybe longer if the sheets were large and they were printing from stones as a large stone could be 600 Lbs. Add another day for the backs and another for cutting and packing for shipment to the plants where they'd be inserted.
Using multiple presses and leaving the stones mounted would allow around 7-8000 sheets a day of constant production.

If the number of potential cards distributed that Scot Reader came up with is at all accurate - And I don't see any real reason to doubt them - They would have needed more than one set of presses dedicated to the ATC cards in general or the available time simply won't work. Bearing in mind they were also doing the non-sports, probably the T210s, and a few other card sets. Plus all the packaging, and normal commercial printing, and thousands of different cigar box labels. ALC was a HUGE company.


Steve B