An unending stream of innovation
Many of us were in Las Vegas last month for the 2007 edition of the Clean Show
that is now part of history.
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Unipress has a tradition of showcasing new models and this year is an exception,
sort of. You have seen their new Thunder, which replaced and improved upon
their very popular DAYV unit.
The Thunder has been on the market for about a year, but has only been
demonstrated at a small number of local shows. Clean 2007 was the first Clean
Show presentation of this unit, as well as the rotary double buck version of
the NT and the NT1, which were introduced two years ago in Orlando.
The Thunder is a conventional double-buck unit that does not press the sleeves.
You still need to press the sleeves on a sleever and, of course, the collars
and cuffs on a triple head. It is quite a different machine than its
predecessor. The NT2 is a huge upgrade for the old CRD and CRD-C.
Although the footprint is the same and the chassis is identical, this is a
completely new machine. To name a few differences: A pneumatic collar clamp, a
completely new buck and steam chest design, very mechanic-friendly and a blower
that shuts itself down to save power when the machine is idle for more than a
minute. Many Clean attendees saw these machines live for the first time.
Forenta entered the tensioning shirt unit market with a couple of very
interesting innovations. The tensioning shirt units in general have two
annoyances that Forenta dealt with right off the bat.
The units have traditionally had a front clamp that holds down the front of the
shirt. Instead of having this clamp move up or down (they never moved down
enough to be out of the way), Forenta has the clamp moving to the left,
completely out of the way. Slick.
The short sleeve attachments on all blown-sleeve units have always been a mélange of mechanical, electrical and pneumatic parts that did the job, sort of.
Maybe Forenta nailed it with their out-of-the-box approach: Instead of
attaching the sleeve to a clamp, the specially designed bag simply slithers its
way into the sleeve and blows it dry while stretching the sleeve taut.
FujiStar entered a new realm, too. Their version of the Sankosha/Itsumi/Unipress
NT-like unit is quite innovative. The FujiStar WAC70 has a split front steam
chest to give this unit a footprint that is 24 inches shorter than similar
units. This is an important feature because this unit can fit where others don
’t.
But the innovations continue. The WAC70 has a touch-screen diagnostic computer
and a passive rear pull-down built into the body buck that stretches the back
of the shirt taut just before pressing. This apparently does a perfect box
pleat and you don
’t have to worry about pulling down on the back of the shirt. The unit does it
for you!
FujiStar likes their units to press fast so they made this one fast, too. They
are building this unit with a double-size blower and a double-size steam coil
and have engineered it to handle 120 to 150 pounds to allow for a mere 15
seconds of press time.
What does that mean to you? Fast, fast production. Nothing wrong with that!
Fimas improved their model 389 by bringing the short sleeve attachment closer to
the buck for easier dressing as well as a re-design of the cuff clamps. The
front hold-down has been changed too. It folds completely out of the way so
that it rests horizontally on the cabinet and then moves into position
pneumatically when you need it.
Itsumi continues to tweak their equipment. Their big focus has been on quality — finding ways to do little things better. This year’s model has two separate heat exchangers and two separate blower motors. One
each for the sides of the shirt and the other for the sleeves. This
dramatically speeds up dry time on an already speedy machine.
Sankosha introduced a completely new rotary double-buck shirt unit, model
LP170U. I was never a big fan of the model that this replaced largely due to
its sluggish production. Sankosha has addressed this in a big way this year.
They have completely re-designed the cuff clamp unit, the short sleeve
attachment is now air-operated as well as the side airbags. They have doubled
the air volume for much quicker drying of the shirt. This reduces the squeeze
time to 24 seconds and that allows for productivity in the (finally!) 100+
range.
Trevil added a bunch of features to its Trevistar 5202. Trevil likes to term
their finish quality
“automated hand finish.” Think about that for a minute. How many of you are “hand-finishing” hand finish shirts by hand? (that is not supposed to be funny).
Many people do a hand-finish shirt that isn’t as good as they think it is because there is too much handling.
I think that it was a good call for Trevil to have customers in their booth as
demonstrators. This unit runs on 80 psi of steam pressure which makes it great
for adding a shirt unit to a drycleaning plant. No change in boiler steam
pressure is required. The cuff clamps are well designed and result in a nice
round, dry cuff.
This really was the year for innovations. Wait until you see what else I saw!
I suspect that Hoffman/New Yorker is going to be able to say that they started
it all when production monitors are built-in to all shirt units. This
impressive unit has a computer console unit to the right of the operator that
houses a self-diagnostic system and a really slick production monitor that
tells you and the operator whether or not they are on pace to meet your desired
production goal. This heavy-duty unit has been sound-proofed and is available
with 18- or 20-inch bucks.
Hi-Steam introduced a very interesting tensioning shirt unit. It has an
automatic unloader that removes the shirt from the buck
— already hangered — and drops it onto a slick rail.
Do you think that this is a bit too much of a gimmick? It isn’t. This is cool. The Hi-Steam unit produced a very high quality shirt. The
shirts where simply so good that it was a bit surreal. I wanted to find
something wrong with them but couldn
’t.
So what does that have to do with the auto-unloader? A lot, actually. Tensioning
shirt units do a darn good shirt but the productivity is generally on a
different plateau than the more traditional units.
Unless everything that I have ever learned about business is wrong, if we do a
great quality shirt and give good service, our business will succeed and
increase. Needing better production is something that, in my view, is
inevitable.
The auto-unloader greatly improves production by taking a key step out of the
process. Before dressing the buck, you slip a hanger in the top of the machine.
The shirt is then dressed normally and pressed with the hanger in position.
No, there is no hanger impression whatsoever because the shirt is blown dry
outwardly. The shirt probably doesn
’t even touch the hanger during the pressing cycle.
Furthermore, this unloading device is very simple. It is probably no more than
one or two moving parts.
And what about Veit? I said that this was a show full of innovations. You should
have been there! Veit introduced a true one-piece unit that presses the entire
shirt
— collar, cuffs and everything else — in one step! How cool is that!
Two years ago at the Orlando Clean Show, I remember thinking we had finally
thought of everything. There could be no more innovations in shirt equipment. I
was wrong. But now we are done with innovations, aren
’t we? We must be!
“If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you always got.”
