Tas?

Hello PW!
Tass Machines are Very Well Built Machines! The mechanics are "bulletproof,",
the electronics are simple yet ample! Their sales here in the USA were
better years ago. The Tass "team" IMHO has NEVER had proper marketing,
support,etc. The exchange rates have been a factor,. I am very surprised
that they did not open another operation in a lower cost country to
complement Austrailia. They are very Reliable,well built machines!
winston

Words from the Winston, TAS machines require almost zero support, you could literally have a small box of spare parts ship with every machine and never need a technician or even phone support.

The Mustang has followed in the TAS foot steps for sure, are you available in a few weeks to come see the 16 color Mustang being installed in Charlotte or is the Mustang 12 color install in New Orleans closer for you :confused:

BTW, the next 12 color Mustang is in Missouri so if scheduling conflicts arise we could always invite you down to Central America during that install, they are getting three Mustang presses a 12 color, 14 color, and a 16 color

Do you know anyone looking for 3 left over RPM Revolution presses :confused:

These are 8 colors and can be had at a great price if you know anyone interested apparently Rick Fuqua doesn't think he can sell then so maybe you could help out ;)

Guess what readers, if you aren't singing from the Blue song sheet you will be attacked (just saying)

A year or so ago, drunk as a skunk in a bar in Shenzhen, I met up with an Aussie guy I had seen earlier in the week at a tea tol factory. He was an agent for product, but I think he also organized setting up JV's in Asia and he knew machines so had training. He was telling me way back then of some tie up between SRoque and TAS and to watch that space. Actually may have been longer ago than that and nothing has happened in that space, but it could have made sense. He preferred the TAS there in the humidity and dust and leaky roofs over the MHM and MnR because the locals could keep them running so much easier.

Gerry, for a little bit more, maybe 20% you would get one of the leftover RPM 8 Colours. IMHO it's twice the machine of the diamondback for not that much more. Go on YouTube and check out Alans RPM. It's a whole class above. It's not just the investment but the return on investment over its lifespan. I think it's twice the machine of the Brown through the changeover times which keeps you invoicing and turning work over quicker.

Nice to see some new things happening. That label printer would be great on tote bags. You could work it with a swing in flash maybe for darks.... This new model better be good as it has tough competition.

I do very few big prints anymore. I tell the customer what our maximum dimensions are, if they ask bigger I hike the price right up so that I could farm it out and still make money and they always settle for what is our normal big size. Manage the customer. In about the last five years I have lost only one job, it was Christmas, we were busy and I didn't loose any sleep over it. 20% of our work is A5 or less, 50% under A4 and the rest about A3 or slightly bigger. I set my max dimensions to 36cm wide x 45cm deep, I can print a bit bigger, I just don't want to!

I got a lot of gear built up over time so that I could do stuff on request. Maybe 2000 sq ft of stuff that I use once or twice a year. Trying to get rid of it now and reinvest in the stuff that is core business, not the odd order, but concentrate on the majority of the work and stuff that's in every single week and day. One mistake i made was trying to be all things and do all things. I have since learned it's alright to farm out and work in with other printers, in fact it's better. Ie I now send all my jackets out to a shop that sends me all their big tee shirt jobs. Another gets transfers and they send us work too.
The only thing worse than having gear you don't use all the time taking up room and rent is doing something you don't specialise in, having it take too long and costing you money and making seconds. The larger format on auto is also pallet options, space, squeegees and floods etc. depends on how much of that work you have to print already or could get in the door, if you have it then definitely buy it, but it can be a hard road buying stuff and stretching if you aren't going to work it hard, been there, have the list. Sometimes buying stuff it's easy to try justify and up yourself into potential capabilities that you don't do much anyway. Likewise it's important to try grow capabilities and features if you can also to grow your business as you can afford to reinvest.

I earn easily 5-10 jobs a month off oversized printing. If you dont think it's valuable to be able p print larger maybe your looking at it wrong. Nothing wrong with managing te customer.... But locking them into one option is a bit odd. 99% of my work prints at least 15x17 or larger.

Brandt, I know in the US the trend is bigger prints, here it is for fashion, and moving that way for other forms of souvenir and retail. My work is mostly promo and corporate and they work with smaller boring images. Also they hate paying for bigger print areas so compromise to smaller. When it is wanted we can farm it out if necessary, but it's so rare. Another mate has half his work off one customer who has a few labels and it's all oversize massive prints. I know one guy with a supermaxx carousel that can print approx 4ft wide by 5.5 ft but he don't have the room and doesn't get enough panel work, and it costs him a couple grand rent for it to gather dust. It will be different for every shop.

For sure, but we are talking about a USA guy right? So if I was giving press advice, it would be to get a machine capable of printing the largest print area and most colors you can afford.

Tas are fine machines. There are many good machines out there. There are some poor representation of some of them though. Poor marketing on others. Poor service on others.

Dude, THIS is the machine YOU should be selling!

It basically means if you don't agree with the few Blue Tools around here you are an idiot and deserve to go out of business :rolleyes:

If you persist on disagreeing with them they will google bomb your business, welcome to DigitSmith :p

I think he is getting you mixed up with that eee guy who is a puppet of Barnes.

I've printed on TAS Hawks, good machines from my experience. No knowledge on the newer entry level units.

All the TAS know are mid to high models. They make good solid simple machines, and you notice the weight and metalwork in them they use a lot of good steel. I freaked out going across from a TAS to a diamondback getting jobs farmed out in two different factories. The diamondback was by comparison so much lighter and you could hear and feel the movement, vibration etc in it. But they are two different classes so that to be expected. TAS down under tend to live a very long lifespan, quite simple to troubleshoot and fix. Wouldn't say they are revolutionary new technology, but they are reliable. Only downside at the moment to them is the Aussie dollar is so high they are becoming a much less competitive machine. It think for the money that the RPM or Mustang has it all over TAS. even in Australia where you may think on home turf they would dominate, you see a few Schenk, a few more Anatol, and a hell of a lot of MnR. I think they would have less than fifty percent of their home market. Nice company to deal with, great service and parts inside Aussie, outside Aussie they are only as good as their distributors.

TAS machines are the most reliable presses on the market, if you were going to setup a shop in a 3rd world country in the middle of "no where" with hardly any shpments from the outside world TAS would be the only machine to own.

TAS are a bit on the basic side as far as features and benefits but at the end of the day we are only putting ink on underwear ;) LOL

Contact Mel over at TAS she is a salt of the earth type gal and offers a fantastic post sale support system

You can also contact Marc at Interchange as they have been a TAS dealer going on 2 decades

I think that is the thing about TAS. Nothing grabs you in terms of features or WOW factor or function that's new and leading, yet they build such a heavy stable, simple machine. And there are so many machines from the nineties that seem to have outlived the Gauntlets of same age and are still in reasonable daily production. TAS sell their machines on the fact that wherever you are all parts they use are relatively common and easy to source, fix or rebuild.

TAS presses outlast the M&R Gauntlet hands down as the TAS is the original and M&R is the copy, some day I will get Alex to tell you the story of how they copied the TAS from California (really funny stuff)

Your like a hand puppet, or the new Preston...