A day in the life of a Digital Printing apprentice

I’m usually the first one at my workplace in the morning so the first thing I do is turn everything on ready for the day. I clean my printers, dust down my CNC machine and get everything ready that I need for the day. 

I then look at our management website, Trello. On here we keep all the digital job tickets so I can see which jobs need to be completed for that day.  I then organise which ones need to be completed, make a day plan, and get to work. 

I will usually prioritise work, so depending on the workload/client, it will impact my day. If I can help it, I will try and get my Flatbed printer and my Roll-Fed printer printing at the same time. This way I can maximise effectiveness and this way I won’t be sitting around doing nothing. (If there are any jobs that need to be cut on the CNC I will set them off too). 

Once the work has been printed, I’ll spend time finishing it. Whether this is laminating, welding, eyeleting, cutting, scoring etc. Once the product is finished, I’ll take a photograph of it as proof that the product is of good quality. Then I will package it up and send it off to the clients’ address. 

Depending on how much we have cut on the CNC, I will spend quite a lot of time hoovering my work area because dust has a huge impact on my printers and the quality of the print they produce. If I don’t hoover, I risk the print being poor quality, missing ink and even damaging the print heads themselves. This is so important, especially when we cut woodwork because the sawdust gets everywhere as you can imagine. 

And that’s my day! In between tasks I’ll tidy, and make sure my workplace is organised so I know where everything is but that is a standard day in the life of a digital printing apprentice!