Recent Posts

Pages: [1] 2 3 ... 10
1
Equipment / Re: Whats better than Hotronix?
« Last post by spencer_L&KC on Today at 12:34:24 AM »
we have a slew of presses, the only one I want to use as a boat anchor is the 360 IQ hat press. Biggest POS on the market. Don't buy into the heated bottom platen, no crease on your hats nonsense.


Anyone want to buy a 360 IQ hat press ? it works GREAT....  ;D

Man am I glad I saw this. I was seriously considering getting one of these, almost specifically for the bottom heated platen. Basically I will be pressing a lot of screen printed patches, and the top heat can smash/distort plastisol prints a bit, so I was thinking the lower heat option would be ideal to heat the glue from below and not heat up the ink too much on top.

I was originally considering a Geo Knight hat press and getting the lower heated platen add on for it. Do you have any experience with GK lower heat cap presses? Do you think the lower heat stuff is just a gimmick in general or it just sucks on the IQ360?
2
General Screen Printing / Re: Printing above and on the pocket
« Last post by spencer_L&KC on Yesterday at 11:42:33 PM »
We have a fairly large order that needs a print above and on the pocket, I'm wanting to run this on the auto and no we have no pocket or sleeve pallets for the auto only the manual press, I got laser alignment for the auto which will help with placement.  Anyone done this or do I just need to print the separate?  Oh and the print so far is a one color orange on navy hopeing to double stroke with no flashing one time around ;D

Above the pocket is no problem with the laser system and regular pallets but unless someone here has printed on the pocket without the sleeve or pocket pallets, I haven't found a way.

I have found a way to print on pockets without a pocket pallet. It does take a 4"-5" wide sleeve pallet though. We made a pocket insert that is sticky on both sides. It is basically a thin metal shim, the size of the inside of the pocket. We used a small sheet of thin aluminum shim material, very thin, but still rigid. Then we took some of that PMI dual sided pallet tape, you know the clear stuff that is supposed to replace pallet adhesive? So you cut your aluminum to the dimensions of the pocket and round off or angle off the bottom corners, to make inserting it into the pocket easier. After your insert is cut and fits well in the pocket, not real tight though, just enough to where it is wide enough to get close to the sides of the pocket, and enough to stick out of the pocket to use as a handle to insert and removed. Then cover the area of the shim that fits in the pocket in the dual sided pallet tape.

Now take your shirt and load it onto the sleeve pallet, with the top of the pocket on the very end. I find a 4" wide pallet works great for most pocket sizes. Register your art to the spot on the pocket you want to print on. Ok after your shirt is loaded onto the pallet, top of the pocket towards you and bottom of the pocket facing outward, insert the shim into the pocket. The pallet adhesive on the sleeve pallet will hold the shirt down, and the dual sided sticky shim will hold the pocket down, all without adding hardly any thickness. After a few prints and the dual sided tape gets some lint built up, inserting and removing becomes quite easy and holds the pocket down great. We have an Anatol dual sleeve pallet for our Thunder and multiple shims. So we can do two pockets at a time. We have done every pocket job this way and it does work really well.

Really wish I had some pics for video of how this works, but hopefully my description of it makes sense. It takes a slight bit of finesse to get it down, but when you do, its pretty easy and doesn't really add much time compared to a pocket pallet setup. We will probably get a legit pocket pallet at some point, but we do not get a ton of pocket print jobs and this works great for us.
3
General Screen Printing / Re: Stampinator for Manual presses?
« Last post by spencer_L&KC on Yesterday at 11:17:32 PM »
I claim you can cure your shirts in your home oven and you probably already have one, and those cost less than a manual stampinator ($6500) vs a home depot oven ($500) or a heat gun ($30).  You could probably cure your inks with a magnifying glass and the sun as well, or if you print water base, the air will literally cure your inks.

In line heat press is an amazing tool for heat pressing inline, however it will never replace a conveyor dryer in terms of efficiency or getting a proper cure.  I don't really understand why they try to advertise all the gimmicks of applying transfers on press, or foil, or whatever when what inline heat press is good for is for pressing your inks inline.  Yes it can be used to par cure your under base, however I recommend using a flash before still if you have room.

You'd be better suited to buy a little buddy dryer, a infared flash, and heat press, can probably get all 3 for $6500.  If you are printing plastisol, once you heat press a shirt and then run it through the dryer, the inks tend to puff back up a little bit and don't have the same smooth finish anyhow, so where inline heat press works best is for making a super smooth base to print your colors on, or pressing out your sins (bad printing) on press, and then curing it in the dryer.

Depends on the equipment, space, electricity, but looking for a used dryer would be good, but the little buddy isn't bad it's just an infared flash in a box with a conveyer, can be ran off 110v, and are good for mobile printing or events if you end up upgrading later. (you should)

I don't think that the Manual Stampinator is a bad tool, but to go "sales guy" and say it can fully cure your prints on press is not true.  To cure water base properly takes 2+ minutes in a forced air gas dryer, the Stampinator is just a GeoKnight Heat Press element in a fancy box with a hefty price tag.

There are a lot of under cured shirts in the world though

Yeah I fully understand all of that and agree. I was wondering where the water is supposed to go when "curing" WB prints. Part of the usefulness of the manual stampinator is that it can replace your flash, obviously there are limitations for stuff like puff, but you're supposed to run this thing instead of a flash. You press each pass of ink, not just the base. Then when all the colors are printed they said you press it again to cure it. I was skeptical that it could reliably cure prints on press, but the smoothing/flashing benefits are pretty great. Obviously this isn't really an issue with WB inks. I was just wondering if anyone here got their hands on a manual version and had some runs under their belt with it.

Also noticed the GeoKnight controller right away as GK presses are what we use, so we are familiar with those controllers. This was a positive for me when considering a MS. The price is absolutely ridiculous though thats for sure. I was actually pretty close to getting them to send me a beta unit to test before the manual version was finished and released. They had a setback of some sort and I was sort of forgotten I think.

We currently have a BBC Big Buddy 24" x 8' dryer and 18"x24" Black Flash. We are in St. Louis so BBC is very close to us. You mention to properly cure WB ink that you need a gas air forced dryer. Do you think it has to be gas? Wouldn't an electric air forced dryer work well? We are actually looking into upgrading to a new dryer when we move into our brand new studio. Been looking at the BBC Aeolus line (super spendy), Anatol dryers and even the Workshorse Quarts dryers (price friendly). Definitely want something air forced as we start to venture into WB printing. I am most curious about the quartz dryers from Workhorse as they seem pretty great and the price is nearly half that of the Aeolus line from BBC ($10K vs $18K). Thanks for the reply.

IMO it shouldn't be used to cure shirts.

It's to make a much smoother print, which helps with vibrancy by getting the fibers down.  I think of it like a smoothing screen but can also be used to flash cure the ink.  Full cure on press sounds like a terrible idea to me, any which way it's done.  I figured out how to do it but with a very unique use case and only in that case.  Luckily we didn't need to use that method, it was just if we had too much production and had to use one press without the dryer.  Would not recommend to use in this way at all.

Was just curious if anyone had a chance to use one on a run and how it went. I suppose I worded the OP poorly. What mostly interests me is the flashing/smoothing. I know it'll provide smooth prints, but the flashing while smoothing is valuable for me. We currently use an iron to smooth shirts, on a manual press, while loading. Smoothing the fibers down before any ink hits the garment works really well too. I have tried just about every smoothing technique out there, smoothing before, during and after printing, and pre-smoothing fibers works great for us. The difference in smoothness between pre-ironed garments vs non-ironed is enough to keep doing it. Yes it means more timely loading, but it also means no need to stand at a heat press after the run is over pressing them later, which a lot of printers do. I have done it on some jobs and smoothing the garment while loading (load all shirts first, then smooth them, then start printing like normal) is much faster than unloading the shirts from the catch bin and pressing them after. 

We are very capable of producing nice smooth prints without any smoothing techniques, but that is just an average print imo. If we can make them even better with just a little more effort, we are going to do it. That is why we take the extra 5-6 secs per shirt to smooth on press.

Another positive about pre-ironing is that it helps stick the shirt down to the water based pallet adhesive, but cuts down on how much adhesive is used. We mix our adhesive with more water. Without smoothing the tees before printing this would not be enough adhesive to hold the shirt down. Pre-smoothing sticks it down good and it comes off really easy. So the prints on those first 6-12 shirts do not get stretched before some lint gets on there.

In my last reply I brought up some new dryers we are looking into. Would love to get some more feedback on pros and cons of dryers. Gas is not an option so im looking into electric. We are building a new building/studio and construction should be done by Dec/Jan. When we move in we will be ready to upgrade. Anyway, I am going to start a new topic about dryers to not derail this one. Thanks for the reply.

I heard the manual setup is faster for transfers than the new ROQ. That’s a big flex.

Much like their main product, the list of things it can do is quite long. It’s truly great at only a few of them though.

I don’t mean that in a bad way either. Not all the features are equal though. I wouldn’t wanna cure a shirt though. Maybe a neck tag actually. Might try that.

Yeah I was mainly curious how it worked overall during a run. I just mentioned the full cure because it seems to good to be true. Doing transfers is an added bonus, but we dont really do many transfers. Been considering getting into printing our own plastisol transfers or using DTF transfers. Im just a screen printing geek and want to print everything directly. We will hand print size tags. I have also been thinking about trying to print sheets of plastisol tags, on that film that Night Owls and others sell. Thanks for the reply.
4
Business/Shop Management Programs / Re: Scheduling Per press/location
« Last post by tonypep on Yesterday at 06:28:37 PM »
Must...resist....temptation....to respond in a long tome on this extremely important topic. Seriously, it could easily be derailed into subtopics so for now, I will observe and absorb before commenting further.
5
Business/Shop Management Programs / Re: Scheduling Per press/location
« Last post by 3Deep on Yesterday at 04:01:41 PM »
Sounds like a great idea, but as you say it's going to be more work on you or whomever has to do a daily schedule to be posted up each morning, but you know and I know every good plan has faults.
6
Business/Shop Management Programs / Scheduling Per press/location
« Last post by ebscreen on Yesterday at 03:42:55 PM »
I'm finally getting around to putting our whole daily shop schedule on a giant screen TV so that hopefully anybody
that doesn't know what they should be doing is able to see at a glance where to go. Detailed production information will be included to hopefully
clear up some of the million little questions I answer daily.

The dilemma I'm facing is how to format this info/scheduling. Currently each entire job is scheduled to one press, and the schedule for that day
is displayed. Our press ops are fiercely defensive of their individual machines so it's obvious who goes where in that regard.
The reality though is that rarely is an entire job produced on one machine, it's typically split between two or three, IE fronts on small machine, backs on larger, etc.
So a daily schedule by decoration *location/method* starts to make sense.

Basically it will be a ton of work for me to implement that style of scheduling/display and I'll probably break a million other things in our database
in the process so I'm hoping for a unanimous "yes do it that way it's worth the effort" or "no that's dumb" kind of response.

If anyone has images or info on how they like their scheduling displayed I'm appreciative. I try to approach it
as if I'm the employee looking for info but it's hard for me to conceptualize as I'm on the other side and already have all of the info haha.
7
General Screen Printing / face mask manufactures? High volume.
« Last post by rusty on Yesterday at 01:32:18 PM »
anyone know of any places that did or can do high  volume printing and face mask manufacturing? we don't need face masks but something similar and lots of places are not doing it or sold off their equipment. It has to be in the U.S.

Any leads is appreciated.

Thanks
8
General Screen Printing / Stampinator for Manual presses?
« Last post by CBCB on March 27, 2024, 09:54:29 PM »
I heard the manual setup is faster for transfers than the new ROQ. That’s a big flex.

Much like their main product, the list of things it can do is quite long. It’s truly great at only a few of them though.

I don’t mean that in a bad way either. Not all the features are equal though. I wouldn’t wanna cure a shirt though. Maybe a neck tag actually. Might try that.
9
General Screen Printing / Re: Stampinator for Manual presses?
« Last post by Admiral on March 27, 2024, 04:23:24 PM »
IMO it shouldn't be used to cure shirts.

It's to make a much smoother print, which helps with vibrancy by getting the fibers down.  I think of it like a smoothing screen but can also be used to flash cure the ink.  Full cure on press sounds like a terrible idea to me, any which way it's done.  I figured out how to do it but with a very unique use case and only in that case.  Luckily we didn't need to use that method, it was just if we had too much production and had to use one press without the dryer.  Would not recommend to use in this way at all.
10
General Screen Printing / Re: Stampinator for Manual presses?
« Last post by zanegun08 on March 27, 2024, 04:11:09 PM »
I claim you can cure your shirts in your home oven and you probably already have one, and those cost less than a manual stampinator ($6500) vs a home depot oven ($500) or a heat gun ($30).  You could probably cure your inks with a magnifying glass and the sun as well, or if you print water base, the air will literally cure your inks.

In line heat press is an amazing tool for heat pressing inline, however it will never replace a conveyor dryer in terms of efficiency or getting a proper cure.  I don't really understand why they try to advertise all the gimmicks of applying transfers on press, or foil, or whatever when what inline heat press is good for is for pressing your inks inline.  Yes it can be used to par cure your under base, however I recommend using a flash before still if you have room.

You'd be better suited to buy a little buddy dryer, a infared flash, and heat press, can probably get all 3 for $6500.  If you are printing plastisol, once you heat press a shirt and then run it through the dryer, the inks tend to puff back up a little bit and don't have the same smooth finish anyhow, so where inline heat press works best is for making a super smooth base to print your colors on, or pressing out your sins (bad printing) on press, and then curing it in the dryer.

Depends on the equipment, space, electricity, but looking for a used dryer would be good, but the little buddy isn't bad it's just an infared flash in a box with a conveyer, can be ran off 110v, and are good for mobile printing or events if you end up upgrading later. (you should)

I don't think that the Manual Stampinator is a bad tool, but to go "sales guy" and say it can fully cure your prints on press is not true.  To cure water base properly takes 2+ minutes in a forced air gas dryer, the Stampinator is just a GeoKnight Heat Press element in a fancy box with a hefty price tag.

There are a lot of under cured shirts in the world though
Pages: [1] 2 3 ... 10