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General => Manufacturer's section => Action Engineering => Topic started by: Action1 on January 26, 2015, 09:38:56 AM
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We have Tee-rriffic News!
We have now heard from reputable sources that the Manual Roller Squeegee is working as hoped. I have to say that I was wrong about this product. It was my position for the last year that it wouldn't work because of the speed and pressure that the automatics can produce is more than we can do by hand.
However - I was flat out wrong. They work. Here's an example of the difference between a print which is manually smoothed and a traditional print with no smoothing.
Action Engineering, Inc.
www.actionengineering.com (http://www.actionengineering.com)
Manual Roller Squeegees - http://www.actionengineering.com/cat-24-1-1136/click-for-our-newest-products.htm (http://www.actionengineering.com/cat-24-1-1136/click-for-our-newest-products.htm)
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Want to bump this thread to see if anyone is using this? In the pic posted even after rolling it is not an acceptable print in my eyes. Also do you move the flash to the last station instead of the first on a manual press?, I would imagine so.
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Don't know Gerry I will say doing it by hand that looks really good to me, I wouldn't have a problem at all with that coming from a manual press using the roller.
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I guess I could look at it in a different way. The improvement in the pic was great and if you can print and get it to look like the post roller print in the first place that the improvement post roller from that would be even better.
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I've been curious on how the setup works for this. Do you need to run 2 flashes to be efficient? I feel like it may be too slow of a process for manual printers. It would be quicker to heat seal the shirt afterwards, no?
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I manually print with a flattening screen. I don't have the roller. I use an old squeegee on an exposed screen with no image on it and a Teflon sheet taped to the shirt side. Add a little ink for lubrication. Works excellent. The key to success is a proper flash. Just enough so the Teflon won't stick. Too much and it won't work. I use a quartz flash so once everything is warmed up and working its no more trouble than an extra color. So I could see the roller squeegee working good for a manual printer.
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I have a homebrew version of the roller squeegee that I made from a small offset press roller and shaped piece of 2x4. Teflon sheet crazy glued on the underside of an old screen.
I print all six stations normally, with the flash at the first station after the print (clockwise), then reverse the direction of the cycle to counterclockwise so that I am using the roller sqeegee in the print station after it comes out of the flash. Works great. Didn't work at all if I just kept everything rotating clockwise, he print was fully cooled by the time it got around, as it should be.
I saw them at ISS Long Beach, asked some questions, and the folks there didn't really have any idea how it was used in production. It would be great if Action would post a video of this product being used in a production based setting, likely add credability as well... I wasnt sold on it, so I tried out my own version with less investment, now I doubt id buy the real deal.
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Don't take this wrong but I never see a print even as rough as the post roller using a 150 s mesh 1 stroke or 2 here. I'm sure it happens but with the right technique it shouldn't.
Maybe that's a garment type that I've never printed.
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There are a lot of people who struggle on a manual press with white ink.........
The roller would be helpful to them.
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I'm definitely not trying to offend anyone so I'm hoping that no one took it that way. I'm just saying that I would be trying to find out what to correct to avoid the rough prints whether it be mesh selection/tension, print stroke speed/pressure, off contact, not modulating the ink enough, ink/pallet temp etc. We've all had issues and have had to troubleshoot in the printing world. I am by no means an expert.
If I had tried everything possible and failed to get a smooth white print then I would add that to my shopping cart in a heartbeat.