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screen printing => General Screen Printing => Topic started by: Maxie on October 15, 2017, 12:44:09 PM

Title: Fire!!!
Post by: Maxie on October 15, 2017, 12:44:09 PM
This morning I was in our plant and smelt something burning.        Looked at the S Type and about 5 screens were burning.
White the printers were setting up they must have over flashed and a shirt caught fire, as it turned around the press the screens caught fire.
We were lucky, I managed to pull the screens out of the press and extinguish the fire with my foot one of the printers pulled the burning shirt off the press.     Except for the screens no damage done bit of a mess where I stood in plastisol.
Title: Re: Fire!!!
Post by: Frog on October 15, 2017, 01:11:36 PM
Flash dryers, along with human error, are notorious arsonists.
There was a time when I rarely saw a press without at least one scorched board.
Title: Re: Fire!!!
Post by: blue moon on October 15, 2017, 01:50:02 PM
Glad to hear ti was not worse!

pierre
Title: Re: Fire!!!
Post by: Inkworks on October 15, 2017, 05:45:22 PM
I've grown to be proficient at smelling the first whiff of over-warmed platen pre-mask cooking under a flash, it's as distinctive as the "whiz" sound a floodbar that's out of ink makes on the auto.

Glad you are okay and didn't suffer more dire consequences Maxie, Fire is no joke in a shop!
Title: Re: Fire!!!
Post by: merchmonster on October 15, 2017, 07:24:21 PM
Damn sucks! I had exact same thing happen to me earlier this year and it took over an hour to get the smell of burnt rubber out of the shop
Title: Re: Fire!!!
Post by: Sbrem on October 16, 2017, 09:00:24 AM
Well, that was close. Glad all is pretty much OK. I walked away from a flash unit over a naked rubber coated plate once... once. We've had hoodies get hung up in a low clearance all electric dryer. The simplest thing, and the machinery is oblivious to it, it just keeps going...

Steve
Title: Re: Fire!!!
Post by: willy35 on October 16, 2017, 07:26:33 PM
It happens to me as well, only once, years ago.

20 minutes red chili on over a pallet during lunch time due to a bad sensor... what a mess, and the fumes... whew, we got lucky as well, no harm to the screenprinting machine and shop, only to the top pallet rubber.

Since that time, everyone knows that we have to turn off the flash anytime nobody is in the shop or during changeover.

Title: Re: Fire!!!
Post by: Doug S on October 17, 2017, 08:34:20 AM
No fire here but close.  I've always had head 2 as a flash but a couple of months ago on a large order, I shut the flash timer off, manually pushed the flash over the pallet and just used the quartz timer so I could speed up the press.  After we finished running through a large portion of them, we took a break.  My wife looked at me and said "I smell something burning" and that's when the "OH SH@@$" came out.  It had completely curled up the pallet covering and there was smoke everywhere.  I used pliers to pull the pallet off of the arm and immediately went to actionengineering and ordered a replacement and a spare just in case.   So never again will I manually push the flash in and just use the quartz timer.
Title: Re: Fire!!!
Post by: GraphicDisorder on October 17, 2017, 08:39:31 AM
We've set a pallet on fire before, but not a shirt lol.
Title: Re: Fire!!!
Post by: Doug B on October 17, 2017, 09:08:32 AM
  It is the passing ritual to being a real screen printer This "baptism by fire" happens
to all screen printers at lease once in a lifetime (myself included).
Title: Re: Fire!!!
Post by: mooseman on October 17, 2017, 06:08:12 PM
Damn near lost my shop to a flash burned shirt caught fire while I was away from the press some idiot left the shirt under the flash.......oops it was me.
I now have 2 smoke alarms hanging down from the ceiling just high enough over the flash unit to clear the screens as the press rotates.
They go off pretty early on sometimes at the first sigh of any vapor let alone smoke......learned my lesson.
BTW it was a huge smoke mess ruined sme stuff and my insurance company dumped my ass even after I did all the cleaning and repainting myself.⤴
Mooseman
Title: Re: Fire!!!
Post by: Doug S on October 17, 2017, 06:14:54 PM
Damn near lost my shop to a flash burned shirt caught fire while I was away from the press some idiot left the shirt under the flash.......oops it was me.
I now have 2 smoke alarms hanging down from the ceiling just high enough over the flash unit to clear the screens as the press rotates.
They go off pretty early on sometimes at the first sigh of any vapor let alone smoke......learned my lesson.
BTW it was a huge smoke mess ruined sme stuff and my insurance company dumped my ass even after I did all the cleaning and repainting myself.⤴
Mooseman
Gotta love insurance companies.  Everything is fine with them as long as they are just receiving.