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screen printing => Equipment => DIY - From master engineered marvels to cobbled together jury-rigged or Jerry-built junk! => Topic started by: Inkworks on December 30, 2013, 08:11:37 PM
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My shop if full of home-brew stuff, but I'll start with one of my favourites, forced air drying rack under the light table. So stupidly simple, yet made out of what was wasted space, dries screens after rinsing image and after block out very quickly, right in the middle of the shop so it's a no-brainer to check on screens whenever someone walks by, we put them in there and someone always blocks them out as soon as they are ready for it. I have a bathroom fan timer switch I'll be putting on it so we can just dial in 5-15 minutes and it'll turn itself off.
Before this we were drying screens propped up in front of a box fan, not only is this about twice as fast, but no more knocking over screens and taking up floor space. We squeegee screens after wash-out, and if we're in a real rush we have dry, compressed air in the screen room and go from rinse-out to press in 3-4 minutes including drying block-out if we in a hurry.
If you really need faster drying time, down-draft would be the way to go with the screens in the rack vertically, but this is plenty fat and big enough for what we do in an average day.
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Here is the screen-room drying rack, hepa-filter covering the air intake, simple bathroom style fan draws air out of the box. Holes between sides for air flow. It isn't super fast, but still fast enough in our dry climate and we have enough screens that we don't end up in a hurry.
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Here is coated screen storage:
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Good work. I need to rebuild my screen storage (again). Getting more 24x33 screens and I'm at full capacity of 20x24s...
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Nice touch... with the metal corner caps !!
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Is the cabinet home made? Is that sealed enough to keep light out? I need something smaller and would prefer NOT to have to build one, but it looks like I might have to.
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Ya know, for the utmost in economy and ease (or lack) of build, I remember when I stored my coated screens in the boxes in which they came.
I draped a towel over the closed flaps to ensure light safety.
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Ya know, for the utmost in economy and ease (or lack) of build, I remember when I stored my coated screens in the boxes in which they came.
I draped a towel over the closed flaps to ensure light safety.
That's how I started, then "upgraded" to the bottom of a tarp draped work cart.
Very glad to have built my cabinet with the help of a friend (he did 95% of the work and math).
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Ya know, for the utmost in economy and ease (or lack) of build, I remember when I stored my coated screens in the boxes in which they came.
I draped a towel over the closed flaps to ensure light safety.
I stored coared screens in doubled up black garbage bags for almost a year. ;D
Yes we built it all ourselves and the big cabinet is light-fast,even with the 8000 watt Olec on in the same room.
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Homebrew washout tank.
Big old poly storage tub for a basin plumbed with a drain, the HDPE matts you get to go under office chairs for on on carpet as a transparent/backlit back splash, some 2 x 4's, a garden hose and nozzle for developing screens, 4 bulb fluorescent fixture behind for back-light, wired with 2 light switches, 1 for the back-light and one for a switched outlet the power washer plugs into, and the whole unit plugs into a GFCI outlet so it's safe around all the water. It's never tripped the GFCI yet. And good ventilation to get rid of humidity and de-haze fumes!
I bet aside from the power washer it cost me under $100 and ~6 hours total investment.