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screen printing => Screen Making => Topic started by: Gilligan on January 16, 2015, 10:03:00 PM
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I'm trying to get an idea of what I need in clean storage space vs dirty storage space.
Wondering how many screen are basically always dirty? No way to really get them all clean and ready to go if you are always printing?
We are a 1.75 man shop... my guy is full time production as well as art and some phone handling, then we have another girl for phones and office management, she catches, counts and sorts as well as some screen cleaning (but that might be slowing down as she feels my guy is taking advantage of her generosity :) ), we have my retarded bro-in-law that cleans the squeegees and the keeps the shop fairly clean, my wife handles some of the harder art issues, and I basically cause trouble.
So it would be more direct comparison to those in smaller shops that don't have dedicated screen techs and are printing fairly steady. Right now we probably turn about 10 screens a week maybe... I'd have to ask honestly. :)
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We do roughly 30 to 40 screens a week... and it seems like there's always at least 20 in the reclaim pile. I cleaned all of them this afternoon after the last of this week's jobs were out the door.
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How many usable screens do you have total (clean and dirty)?
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I would say 6-10 per day sometimes less, sometimes more. I have made it so some days we don't print, just do odd things and other work we do for revenue. Such as today went with about 8 and made sure they were broken down or at least degraded the ink so they don't make a mess and can reclaim quick. I have a really fast screen turnover in our dark room so its always nice to have a good 6-8 to coat and have ready a few hours later.
I am potentially looking into the dip tank to speed the process up. Also, many times while screens burn we will break down 1 or 2 to help keep the flow going.
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I try to keep my pile at around 10 screens. It's an awesome day when I can only have dirty screens on the press, but that never really happens. But when I get above 10 I stop and clean
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Other then the permeant screens we keep for some customers there should be no dirty screens in our shop even if it means coming in on a Saturday. When a job is done the screen is dead and needs to go back in circulation.
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Do you have dedicated screen techs Brian? Or does the jobs stop while you reclaim the last job? Or do you just make sure to schedule for clean screenings accordingly?
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We have a high school kid that comes in M-F at 2 and reclaims along with some other dutys. He can ban out 20 per hour. If he can't make it I do them. If there is anything left at the end of the week I do them Saturday morning. I like to keep them all ready to go, if we only get 230's clean I'll need 156's. So if they are all done they are all ready to go.
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Word
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I don't have much extra space. If I get more than 10 or 12 dirty screens I have to walk sideways to get around them.
I probably have 50 usable screens, and most of the time 40 are ready to expose.
I need more badly...and a bigger darkroom.
And less JUNK.
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I don't have much extra space. If I get more than 10 or 12 dirty screens I have to walk sideways to get around them.
I probably have 50 usable screens, and most of the time 40 are ready to expose.
I need more badly...and a bigger darkroom.
And less JUNK.
Sounds like us! Probably LESS room, less screens right now for sure, but we just converted from 18x20 mzx's.
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I've got mostly statics, and mostly manual size. A few MZX's, but I really don't care for them much. My manual is a Hopkins Pro Line so I need the square bar.
My auto is a Gauntlet GT-8, so I might get some M3's. For now, statics.
What did you convert TO??
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Hix style Retens. Shurloc sells them now.
Square bars and no racking... So far much easier to deal with!
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http://youtu.be/zV4dJTlVyp8 (http://youtu.be/zV4dJTlVyp8)
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Oh yeah. Hix Retens. We've talked about that, sorry. I just forgot.
My memory is the SECOND shortest part of my body.
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We now have in inventory:
22 M3's -- 14 with 225S, 8 with 180S
and a bunch of statics:
12 305
3 225S
24 200
24 156
12 160S
4 110
2 24
the 24, 110, 156 and 305 rarely get used since switching to S and the Newmans...
I need more Newman frames, as those go from print to reclaim nearly immediately as we don't have enough.
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Generally only the hold for some reason, and yesterday's. We like to wait 24 hours for "oh s@@t"
Library screens are cleaned an stored on same schedule. So maybe a hundred or so total.
After a season we may have 50-100 needing mesh. We do that off peak times. 125 asst coated buffer in the closet.
If we start to run light on a mesh , we usually increase our numbers of that mesh.
Waiting for a reclaim to run a job is not cost effective.
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My workflow is to reclaim what I'm going to need the next day, plus a spare or two.
Now I'm a low volume, one dude shop, so that may not work for everyone.
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I hold used ones two three days incase of reprints, I have 20 screens so figure 5-6 dirty most days
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We hold until we have enough for a screen run, usually 13 screens as we use the stack method and 13pcs is about the right sized stack, our screen room drying rack holds 13 per side, so once both sides are full we coat 26 at a time.
Here is the screen room drying rack, a vent fan pulls air out, the air inlet has a hepa filter over it to keep dust out of the emulsion, it is also the main work-counter for reclaiming and stretching the Hix Retens.
(http://gallery.flybc.ca/albums/album826/20131230_090738_resized.jpg)
After coating and drying, they are moved to dark-storage, which holds 68 screens ready to burn
(http://gallery.flybc.ca/albums/album826/20131230_090711_resized.jpg)
After exposing/rinsing we have a high-speed dryer built under the light table, they dry there, get bocked out a dry again, then off to press.
(http://gallery.flybc.ca/albums/album826/20131230_090609_resized.jpg)
Dirty screens are leaned against the wall in the screenroom, one of the many nice thing about the Hix's is they lean and stack better than a Newman. You can see some leaning just inside the pocket door to the screen room in the photo above, and here stacked beside the wash-out booth:
(http://gallery.flybc.ca/albums/album826/20131230_090654_resized.jpg)
I think we have around 110 screens in rotation in total, That includes retens, some statics, hand table and special small screens for rotary bottle screenprinting, we probably have 40 library screens for one contract customer who does regular re-runs, these are statics with hardened emulsion.
In summary, you need about 30pcs. less than the total number of Hix screens you currently own ;).....
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Our complete inventory of screens is cleaned and ready to go by every Monday. So not really dirty long at all.
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We hold until we have enough for a screen run, usually 13 screens as we use the stack method and 13pcs is about the right sized stack, our screen room drying rack holds 13 per side, so once both sides are full we coat 26 at a time.
Here is the screen room drying rack, a vent fan pulls air out, the air inlet has a hepa filter over it to keep dust out of the emulsion, it is also the main work-counter for reclaiming and stretching the Hix Retens...
That wasn't the question asked, but it was the perfect answer... Lots of great things to think about!
In summary, you need about 30pcs. less than the total number of Hix screens you currently own ;).....
Lol, nice. How's that fpu and press jig coming? ;)
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Lol, nice. How's that fpu and press jig coming? ;)
Still waiting on measurements... ;)
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our stack of dirties will sometimes hit about 150 screens. Now that we aren't printing as much contract i doubt it will get over 20-30.
i won't miss huge stacks to untape anymore...
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Lol, nice. How's that fpu and press jig coming? ;)
Still waiting on measurements... ;)
I'll email you.
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our stack of dirties will sometimes hit about 150 screens. Now that we aren't printing as much contract i doubt it will get over 20-30.
i won't miss huge stacks to untape anymore...
In 2015 we'll be taking steps towards going tapeless.
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While we are on screens what do you guys do about the "heavy" deposits on the outside that sometimes happen? This seems to be a thorn in my reclaim time, I can power them out but not the best way. I am speaking of the thick strokes that may happen on the edge of a monster coater, it's like an ex girlfriend that shows up at every other reclaim party you go to.
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A good scoop coater minimizes this, but we keep a plastic scraper handy while coating to take down the thick deposit before letting the emulsion dry.
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Last time I counted we had about 150 to 180 screens and I try to keep most clean, but right now I think we have about 40 dirty screens I got to clean this week...faster you get them clean less chance of ghost.
darryl
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I see I'm coming late to this party, but we gather and clean every day; that being said, we have a screen cleaning booth in our compressor room, so the shop stays cleaner...
Steve
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Currently I have zero dirty screens and zero un-stretched frames...but that's because we've got some monster jobs on press. Ordinarily I try to keep well under 100 screens in the dirty screens rack. That's out of 600.
During times of year when we are doing tons of tiny jobs it can get up to almost 200, with the shop dropping off another set of dirty screens every 45 minutes or so. The one guy doing the cleaning is stuck at that station pretty much all day.
During times of year when all the presses are on huge runs we usually have the 'ready for press' rack stuffed with jobs and I try to keep 50 or so screens in the screen room just in case every single one of the four presses suddenly needs an entire setup.
We might be a big operation but I think the concepts scale up and down perfectly. I find it's all about keeping strategic buffers are specific points in the loop.
Buffer #1 - The screen room. Just in case a job suddenly needs to be prepared.
Buffer #2 - The ready-for-press rack. Just in case of a catastrophic failure in the screen department the presses won't stop spinning while I put out that fire.
Buffer #3 - The dirty screen rack. If this is empty then I have one guy with nothing to do. This is bad.
Buffer #4 - The reclaim room. That would be another guy with nothing to do. Also bad.
Buffer #1 and #2 are the most important. I imagine that would be universally beneficial in any size shop, as space constraints provide. Buffer #3 and #4 keep the workflow moving smoothly between all of the stations. If one of those runs out I put that guy on stretching and coating and have the guy running the CTSs just prep screens for developing. If that work runs out or another buffer runs out I then have them retension every screen that comes through--instead of just the ones that are over their retension date tag.
If a buffer runs out at one station that means there is a glut of screens somewhere else in the loop. So I bump the least busy guy up to the glutted station...except the only place in the loop we have no control is where the screens pass through the shop and get used...there are some times we are just at the mercy of the run size...then we do some house keeping...and if the runs are just that huge I start letting the guys duke it out over who gets sent home first. Anyone who really needs the hours I let stick around, but they have to indulge me and my R&D missions.
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Currently I have zero dirty screens and zero un-stretched frames...but that's because we've got some monster jobs on press. Ordinarily I try to keep well under 100 screens in the dirty screens rack. That's out of 600.
During times of year when we are doing tons of tiny jobs it can get up to almost 200, with the shop dropping off another set of dirty screens every 45 minutes or so. The one guy doing the cleaning is stuck at that station pretty much all day.
During times of year when all the presses are on huge runs we usually have the 'ready for press' rack stuffed with jobs and I try to keep 50 or so screens in the screen room just in case every single one of the four presses suddenly needs an entire setup.
We might be a big operation but I think the concepts scale up and down perfectly. I find it's all about keeping strategic buffers are specific points in the loop.
Buffer #1 - The screen room. Just in case a job suddenly needs to be prepared.
Buffer #2 - The ready-for-press rack. Just in case of a catastrophic failure in the screen department the presses won't stop spinning while I put out that fire.
Buffer #3 - The dirty screen rack. If this is empty then I have one guy with nothing to do. This is bad.
Buffer #4 - The reclaim room. That would be another guy with nothing to do. Also bad.
Buffer #1 and #2 are the most important. I imagine that would be universally beneficial in any size shop, as space constraints provide. Buffer #3 and #4 keep the workflow moving smoothly between all of the stations. If one of those runs out I put that guy on stretching and coating and have the guy running the CTSs just prep screens for developing. If that work runs out or another buffer runs out I then have them retension every screen that comes through--instead of just the ones that are over their retension date tag.
If a buffer runs out at one station that means there is a glut of screens somewhere else in the loop. So I bump the least busy guy up to the glutted station...except the only place in the loop we have no control is where the screens pass through the shop and get used...there are some times we are just at the mercy of the run size...then we do some house keeping...and if the runs are just that huge I start letting the guys duke it out over who gets sent home first. Anyone who really needs the hours I let stick around, but they have to indulge me and my R&D missions.
That's good stuff.
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Agreed... new mission for tomorrow. :)