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screen printing => Equipment => Topic started by: UnderPressureSP on October 23, 2015, 09:10:34 AM
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I was following the realthread instagram and it seems they got a new dryer. They claim its the only one in the world? They claim it gives the shirts superior softness. Looks like a M&R product with a raised belt so the water base ink cures faster is what i am guessing which than equals a soft shirt unless it some how makes the overall fabric softer like the power wash t-shirt from american apparel. I just thought this was cool!
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Its a Sprint 3000T
http://www.mrprint.com/en/ProductOverview.aspx?id=180 (http://www.mrprint.com/en/ProductOverview.aspx?id=180)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3LoSGCxdeU (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3LoSGCxdeU)
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I dont know about softer shirt, I mean heat is heat. I think the idea behind this dryer is multiple belt levels allowing the shirt to go through a few times staying in the chamber allowing the dryer to be shorter taking up less room on your work floor. Made really for the water based printer. I could be wrong, but I know they were working on something like this. PatFinn could elaborate on it more I'm sure. ;D
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I dont know about softer shirt, I mean heat is heat. I think the idea behind this dryer is multiple belt levels allowing the shirt to go through a few times staying in the chamber allowing the dryer to be shorter taking up less room on your work floor. Made really for the water based printer. I could be wrong, but I know they were working on something like this. PatFinn could elaborate on it more I'm sure. ;D
The shirts can stay in the chamber much longer without disrupting production. The softness can come from the shirts being wrapped around the rollers as they reverse directions.
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Ah well there ya have it UPSP ;D.
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If it is the one that was in the showroom at M&R little over a year ago, it IS bad ass!!
I call B.S. on it making the shirt softer though. Just like THEIR SuperSoft inks.... One of the 10 billion issues with social media, say what you want, very few will question it, especially if you are not educated on a particular industry... Oh, that reminds me, check out our facebook page later today, we are announcing we were voted best screen printer in the whole world!!! ;D :P
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To me the context of their post was in reference to the soft inks they use. Which is no different than any of the rest of us can use. But it can read as if they are the only ones doing it if you want to read into it. People see what they want to see.
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It's about time, Alex
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It just sounds like how they are describing water based inks is all...
Most customers don't know about inks from the get go so you can talk about what you use however you want to educate the customer easily. I wouldn't advertise them as 'low to no hand' on the print to social media.
I do like how that dryer is a space saver though. Saw it at ISS Long Beach and thought about it for DTG curing.
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A simple fix to bring these folks into the realm of honest copy writing
And I don't think for an instant that they were not trying to mislead the girly-man-shirt wearing public.
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It's about time, Alex
Ya, sorry you didn't get to vote on the prestigious title we received Dave. It was a kinda a impromptu vote that took place last night around 11pm.... Me, a dozen or so empty cans of amber nectar, and the mouse next to the power washer. Ya, we all voted..... But I'll just leave that out of our "voted universes best" post, don't want it to get too wordy or anything! ;D
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That is pretty cool. Great use of space.
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Precision made the same thing in the eighties/nineties.
Awesome idea but I can't hang with the unavoidable incline infeed.
Hard to hit two presses.
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This might give away my inexperience with wb and dc inks: since the shirts are flipping print side down on the middle belt, that would mean that inks would need to be pretty far along the curing process by the end of belt 1 to prevent the print getting damaged or perhaps ink on the belt... so how much of an effect is all that extra dryer time on belt 2 and 3 having on the print and the tshirt?
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It's dry to the touch pretty quick, think of flash times for example. The rest is actually fully removing the moisture etc.
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This might give away my inexperience with wb and dc inks: since the shirts are flipping print side down on the middle belt, that would mean that inks would need to be pretty far along the curing process by the end of belt 1 to prevent the print getting damaged or perhaps ink on the belt... so how much of an effect is all that extra dryer time on belt 2 and 3 having on the print and the tshirt?
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Unlike plastisols which "cure" at a certain temperature, waterbase inks require more like what we think of as "drying" by removing their water by evaporation.
Interestingly, at a hobby level, waterbased inks are quite user friendly as they can be dried with something as common as a hand iron.
Step up to production levels, and it's a whole new ball game with retentions tmes and forced air removing the moisture, something that a conventional minimal IR panel belt dryer may not be able to keep up with.
See this current thread for a great example. (http://www.theshirtboard.com/index.php/topic,16207.msg154871/topicseen.html#new)
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Adelco had one on display at FESPA this year.
It's not a new idea, just been produced again, gives you close to double the belt length.
As someone posted, heat is heat, I don't see how someone can claim that it makes a softer print.
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My dryers tunnel length is about 4ft long and the tees are managing to come out pretty toasty at the end of it too. It's amazing that some shops are printing fast enough to need the 30ft ovens.
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My dryers tunnel length is about 4ft long and the tees are managing to come out pretty toasty at the end of it too. It's amazing that some shops are printing fast enough to need the 30ft ovens.
considering that retention time for water based and discharge inks can be from 90 seconds to 3 minutes, it's easy to see the efficacy of a longer belt and heat tunnel.
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we have a 10ft chamber, and have to slow way down during WB and Discharge runs. We run the belt at 4fpm to keep the shirts in the chamber 2-2.5 minutes. This equates to roughly 350 pcs/hr... When printing a plastisol job, we can print (even with flashing) in the 600-700 pcs/hr range.
We are limited by length in our shop, or I'd be adding a few extra chambers to be able to bump the speed. When we move in a few years, we'll be looking at a minimum 60" belt, if not 72", and a minimum of a 16ft chamber for our WB area.
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we have a 10ft chamber, and have to slow way down during WB and Discharge runs. We run the belt at 4fpm to keep the shirts in the chamber 2-2.5 minutes. This equates to roughly 350 pcs/hr... When printing a plastisol job, we can print (even with flashing) in the 600-700 pcs/hr range.
We are limited by length in our shop, or I'd be adding a few extra chambers to be able to bump the speed. When we move in a few years, we'll be looking at a minimum 60" belt, if not 72", and a minimum of a 16ft chamber for our WB area.
If space is limited then a dryer setup like this one would probably be a good idea! Unless y'all are set on moving to a bigger location where space wouldn't be a factor.
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We're definitely moving in a few years... now that we're pretty sure that 'this works' we'd rather own the building we're in vs. paying rent. Plus more space would be really nice.
also, at the time we bought our setup, we weren't really planning on just how much WB/discharge work we're now doing.
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This brings up so many questions I have about dryer settings that I should probably start a dedicated thread. Thanks for the info so far.
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i thought they had this dryer at a show last year. I remember talking to Ryan Barger about it. He said it wasn't ready just yet at the time of it's display, but they were tweaking some things on it before it was put out in the wild.
I'm waiting for it though, as we want one of these.
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I guess it's out in the wild now. This is a big solution for water base printers with not enough space for a 36 ft of heat. Plus the 8 ft feed front and back. With one auto I max out 12 ft of heat at 600 pieces a hour with no additives in my HSA ink.
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IR dryers are not really suitable for Water based pigments.
I have been using WB for years, plastisol reaches the right temp and cures, water based needs to cure at a set temp for a few minutes, I use water base that needs 5 minutes.
This is 5 minutes after the water in the print has evaporated and the pigments have reached the set temperature, in practice it can add a minute or so to the time.
The pigments I use can be cured for less time at a higher temperature but then we have scorching problems especially on white shirts.
The soft hand of WB is great but not being able to have a break, carry on tomorrow, etc make WB a PITA to work with.