TSB
screen printing => General Screen Printing => Topic started by: Wildcard on January 22, 2016, 08:24:52 AM
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I'm not sure how the experienced boys do it, but I struggle to stop ink getting on my hands while printing on the auto. There just always seems to be a sneaky drip somewhere that gets me when I'm working around the screens and with the containers. I'm constantly walking to the sink to wash my hands, which is annoying. I now keep an alcohol based hand sanitiser at the press which does a fair job of dissolving most ink smears without a trip to the sink, but it still grinds my gears that i can't control the stuff.
Auto hand cleaning station: a revolutionary new accessory concept for presses?
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Learn to be less messy. Gloves are also a solution but do cost. We print water base so a little ink wipe up is no problem with a wet rag. I would just keep a rag that is a little wet with some press wash next to the press so you can just wipe the ink off vs run to the sink. We also tend to like to work with quart jars with ink vs gallon buckets or 5 gallon buckets. It seems to be less messy when were on the press.
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the BIGGEST thing we've found is immediately wipe ink off anything it doesn't belong on. outsides of buckets, handles of ink knives, knobs, the floor, etc.
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Food grade disposable gloves. 10,000 for $40 bucks. Put them on, put ink in the screen/squeegees. Tear them off and trash.
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Allow me to ruffle some feathers. I don't allow press operators to wear gloves. To me, that's just telling them it's OK to be messy. Clean hands, clean tools, clean equipment. (ducking)
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I agree with ya Dave, I don't wear glove's unless what I dealing with calls for it, plus I keep a towel in my back pocket
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they are expensive but we use SCRUBS in a bucket. generic amazon link here, i forget where we order them from right now. these things work amazing though. and you can re-wet them when they dry out. usually get a pretty long life out of each one as long as you aren't too messy with them.
http://www.amazon.com/SEPTLS25342272-Dymon-SCRUBS-Cleaner-Towels/dp/B00CD92XJM (http://www.amazon.com/SEPTLS25342272-Dymon-SCRUBS-Cleaner-Towels/dp/B00CD92XJM)
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slow down.
we had gloves here for a week. What a mess. plus, we found It takes longer to put gloves on and off than it does to simply wipe it off.
I agree with Dave and Darryl,
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I agree with Dave and Darryl,
Crap, Now I have to rethink things.
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the BIGGEST thing we've found is immediately wipe ink off anything it doesn't belong on. outsides of buckets, handles of ink knives, knobs, the floor, etc.
This is the one. Aside from being careful to be clean the entire time this is the close runner up best practice.
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I never thought about those wipes. We have a few buckets we were given that I've never figured out what to do with.
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My first thought was... Your'e a screen printer, get over it! Everybody knows that plastisol
has a mind of it's own and will hunt you down. Just part of the business.
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Think plastisol ink is tough to clean up?
You need to take up intaglio... ;D
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the BIGGEST thing we've found is immediately wipe ink off anything it doesn't belong on. outsides of buckets, handles of ink knives, knobs, the floor, etc.
This^^
Sent from my XT1585 using Tapatalk
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Think plastisol ink is tough to clean up?
You need to take up intaglio... ;D
what this guy said
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I never found it difficult to stay clean... mostly anyway. My first boss even asked me why my hands were clean; I told him I cleaned them (duh)
Steve
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When Ink gets where it doesn't belong, getting it off becomes Job One.
Ink happens. Then it gets cleaned off, right then.
I can't tell you how many times I've traipsed around the presses, looking here, looking there.... rubbing obscured places with my hands, trying to find where the ink mess is hiding. It never dries, and you often can't really feel it when you're busy working. But the guy or gal who made the mess usually knows it and can fix it right then and there in a fraction of the time it takes for "hide and seek."
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The stuff sneaks up on me often. V-squeegee tends to flick little spots of ink into some odd places that surprise me later on. Some days I'll find a spot of color that I printed a week before.
Maybe with time I will develop better ink tool control but man it gets on my nerves some days.
Keeping ink buckets/pails clean is another story... sigh
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You can laugh up your sleeve if you like but we print manually with plastisol and frequently need a quick clean up.
Running to the sink sucks...
using our ink wash sucks and it is expansive
we keep a bottle of this stuff handy to the press.
it cleanses the ink nicely off our hands, squeegee blades on color changes and just sloppy ink in general
and it doesn't cost a small fortune.
mooseman
http://www.walmart.com/ip/Turtle-Wax-Bug-and-Tar-Remover-16oz/16888962 (http://www.walmart.com/ip/Turtle-Wax-Bug-and-Tar-Remover-16oz/16888962)
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In my experience the source of most of our ink mess that gets on our hands comes from improper handling of the goop scoops or whatever you use to sling ink. It may be different at other shops but for us if you get sloppy with how you handle the scoops you get ink down on the handle first, then it's on your fingers and it grows from there. As someone who can sling ink all day long and not get a blob of ink anywhere it doesn't belong I often find myself getting really upset when I go back to help out and the first goop scoop I grab has ink on the handle and I have to spend time cleaning it, then I see ink dripping down the side of a bucket. And it really bothers me when I see the goop scoop laying on the lid of an open bucket with the handle sitting in the ink when it's so EXTREMELY easy to place the scoop on top of the lid with the handle completely out of the ink that's inside of the lid.
I know it varies from shop to shop based on what tools you use but a messy press op or helper is hard to break. I can only imagine how much time a multiple auto shop with a bunch of messy employees would spend wiping down hands before and during a print run.
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it turns the container around the ink knife when dispensing ink to sceen with a cut along the rim to stop the flow with out spilling a drop
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it turns the container around the ink knife when dispensing ink to sceen with a cut along the rim to stop the flow with out spilling a drop
This sounds promising but I may need a bit more of an explanation.
@Alan, were you always that neat with ink from the start or is it a skill learned over time along with everything else? Perhaps there is hope for me?
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We had this guy. Slowest mover of them all. But he made sure everything was done properly at every stage. Funny thing is. He would finish before anyone. Plus less rejects...
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After posting this thread I had one of my worst ink moments yet. I should have taken a photo but I was too busy cussing. Karma perhaps for griping to TSB?
I was just loading some poly white ink in the screen and the thick ink usually needs a little help to distribute nicely on the first few strokes. I set the warm up prints to triple stroke/flood and as I was moving some ink around I dropped my ink tool right in the middle of the screen as the storke started! I watched it get pushed up and down the screen 3 times before having to pack on the gloves and dig it out of ink. It took me a good long while to clean that mess up.
Up side is that I'm lucky it didn't shred the mesh, but I still say: farking ink!
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it turns the container around the ink knife when dispensing ink to sceen with a cut along the rim to stop the flow with out spilling a drop
This sounds promising but I may need a bit more of an explanation.
@Alan, were you always that neat with ink from the start or is it a skill learned over time along with everything else? Perhaps there is hope for me?
It started early due to a lesson learned in my 1st week in the shop. By the time my 1st week was over we had gone through 2 printers and the last one was awful and he made a mess of everything. So I came up on a Saturday and I spent an entire day wiping down the press and floor that had ink in every nook of an American Centurian which anyone familiar with that press knows it has lots of places for ink to hide. Luckily the printer that made the mess didn't make it through the day the following Monday but he still managed to make enough of a mess that it took about an hour to clean up at the end of the day. If the little drops of ink don't bother you now I can see that changing the more time you spend cleaning and once you realize that every hour spent cleaning is an hour less printing your attitude will change quickly.
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Oh the drops of ink bother me! I would have the place pristine without a drop out of place if I could. I'm just not that precise at working with the ink and seem to get caught by surprise a bunch.
I figure it must be a learned skill since I'm probably better now than a year ago.
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After posting this thread I had one of my worst ink moments yet. I should have taken a photo but I was too busy cussing. Karma perhaps for griping to TSB?
I was just loading some poly white ink in the screen and the thick ink usually needs a little help to distribute nicely on the first few strokes. I set the warm up prints to triple stroke/flood and as I was moving some ink around I dropped my ink tool right in the middle of the screen as the storke started! I watched it get pushed up and down the screen 3 times before having to pack on the gloves and dig it out of ink. It took me a good long while to clean that mess up.
Up side is that I'm lucky it didn't shred the mesh, but I still say: farking ink!
I'll see your ink knife stuck in the screen with no damage, and raise you..
a 12 color challenger, 8 color print.. freshly glued boards for a long run.. nice and warm and the operator hit print.. rather than print start.. thanks to even spacing all 8 print heads did their thing... the carousel hung there for about 2 seconds, we had 45n tension screens in there.. when it let go.. the screens that didn't break, acted like a trampoline..
Last I heard.. 15 years later ink is still on the ceiling.
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Last I heard.. 15 years later ink is still on the ceiling
Don't worry, someone else will get that.
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After posting this thread I had one of my worst ink moments yet. I should have taken a photo but I was too busy cussing. Karma perhaps for griping to TSB?
I was just loading some poly white ink in the screen and the thick ink usually needs a little help to distribute nicely on the first few strokes. I set the warm up prints to triple stroke/flood and as I was moving some ink around I dropped my ink tool right in the middle of the screen as the storke started! I watched it get pushed up and down the screen 3 times before having to pack on the gloves and dig it out of ink. It took me a good long while to clean that mess up.
Up side is that I'm lucky it didn't shred the mesh, but I still say: farking ink!
I'll see your ink knife stuck in the screen with no damage, and raise you..
a 12 color challenger, 8 color print.. freshly glued boards for a long run.. nice and warm and the operator hit print.. rather than print start.. thanks to even spacing all 8 print heads did their thing... the carousel hung there for about 2 seconds, we had 45n tension screens in there.. when it let go.. the screens that didn't break, acted like a trampoline..
Last I heard.. 15 years later ink is still on the ceiling.
This has to be one of the best stories I've heard in a long time.
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Allow me to ruffle some feathers. I don't allow press operators to wear gloves. To me, that's just telling them it's OK to be messy. Clean hands, clean tools, clean equipment. (ducking)
We do the same. As soon as you allow gloves the ink gets transferred everywhere. They are a lot more careful when their hands are dirty.
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I'll see your ink knife stuck in the screen with no damage, and raise you..
a 12 color challenger, 8 color print.. freshly glued boards for a long run.. nice and warm and the operator hit print.. rather than print start.. thanks to even spacing all 8 print heads did their thing... the carousel hung there for about 2 seconds, we had 45n tension screens in there.. when it let go.. the screens that didn't break, acted like a trampoline..
Last I heard.. 15 years later ink is still on the ceiling.
Epic story jsheridan! There should be more of these these to make me feel better about my small scale dramas.
I did a job on some reversible poly mesh singlets that needed a solid triple coat of water based table tack to stay down. While setting up the following job i raised the boards while a couple of screens were down... the sound of the screens releasing from the ultra sticky pallets/platens was like a bomb going off.
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I think almost everyone here has made the same mistake when mixing ink. We use Jiffy mixers on a regular drill. Every person that makes ink, early in their time here, will pull the mixer out of the container while it's still spinning, and ink flies everywhere (go ahead and insert your jokes on pulling out early now) Always a hearty round of applause for the newb that does it.
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Or 20+ years ago tracking ink on the bosses office carpet. :(
Who did this!? Wasn't hard to figure that one out. ::)
Get the extension cord for the spot gun, ugggg.
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I think almost everyone here has made the same mistake when mixing ink. We use Jiffy mixers on a regular drill. Every person that makes ink, early in their time here, will pull the mixer out of the container while it's still spinning, and ink flies everywhere (go ahead and insert your jokes on pulling out early now) Always a hearty round of applause for the newb that does it.
We have seen this with the new guys in our shop as well.....but I always try to make them feel a bit better by telling them " don't worry, you'll never make as big of a mess as I did ".......
Once in the beginning of my mixing career I was mixing a 5 gallon of ECRU ( what ever color that is ) when for some reason I thought I would let go of the bucket with my feet, thinking it would just spin like it was on a turntable....not what happened. The thing started whipping around like a top out of control, spraying ink all over the place, like a blender without the lid. Ink went everywhere, all over the press, floor, walls and countertops, but I got the worst of it. My pants were covered from the knees down and I had to cut them off into shorts, my shoes were covered so bad I really wasn't saving them and I had to just throw them away and work without shoes until lunch. Sometimes when deep cleaning I feel I still find some of that Ink around.
Murphy
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I did the same. I was having bad back problems and had a terrible spasm as I was bent over (go ahead with another joke). I jerked my body upright and still had the mixer running full speed. Epic (pun intended) mess. Most people only make this mistake once.
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One thing you might consider is cheap baby wipes from the "walmart". The ones i get come in a case for like $13. I can't remember how many wipes are in there but we just keep them everywhere, and we use them until there is no clean space left on the wipe. I get about 2 months out of a case. For me it is cheaper than paper towels or any other thing I have found so far. They get plastisol off your hand like a champ as well.