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screen printing => Equipment => Topic started by: alan802 on January 23, 2017, 04:33:29 PM
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Ok folks, we've been printing with the G3 for 3 weeks now, and the last 2 weeks we've printed more shirts than in any other 2 week period since we've been open, and I've only found 2 other months where we printed more garments/impressions than we've done in the last 2 weeks, so yeah, we be busy.
I'm very impressed with the G3 so far. I worried that we wouldn't be able to do everything the same way, or quite frankly, that the press would be able to run like the RPM (you just never really know until you do it). The way we print, we push the limits on print speed and pressure, and what I've seen at other shops with other machines tells me that things can be different through no fault of your own. So aside from the exact printing pressures being used on the RPM versus the G3, and what I know most other shops print with as far as PSI settings, the G3 is printing with much less pressure than what I was thinking would be possible. I'm printing white ink at 25-30psi on the G3, and on the RPM it's around 22-28psi. Print speeds for white ink, awesome, this press will fly just like the RPM. Since it doesn't measure speed digitally like the RPM I can only guess at how fast the squeegee is traveling, but we're doing the exact same thing on each press with print speed and I think the G3 will run at about 35-40"/sec at it's fastest and the RPM will go up to 30"/sec.
The Regi System: This one worried me a bit. I've done about 10 multi-colored jobs on the G3 of over 3 colors, and so far they've all been finished with no more than 3 test prints. I did a 6 color left chest on Friday afternoon, and I got it ready to run with only 2 test prints and the colors were all butt to butt, on a base. After the pallets were warmed up, we ran that job at 800+ pieces/hr. So the system works as good on the G3 as it did on the RPM, thumbs up.
Also last week, we ran a 2 color, white, flash, white, and got up to 1080/hr but they were youth sizes and it was very hard to keep that pace for very long. We did print a 3K piece job in around 5-5.5 hours if I remember correctly.
I've ran a few jobs loading and unloading by myself and doing 450-500/hr is fairly easy to do. The fastest I could manage on the RPM by myself was closer to 400/hr. I got up to 550/hr, and I believe I could maintain that speed for hours, but I think realistically 500/hr with one person on the press is pretty good. The press indexes really fast compared to the RPM. I don't know how it spins versus the MHM and Roq presses but I think it's right there with them. A dry cycle on the G3 will yield almost 1800/hr and when I turn the print heads on and run a left chest logo size at a fast speed the press will run 1600/hr no problem. I can load at 1000/hr and if I had a way to pick the shirts cleanly, like someone opening the shirts for me I could do 1300-1400/hr. I have a habit of doing a hand wipe motion on all the shirts I load to get any big lint balls or strings out of the way. I should install a greaser in head one for these bigger jobs and I also should buy the No-Shirt Detector. I think I could load a bit faster and not worry about anything.
OK, so that was a bunch of fluff and some rambling but I'll use this thread as the base and keep adding things, hopefully on a daily basis at first then I'm sure we'll run out of content to put up. I also have videos on Youtube but honestly I feel like most everyone on this forum is well above the video content and I seriously doubt this crew would get anything out of what I've done so far. I'm still trying to find my way with the videos and how/what type of content to do, but essentially what I've posted so far is boring "VLOG" type of junk that I'm afraid many of you will be pissed for me having wasted your valuable time :).
I wrote a "manifesto" that was originally within this thread but I went ahead and cut it out and perhaps I'll put it back in at some point if I feel like it's necessary. It really depends on how things are received in this thread and if anyone feels like they are the subject of a post or a video which I can promise nobody or no company will be in a negative way. We'll keep everything positive as much as we can and any negative criticism will be kept to either of the 2 machines in our shop and nothing else. I might feel the need to compare a certain feature to another brand press but I'll keep things factual and not get into subjective issues.
Lot's more to talk about, but I ain't got that kind of time on my hands these days.
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I guess these days I just throw down so much truth that nobody can even muster up a response :). That's ok, I was an only child, I grew up entertaining myself.
I'd like to give some details of how the transition has been from a print technique/settings standpoint going from a fantastic RPM press that up until a few months ago was just a stone cold killer, now she's developing a lot of air leaks since we've moved her. I'm not sure if there is a relationship between the new air leaks and the move or if it's just something that finally broke over all these years. I have leaks coming from the air regulators and various other parts of the pneumatic system. Some choppers are so bad it won't print on those heads so I'm dropping good print heads. I'm down to about 7 good ones now, with two flashes so it's really only a 6 color at best, 5 color at worst.
Ok, so back to the printing details, what have we had to change from the RPM to the G3? Nothing. Next subject...just kidding. I'll discuss with myself. I wondered what kind of pressures and speeds we'd achieve with the G3, and it will do everything the RPM has done, except a slightly higher PSI setting on the head. I don't believe the downward force is any more or less than what we did on the RPM, it's the same overall system, but different choppers, different regulators, so there is bound to be some difference there. The main reason I worried about this is because you don't see a lot of people talking about running white ink pressures in the 20's, regardless of press so I wondered if it was the press or the way the shop operates, and seems like most of it is just shop specific. I do believe all plastisol shops should strive to lower their print pressures and speed up their print speeds, but for whatever reason it seems like it's not done that often. This forum included. But it's really none of my business how other shops print, and if they want to use 50 psi then I can't change that. But I hope everyone understands that for some strange reason, I genuinely want to help others print better, even total strangers. I hope it doesn't rub people the wrong way with me always bringing it up and at times it feels like people think I'm speaking down to them but I know with 100% certainty you'll get better results across the board. Crisper prints, more opacity, higher production speeds, use less ink, and to get flack for trying to help others is kind of jacked up, but oh well. I try not to take it personal and I know my intentions are genuinely good so I can deal with some negativity and some shade, at least to this small degree. I've seen a lot of good, well-meaning people run away from forums because of stuff like that and it's a damn shame. But it is what it is and if someone doesn't want to deal with any negative stuff on the internetsweb I sure as hell don't blame them for cutting it from their daily lives. You know what they say, the road to Hell and good intentions....yeah.
So the essentials of plastisol printing for textile shops that we use here definitely transfer from an RPM to a G3, and to an air head Diamondback, from a 1991 American Centurian to a 12 year old Challenger II, but what all those machines have in common is the traditional, 4-chopper style print heads. I've been to quite a few shops and played around with different machines but I have enough experience with the machines I've mentioned above to know our methods work on all of them quite well.
I need to spend some quality time on other brands to see how our methods work, and I'm sure with so many of the ISS award winners using Sroques and MHMs that they do just fine. But I don't do the award printing stuff so anything I say about how those are done will be void of any real experience and mostly guessing on my part. I've been told things and heard things about the time and effort that goes into it, but then after hearing 10 examples of that you hear 10 more saying they just grabbed a shirt off the dryer in the middle of a production run and submitted it for the award show so I have no clue really. MAD props to those shops that can snag a random shirt off the dryer and place in a show, that's in-freaking-credible. I know if I were trying to win something I wouldn't care if I had to double stroke or run multiple revolutions to get a shirt looking right, WHATEVER IT TAKES!! :), but running production jobs with quick turn times I can't/won't do that. You have to know when to say when on how much time you want to spend fine tuning things. Most customers wouldn't know a quality print if it bit them on the anus but they will be happy as hell if a crappy print is done a day before you told them it would be, then price, and finally quality. Not all customers, but most of ours are this way.
Ok, diarrhea of the fingers this morning is over, gotta get back to running this fine press.
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I appreciate the posts and am reading them! :)
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Good stuff, glad to hear your thoughts.
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few counters and info points
our ROQ YOU maxes out at 1035 and fastest we've had it print ubase/flash/top white so far has been 950/hour. 'don't know if we will be able to eek out more. For some reason, the dry cycling and fast printing run at the same speed. The ROQ ECO is an XL version so it runs slower than the regular. We've hit 1170/hour on it and there is very little left to go faster, possibly that might be as fast as she'll go. Dry cycling is about 1300-1400, can't remember exactly. MHM E-Type (and the specs for few of their other models) dry cycle at 1400. We've gotten ours over 1100 plenty of times. ROQ has lifting heads, MHM has lifting carousel. Thus, ROQs are easier to load. I would imagine the you are seeing similar results between the G3 and RPM for the same reasons.
We print at 50+ PSI. Even the MHM required more pressure and everybody I know that prints on metal platens is using more pressure. Four cylinders vs one scissor setup is not making any difference for us. If there is anybody out there that can print at 25 PSI on the metal platens, I'd like to know about it. 'not saying it's impossible, just that I don't know how to do it and we've had some pretty sharp ppl look into it with us. Joe and I had some conversations about it and are not seeing eye to eye on it. He did say that what we are getting out of it seems to be about as good as it gets. He'll be here for few days in the next month or so and we'll have time to really test it. If it does not get better with him I'lll call that myth busted for the metal (no rubber) platens.
I also think that you will get better at not having to micro the jobs as you go along. Danny said it took him 3 months to tweak the system so it's working fine. We are seeing no micro setups here and there, but we are changing the systems completely and having to re-engineer the equipment to accommodate theh MHM screens with the bushings on them. We've given up on trying to make the rollers with the pins on them work, so those are having the pins removed. Our transition has been much slower as the systems are quite different. Wish we were moving along as fast.
Our winners all required extra work on setup and pre-press. Almost all of them had higher level separations and almost all were printed more than once before they got to the level they needed to be. Only one was a regular customer shirt from a production run, all the rest were specifically designed from scratch to be in the competition. Either we commissioned higher level art or requested the customer provide us with something better. In some cases we licensed high end artwork in exchange for free shirts. As far as I know, most of the shirts that win the competition have extra effort (and a lot of it) put in them. Andy Anderson is the only one that puts in that much work on the print regardless if they are going into the competition or not and from what he said, every shirt he enters is a pull from the production run. Wish I could say the same. . .
pierre
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Has anyone with metal pallets done some testing with a rubber topped pallet, a side-by-side comparison? A few hours, one pallet and a decent design to play around with and you'd have about all the info you'd need to make the decision or come to the conclusion that rubber tops make a huge difference or they don't offer any real benefit. On our old centurian we had rubber tops but they were so old and hard that it wasn't any different than printing on the metal. I swapped out the rubber but unfortunately at that time I didn't know anything about the process so I didn't do a compare/contrast experiment before and after. In those days we were lucky to get a 3 color job on darks on an 8-color press with one revolution. It was one struggle after another, I don't miss those days much at all.
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gotta love it.
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In those days we were lucky to get a 3 color job on darks on an 8-color press with one revolution.
HAY i resemble that remark!
Not much to comment, but definitely watching and reading. We, with Joe's assistance are attempting to fast track to 1/3 of your gained knowledge.
RPM, synergy, low pressure, just ignorant and not so hot at any of it yet.
We appreciate the chatter and the videos!
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On our 12 color sportsman (a 12 color press with arms from a 10 color press = a smaller footprint and shorter arms for the platens) - we can print white ink at 25 pounds or lower depending. The depending is based on several factors: Narrower squeegee blades - needs less pressure to make full contact. 150S mesh with a high EOM. A good quality fast shearing cotton ink. Bonus: The shorter arms from the 10 color press actually help tremendously with lower pressure printing - less pallet deflection.... yes, if you pay attention - you can actually see a difference in ink shear/deposit from top to bottom of the print on presses with longer arms and longer print strokes.
I can not duplicate the low pressure settings even remotely on our 14 color. Longer arms = a greater chance of pallet deflection. Necessitating higher pressures to get the ink to properly shear.
End result - Everyone should be able to print a nice clean bright white if they know their presses and the reasons behind their press variables.
As Allen clearly does.
Love your reports and the videos you have uploaded!
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Thanks guys! I appreciate the compliments.
Pallet deflection, one of the things I was somewhat concerned about but I started paying a lot of attention to the RPM and it's deflection, and honestly, it's quite pronounced. Knowing how it is on the RPM and how little it has affected us I then wanted it to be less obviously with the G3 and it certainly is good in this area. I think the Sroque and MHM are the best in the industry with pallet deflection, but the G3 has been solid and in no way is it bad enough to cause any negative issues on press. Do I wish it were ZERO deflection? Sure, but I think that once you reach a certain level of deflection resistance that anything beyond that has diminishing returns for the manufacturer. It is FAR better than what I had heard from competing manufacturers over the last few years, it's way better than the RPM, and is not going to cause anyone any problems whatsoever, not even close.
I'm keeping my eye on how well the pallets and print heads maintain their parallelism/calibration. The techs did a good job with the calibration but I need to go through and tidy it up a bit. I think for 99% of the shops it would be perfectly fine but I'm a nut job, and a 1/32" off on a few pallets is enough for me to want to bring back to my standards. I realize that my standards are way beyond what is acceptable and needed to achieve high quality prints.
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Sounds like a smooth transition so far, congrats.
We will be making the switch from printing on rubber topped platens with dual chopper style heads to printing on honeycomb with self leveling heads. I know it will change how we print on our main press.
I think anything you place below the substrate, like rubber, that helps even out inconsistencies on the plane of the squeegee travel inherently helps. With rubber especially, you likely get a degree of pressure frorm below the fabric helping to create an optimal pressure dynamic.
Honeycomb can't be coated with buna-n rubber without delaminating the honeycomb from the top al sheet due to the way the heat is absorbed, or at least that's my understanding. So it's a trade off there because honeycomb platens with a good print arm and platen bracket mounting system will always be in plane. Combine that with a self-leveling chopper system and you should have a win in 99% of print situations with minimal or near zero maintenance when it comes to leveling the machine. That's the gamble I'm taking but I'm nervous about that 1% of jobs that might need the muscle and manual adjustability a dual chopper system can provide.
That said, you can spec an s.roque machine with a 4 chopper print head so it wasn't a major factor in press choice for me.
We do get good plastisol printing results on our sportsman- low pressure, fast stroke. Coverage changes over the length of the stroke due to deflection as Colin mentioned and you eventually loose your fast/light ability and need to add back pressure. My hope is that a self-leveling system with lower deflection on the print arms will resolve some of this. Our sporty's print arms don't deflect hardly at all but the heads pop up significantly at low pressures. Deflection is a necessary evil with most press designs but it drives me nuts.
I think you made a good choice for your print style and high level of skill you have. Those series III presses keep the platens in plane much better since nobody is freewheeling them. Knowing how you dial in your plane I think it's going to kick a lot of ass for you. You might get aggravated at it going out of plane compared to the RPM but that's coming from a fellow nut job.
Did you get a kwik clamp yet? If not buy the system today.
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Thanks guys! I appreciate the compliments.
Pallet deflection, one of the things I was somewhat concerned about but I started paying a lot of attention to the RPM and it's deflection, and honestly, it's quite pronounced. Knowing how it is on the RPM and how little it has affected us I then wanted it to be less obviously with the G3 and it certainly is good in this area. I think the Sroque and MHM are the best in the industry with pallet deflection, but the G3 has been solid and in no way is it bad enough to cause any negative issues on press. Do I wish it were ZERO deflection? Sure, but I think that once you reach a certain level of deflection resistance that anything beyond that has diminishing returns for the manufacturer. It is FAR better than what I had heard from competing manufacturers over the last few years, it's way better than the RPM, and is not going to cause anyone any problems whatsoever, not even close.
I'm keeping my eye on how well the pallets and print heads maintain their parallelism/calibration. The techs did a good job with the calibration but I need to go through and tidy it up a bit. I think for 99% of the shops it would be perfectly fine but I'm a nut job, and a 1/32" off on a few pallets is enough for me to want to bring back to my standards. I realize that my standards are way beyond what is acceptable and needed to achieve high quality prints.
very similar with the new install here. MHM had some minor deflection that was not influencing the print from what I can tell. Few others thought different (Forward Printing for example) and switched to ROQ for stiffer platen support. I think we had 1/16th of an inch before, I am not seeing any on the new presses.
Also similar with the tolerances. The press is true, but not the level I'd like to see. We will have to tinker with it to get it to within a thousandth or two. Luckily, the install tech explained how to do it as it is not really very intuitive.
Please forgive the chiming in, not trying to hijack the thread, just 'provide parallel thoughts from a different perspective.
pierre
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fwiw, I talked with the dude from forward awhile back and they were good with the MHM but struggled a little due to deflection on max image sizes. The s.roque solved that for them. I shied away from MHM a couple years ago, which was almost a no-brainer in my eyes at the time, due to platen deflection concerns.
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fwiw, I talked with the dude from forward awhile back and they were good with the MHM but struggled a little due to deflection on max image sizes. The s.roque solved that for them. I shied away from MHM a couple years ago, which was almost a no-brainer in my eyes at the time, due to platen deflection concerns.
just to clarify, Forward was running the E-Types which at the time were entry level presses. The S-Type has beefier support and the 4000 style arms are about as big as a semi truck and just as sturdy. My thought was they were comparing apples to oranges . . .
pierre
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Thanks guys! I appreciate the compliments.
Pallet deflection, one of the things I was somewhat concerned about but I started paying a lot of attention to the RPM and it's deflection, and honestly, it's quite pronounced. Knowing how it is on the RPM and how little it has affected us I then wanted it to be less obviously with the G3 and it certainly is good in this area. I think the Sroque and MHM are the best in the industry with pallet deflection, but the G3 has been solid and in no way is it bad enough to cause any negative issues on press. Do I wish it were ZERO deflection? Sure, but I think that once you reach a certain level of deflection resistance that anything beyond that has diminishing returns for the manufacturer. It is FAR better than what I had heard from competing manufacturers over the last few years, it's way better than the RPM, and is not going to cause anyone any problems whatsoever, not even close.
I'm keeping my eye on how well the pallets and print heads maintain their parallelism/calibration. The techs did a good job with the calibration but I need to go through and tidy it up a bit. I think for 99% of the shops it would be perfectly fine but I'm a nut job, and a 1/32" off on a few pallets is enough for me to want to bring back to my standards. I realize that my standards are way beyond what is acceptable and needed to achieve high quality prints.
very similar with the new install here. MHM had some minor deflection that was not influencing the print from what I can tell. Few others thought different (Forward Printing for example) and switched to ROQ for stiffer platen support. I think we had 1/16th of an inch before, I am not seeing any on the new presses.
Also similar with the tolerances. The press is true, but not the level I'd like to see. We will have to tinker with it to get it to within a thousandth or two. Luckily, the install tech explained how to do it as it is not really very intuitive.
Please forgive the chiming in, not trying to hijack the thread, just 'provide parallel thoughts from a different perspective.
pierre
OMG, You fellas would go frigging bizerk running one of these cream puff 94' challenger 14/16's over here. Please tell me neither of you regularly wear a pocket protector with a temp prob and a ruler.....LOL
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Zoo hurry up and get that press installed so I can get my Quik Clamp ;D
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We saw roughly 10% more dot gain on our rubber top pallets then we are seeing on the aluminum. I'm going to go do training at a large shop in vegas within the next week or so.... They run several m&r presses, recently put a roq in their shop and the production manager told me all high end artwork has been moved to the roq machine due to the dot gain. I'm planning to measure some of their prints old vs new to see what I find there regarding rubber top vs non rubber top. GT3 is a solid machine glad that your digging it Alan!
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Yeah, 4000 series definitely is not deflecting, haha. I saw the same differences between the X and S types but even the S didn't seem like enough support for me and the S type puts the price up in the Eco range.
Dude, Rstefanick, I'm constantly stealing one of our little mitutoyo steel rules and carrying it around. Half the problems my guys have that they can't solve on their own are press calibration. I don't think pocket protectors go well with flannel but I'll give it a whirl just for you. Maybe add a holster for a temp gun and eom gauge. Look out ladies.
Heading your way next week Andrew!
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for anybody following, there are no issues with G3. This is not a knock on any press model or manufacturer. It's just an adjustment on the regulator or in the RIP. Different presses print differently. Learn how to run your press.
pierre
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Come on Rick. I've seen those gems you get to run with.
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Come on Rick. I've seen those gems you get to run with.
I wonder how much money those gems have made over the last 22 years. It's probably insane.
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Yes, insane is pretty appropiate. They have seen better days but still put out some amazingly good stuff on a daily basis
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Yes they do. But we're defiantly not checking pallet deflection and pallet tolerances. I can tell you they do get the job done without payments and running 90 percent waterbased inks they still hold their own. We have a really tight crew now and they make them their own and that helps tremendously.
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I don't have any major updates as of this moment, but I want to keep this thread freshened up and say a few little things. We started a 1600 piece, 2 color, white only so print, flash, print late on Friday and I'm about to start back on that job in a few minutes. My dad had hip replacement surgery early this morning and he's just been taken to his new room and is doing FANTASTIC so I've been a little behind on getting this job finished. I'll blast through the rest in a few hours and I'll do a video of us printing and try to get it posted later today. Stay tuned.
Oh yeah, this machine is freaking awesome, it's kind of like the RPM was the first few weeks in that every day I am more and more impressed with the press. It's just getting better and better. No glitches, no issues, nothing other than a perfectly working "MANpress". Not that a woman can't run it, but think like a world class strength athlete that also still has speed, agility and quickness, that's the G3.
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Hi, I just made the connection that videos I had been watching on YouTube were from yourself, I was impressed at the speed you could run your print heads, and it has made me think I need to change the way I run my mhm x type plus.
Printing international coatings legacy white, print flash print through Newman screens with a 150s mesh the fastest I can run the print head is 0 to 1.5 out of a possible 10 on the mhm dial and still get the screen to clear, this prevents me going any faster than 520 print per hour.
Not sure what's holding me back?
Action double blade squeegee, with a pair triple ply blades, 50/90/50 (orange ones)
Ic legacy ink (we print a lot of poly cotton sweats, so easier to use just one white ink rather than also use a cotton white)
Off contact set to 4 for tees and 8 for sweats ( I believe that's mm so 8mm off contact for a sweat, it seems excessive, but any less and the screen will not clear with one stroke)
Open to suggestions of how I can improve speed?
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Hi, I just made the connection that videos I had been watching on YouTube were from yourself, I was impressed at the speed you could run your print heads, and it has made me think I need to change the way I run my mhm x type plus.
Printing international coatings legacy white, print flash print through Newman screens with a 150s mesh the fastest I can run the print head is 0 to 1.5 out of a possible 10 on the mhm dial and still get the screen to clear, this prevents me going any faster than 520 print per hour.
Not sure what's holding me back?
Action double blade squeegee, with a pair triple ply blades, 50/90/50 (orange ones)
Ic legacy ink (we print a lot of poly cotton sweats, so easier to use just one white ink rather than also use a cotton white)
Off contact set to 4 for tees and 8 for sweats ( I believe that's mm so 8mm off contact for a sweat, it seems excessive, but any less and the screen will not clear with one stroke)
Open to suggestions of how I can improve speed?
If your off contact is 4mm for regular tees then I'd say that is a bit excessive, but probably not your issue unless your screens are of VERY high tension. A 150/48 isn't capable of high tension so I don't think you have a problem there. Our OC is usually around 1/16" to 1/8". I've never used the Action double blade but I know enough about it to think that it's not your problem but you should be able to use a standard blade, 70 duro, and clear a 150/48 with one stroke at 15"/sec, and we routinely run in excess of 25"/sec on a 150/48 and white ink. Maybe try a harder blade, keep your squeegee angle fairly high, around 80 degrees, but no less than 70 and as upright as possible and still deposit enough ink. I think most people use too much angle, and I think 75-80 degrees is good for printing with speed.
I don't know that I really have a "specialty" when it comes to this thing we do, but I put a lot of emphasis on print speed and have always worked to maximize opacity with minimal print strokes, and speed has a huge impact. You have to have a shorter bodied white, you need open, thin thread mesh, sharp blades, upright (75-80 degrees is good, and even running at 85-88 is fine) and that's the main things you need. I really want to do some research and get some real experience with our printing methods while running different brands of machinery. I know they work well on the RPM and now on the G3, they work on an all-air diamondback but that's about the extent of the autos that I've tried these techniques on. If I could spend a few hours, maybe a day on an MHM or Sroque that would be enough time to test our techniques but finding the time and finding participants isn't easy. Everyone is busy and I can't travel very far to do this. I know a guy that knows a few things about screen printing, as in he's pretty much the most knowledgeable guy in the world when it comes to textile screen printing, and he's had mixed results with high speed shearing with a few different brands of machinery but it's by no means a settled debate. It just takes one little variable to throw off the entire system and I'd feel good about getting on some of those machines with our screens, our ink and our squeegees to see if in fact there is something to the theory pertaining to the different types of chopper/printing mechanics used on various autos.
I don't have any IC Legacy to see how short it is, but if it's long bodied, kind of like chewed bubble gum when pulling your spatula out then that would be the 1st place I looked. Shorter body white will print much faster than long. If you need more info in how to tell if you've got short, medium or long bodied white, let me know and I'll do a video of what I look for.
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Alan, what short bodied ink are you running? It seems the trend right now is long and frankly the inks I used to love I am not a huge fan of anymore.
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agreed with most that Alan said. . . One thing to be aware of, is that your MHM is not using rubber on the platens and that is making the print parameters different. What works on the GT3 might not work on the MHM. For us, we switched from printing at 2 (on MHM) to 6 by stirring + preheating the ink and preheating the platens. Add the higher angle and less pressure when doing this. Oh, and ditch the Legacy it is too long bodied to print fast. Try Joe's (Synergy) whites. The poly actually prints nicer than the cotton but is more expensive.
pierre
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Hi, I just made the connection that videos I had been watching on YouTube were from yourself, I was impressed at the speed you could run your print heads, and it has made me think I need to change the way I run my mhm x type plus.
Printing international coatings legacy white, print flash print through Newman screens with a 150s mesh the fastest I can run the print head is 0 to 1.5 out of a possible 10 on the mhm dial and still get the screen to clear, this prevents me going any faster than 520 print per hour.
Not sure what's holding me back?
Action double blade squeegee, with a pair triple ply blades, 50/90/50 (orange ones)
Ic legacy ink (we print a lot of poly cotton sweats, so easier to use just one white ink rather than also use a cotton white)
Off contact set to 4 for tees and 8 for sweats ( I believe that's mm so 8mm off contact for a sweat, it seems excessive, but any less and the screen will not clear with one stroke)
Open to suggestions of how I can improve speed?
If your off contact is 4mm for regular tees then I'd say that is a bit excessive, but probably not your issue unless your screens are of VERY high tension. A 150/48 isn't capable of high tension so I don't think you have a problem there. Our OC is usually around 1/16" to 1/8". I've never used the Action double blade but I know enough about it to think that it's not your problem but you should be able to use a standard blade, 70 duro, and clear a 150/48 with one stroke at 15"/sec, and we routinely run in excess of 25"/sec on a 150/48 and white ink. Maybe try a harder blade, keep your squeegee angle fairly high, around 80 degrees, but no less than 70 and as upright as possible and still deposit enough ink. I think most people use too much angle, and I think 75-80 degrees is good for printing with speed.
I don't know that I really have a "specialty" when it comes to this thing we do, but I put a lot of emphasis on print speed and have always worked to maximize opacity with minimal print strokes, and speed has a huge impact. You have to have a shorter bodied white, you need open, thin thread mesh, sharp blades, upright (75-80 degrees is good, and even running at 85-88 is fine) and that's the main things you need. I really want to do some research and get some real experience with our printing methods while running different brands of machinery. I know they work well on the RPM and now on the G3, they work on an all-air diamondback but that's about the extent of the autos that I've tried these techniques on. If I could spend a few hours, maybe a day on an MHM or Sroque that would be enough time to test our techniques but finding the time and finding participants isn't easy. Everyone is busy and I can't travel very far to do this. I know a guy that knows a few things about screen printing, as in he's pretty much the most knowledgeable guy in the world when it comes to textile screen printing, and he's had mixed results with high speed shearing with a few different brands of machinery but it's by no means a settled debate. It just takes one little variable to throw off the entire system and I'd feel good about getting on some of those machines with our screens, our ink and our squeegees to see if in fact there is something to the theory pertaining to the different types of chopper/printing mechanics used on various autos.
I don't have any IC Legacy to see how short it is, but if it's long bodied, kind of like chewed bubble gum when pulling your spatula out then that would be the 1st place I looked. Shorter body white will print much faster than long. If you need more info in how to tell if you've got short, medium or long bodied white, let me know and I'll do a video of what I look for.
Alan,
ship the screens, ink and what ever else is needed up here than hop on a plane for a day. We'll get a good comparison between the presses and you'll get a chance to try it on both the MHM and ROQs.
pierre
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Alan, what short bodied ink are you running? It seems the trend right now is long and frankly the inks I used to love I am not a huge fan of anymore.
I'm using Joe's Synergy, and adding some Magic additive to it if I think it needs some adjustment. It can be a little short at times, but the Magic will almost always get it right with very little (2% or less) mixed in. I know most will want to print their white straight out of the bucket but I'll probably never do that, even with a perfect ink, I'll still find a way to adjust it. I don't think most shops will need or want to put any additive in it, but I'm so damn picky and know exactly what it needs to feel and look like in the bucket and working with a spatula and will get it where I want it.
White ink is such a weird thing in our industry. Over the years I've found some fantastic white inks and for the life of me I cannot fathom how/why other shops will hate it. It never has made sense other than what some printers like in a white ink is similar to what humans look for and like in the opposite sex, or mate. Some guys like blondes, some like big cabooses :), and others simply like ugly women, for reasons all their own. To this day I still love Rutland's Tidy white and QCM 158 even though they don't run well on an auto without lengthening the body but they print very fast and with very little pressure. Synergy is very similar, but optically "whiter", cures at a lower temp, has very low after-flash tack, and is very capable of being changed slightly without losing it's foundation that made it great.
Pierre, one of these days, hopefully soon, I'll be able to do that. Seems like every time I make plans to go somewhere for a day or two something happens. I was still working on making it to the workshop this weekend, only to get a text this morning from one of my 3 production guys that quit. Yes, he quit with no notice via text. And we're getting busy again. Another of my guys is waffling and seems like he's ready to leave as well. He wants to be behind a desk and the work is starting to wear him down. Now that one of the guys left, he'll probably be gone as well since he'll have to pick up some slack left.
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Alan, sounds like you need to slow your machine down.
You manage to print at amazing speeds but it sounds like in the process you are killing your workers.
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Would love to try the synergy ink but being in the UK means I will hit the usuall not available in th UK wall..
I really like the legacy for its bright white and creamy texture and zero bleed issues, maybe if you could explain the body of an ink in detail I could do some tests on some inks.
What would be your top 3 white inks for poly blends and top 3 for printing black gildan premium ring spun cotton. Hopefully at least one will be available in the UK and I can do some testing.
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Shirt shack, where are you based.
Pyramid have some interesting whites that are worth trying.
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Alan, sounds like you need to slow your machine down.
You manage to print at amazing speeds but it sounds like in the process you are killing your workers.
If the workload they've been submitted to the last few months is killing them...I don't have much hope for their future endeavors. It's been cupcake city around here except the first week in Jan when we did 20K impressions. Besides that we've been doing regular jobs and with 2 autos we've not had to bust our butts much at all. I'm just being honest, last year and so far this year we've probably been overstaffed if anything and the long, tough days are much fewer. Our sales are up and job numbers have stabilized so we're making more per job and the workload on the crew has declined as we've gotten more efficient.
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Im based in Weymouth, dorset.
I used Pyramids poly white most of last year but once I tried the Legacy from International coatings I switched as it is a brighter white.
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From what little I've been able to gather, the Legacy isn't your issue with print speed. It should shear fast, as it's a little light in the loafers, but might suffer in opacity compared to some of the whites I prefer.
Do you have Rutland or QCM where you're at shirtshack? Rutland Tidy or QCM 158 are the same product and I really like them. They will FLY on the press. They are good for 50/50 but you still need to be careful with bad bleeders.
Would love to try the synergy ink but being in the UK means I will hit the usuall not available in th UK wall..
I really like the legacy for its bright white and creamy texture and zero bleed issues, maybe if you could explain the body of an ink in detail I could do some tests on some inks.
What would be your top 3 white inks for poly blends and top 3 for printing black gildan premium ring spun cotton. Hopefully at least one will be available in the UK and I can do some testing.
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Rutland inks I can get through pyramid UK, but as I understand it inks are mixed here so formulars may be different.
I will drop Qcm a line to see if they have a UK dealer, Google did not supply an answer on that.
I did wounder about legacy opacity, when printing on to gildan premium ringspun shirts, 150 s mesh does not seem to place enough ink for total opacity, better results using 135s or 110t mesh with 20% eom and action double Squeegy.
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I don't think Rutland make any more inks in the UK, they tried and it was not successful.
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I used the Revolver Mode for the 1st time today...it was nice! I'm so used to turning heads on and off while I'm trying to operate all the other things on the press and some 7-8 color jobs can be very tough to do while keeping the auto spinning at a decent rate. Now I just programmed the heads and revolutions and it just did what I told it to do, even allowing me to run the press super fast on one revolution and the unload revolution it slows itself down to whatever speed I can unload and load. It's a feature that I'll try not to use very often, but I am really impressed with the feature and it's not all that slow either, I was spinning it at around 700/hr.
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I used the Revolver Mode for the 1st time today...it was nice! I'm so used to turning heads on and off while I'm trying to operate all the other things on the press and some 7-8 color jobs can be very tough to do while keeping the auto spinning at a decent rate. Now I just programmed the heads and revolutions and it just did what I told it to do, even allowing me to run the press super fast on one revolution and the unload revolution it slows itself down to whatever speed I can unload and load. It's a feature that I'll try not to use very often, but I am really impressed with the feature and it's not all that slow either, I was spinning it at around 700/hr.
But Alan..... you should never use that feature. Every for any reason.
/sarcasm
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I thought it was pretty awesome that it took almost 2 months before we actually used it :)
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I thought it was pretty awesome that it took almost 2 months before we actually used it :)
That it is!
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We probably used it on the first day ;D
36 pcs with white print on black.... yeah I will revolve that all day vs making 2 screens
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I used the Revolver Mode for the 1st time today...it was nice! I'm so used to turning heads on and off while I'm trying to operate all the other things on the press and some 7-8 color jobs can be very tough to do while keeping the auto spinning at a decent rate. Now I just programmed the heads and revolutions and it just did what I told it to do, even allowing me to run the press super fast on one revolution and the unload revolution it slows itself down to whatever speed I can unload and load. It's a feature that I'll try not to use very often, but I am really impressed with the feature and it's not all that slow either, I was spinning it at around 700/hr.
That's pretty cool. I always wondered if it was possible to speed up the revolver when it was printing and then slow it down when you needed to load/unload. Was 700/hr your production number or was that just what the press was indexing at? Either way, that sounds fast for sending the pallets around twice.
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When it's in revolver mode it doesn't show you the production counter but I was trying to keep up with it by counting pallets. When we weren't loading new shirts the press was running at roughly 1300/hr (but you have to remember there are no shirts coming off then so it's really not 1300, that's just the rate the press is spinning) then down to about 600/hr when I was loading/unloading. That 700/hr might be a little high but next time I do something similar I'll run the stop watch over the course of a few hundred shirts and see exactly what our print rate is. I do know we ran through 100 pieces way faster than we used to, at least in half the time, since I didn't have to run in manual mode and remember when to turn heads on and off.
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700/hr (or reasonably close!) going around twice is impressive!
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We probably used it on the first day ;D
36 pcs with white print on black.... yeah I will revolve that all day vs making 2 screens
Agreed, we try to stick to a policy of 50 or fewer gets revolver.
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700/hr (or reasonably close!) going around twice is impressive!
that is 1400 cycles per hour... can you unload and load at that speed
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1300+700÷2= 1000hr avg index speed.
Shirts only coming off half of the time=500hr.
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1300+700÷2= 1000hr avg index speed.
Shirts only coming off half of the time=500hr.
Which is faster than many shops run in 1 revolution ;)
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1300+700÷2= 1000hr avg index speed.
Shirts only coming off half of the time=500hr.
Which is faster than many shops run in 1 revolution ;)
Truth. I'll be happy if we can do 300/hr consistently once we're up and running.
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I used the Revolver Mode for the 1st time today...it was nice! I'm so used to turning heads on and off while I'm trying to operate all the other things on the press and some 7-8 color jobs can be very tough to do while keeping the auto spinning at a decent rate. Now I just programmed the heads and revolutions and it just did what I told it to do, even allowing me to run the press super fast on one revolution and the unload revolution it slows itself down to whatever speed I can unload and load. It's a feature that I'll try not to use very often, but I am really impressed with the feature and it's not all that slow either, I was spinning it at around 700/hr.
Alan,
where you producing 700 or 350 units an hour on the revolver mode?
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Yeah our CHIIID does not account for the revolver mode, in its Per/hr calculations .
Much to the dismay of my press operator hahah
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I don't think we hit 700, but we were certainly way faster than 350, so probably closer to 600. On the revolution I wasn't loading/unloading it was spinning as fast as it could go, zero dwell and 1.5 second flash. The revolution where we unloaded/loaded I had a guy unloading for the majority of the run and the press was indexing at roughly 13-14 pieces per minute but where I was the only one at the press it was only indexing at 500'ish/hr. All these numbers are just estimates as I wasn't trying to be scientific about it and the post was made without thinking people would be trying to figure out the exact production speed. I can certainly go through figuring it all out the next time we run revolver if the gallery is THAT interested. I guess I can also go back and study the cameras and count how many we ran, that just takes a lot of time.
If I'm trying to compare it to how fast we ran with the RPM, which was on average probably 400 pieces per hour with revolving I feel very confident that we can blow that number away on the Gauntlet. I love being able to just run and not worry about turning dwell times up and down based on which revolution you're on, it does all that for you.