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screen printing => General Screen Printing => Topic started by: blue moon on June 02, 2017, 04:23:09 PM
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just got off the phone with Joe and we were talking about printing white ink on dark garments. I remember being at Danny's and seeing him run in the 900's. We ran some this week and pegged out at 916/hour. It was a 12 wide and about 14" tall print. We could have eked out a little more if there wasn't about a quarter second delay in the flash unit programing (and go figure, ROQ already offered to reprogram them for us!). Joe's ink on 150LX mesh for underbase. Squeegees running at about 50% speed.
So, what's the best you can get out of your setup? Which inks are you using? Which mesh and tension? Anything else special?
pierre
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Way over 1000 pcs....... I just posted a video on instagram of us going just under 1000 pcs an hour with a 10"x10" round white logo....... Anything more then 1000 an hour my guys start to get wasted way too fast.
Right now I'm blending my own ink using a combination of several products and when we are running fast white it's always on 150/48 base and slightly higher for the top white. 25 newtons on the mesh
check out the instagram here - https://www.instagram.com/p/BU2a8iaD6wj/?taken-by=denverprinthouse (https://www.instagram.com/p/BU2a8iaD6wj/?taken-by=denverprinthouse)
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bro send me one of those, that's my kids school! And our Church!
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Way over 1000 pcs....... I just posted a video on instagram of us going just under 1000 pcs an hour with a 10"x10" round white logo....... Anything more then 1000 an hour my guys start to get wasted way too fast.
Right now I'm blending my own ink using a combination of several products and when we are running fast white it's always on 150/48 base and slightly higher for the top white. 25 newtons on the mesh
check out the instagram here - https://www.instagram.com/p/BU2a8iaD6wj/?taken-by=denverprinthouse (https://www.instagram.com/p/BU2a8iaD6wj/?taken-by=denverprinthouse)
Whats your eom for those?
I know you have played with just about every combination. What made you decide to stick with 150/48?
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Way over 1000 pcs....... I just posted a video on instagram of us going just under 1000 pcs an hour with a 10"x10" round white logo....... Anything more then 1000 an hour my guys start to get wasted way too fast.
Right now I'm blending my own ink using a combination of several products and when we are running fast white it's always on 150/48 base and slightly higher for the top white. 25 newtons on the mesh
check out the instagram here - https://www.instagram.com/p/BU2a8iaD6wj/?taken-by=denverprinthouse (https://www.instagram.com/p/BU2a8iaD6wj/?taken-by=denverprinthouse)
Whats your eom for those?
I know you have played with just about every combination. What made you decide to stick with 150/48?
We are typically around 20-22% for the 150 mesh. It's hard for us to get less then that on that mesh. Anything lower then 150/48 for us here puts down too much ink which takes longer to flash, etc....... I'm getting ready to switch from newmans to tapeless statics now that our auto reclaim is dialed and 90% of our screens will be 150/48 and 225/40.
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I mean, I can't really compete with you guys, but we're averaging 200-300/hr for a pfp white. All air machine isn't the fastest thing in the world on bigger designs and the flashback, even as a standalone flash, slows us down a little.
I honestly don't know how you guys can load that quickly and accurately. Once I get closer to the 400/hr mark it's tough for me to keep up.
We use the tapeless s-thread statics at around 19-22 newtons and my go to white lately has been Wilflex epic LB lava white but I use IC Legacy from time to time as well.
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I honestly don't know how you guys can load that quickly and accurately. Once I get closer to the 400/hr mark it's tough for me to keep up.
Agreed! The pallets that don't raise up and down help.
My guys take 30 minutes to start running a simple job, then run the press so fast they can't load a damn shirt straight. I'd like them to get faster setups down, then run the press a couple seconds slower so that they can load a shirt straight and accurately for 8 hours a day.
Danny that is pretty impressive, S Mesh, and good Technique.
What shirts were those on? That seems to play a huge difference, in my dream software print specs are also tied to garments it is printed on and you can do a star rating on printability so over time you could get an internal and customer feedback on garments which could help better select items that can print well.
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I find that with 135-s and 150-s and wilflex lava white, pretty much any style shirt we get a nice flat white. Took a little practice with a v-squeegee, but the thin thread mesh helps a lot and we switched the print blade to a 70/90/70 and the results have been pretty great.
Printed gildan 5000 and a ringspun poly blend Anvil shirts today with the same design and they both looked great.
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The LX mesh Pierre is using is amazing mesh. Almost zero "knuckle" and I agree with Danny most of our mesh is leaning towards 150/48 and 225/40. Of course every shop, customer base, and design is different but whenever on here and we are doing something award winning shops are such as these guys I breath a sigh of relief. Too much to learn not enough time!!!
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Way over 1000 pcs....... I just posted a video on instagram of us going just under 1000 pcs an hour with a 10"x10" round white logo....... Anything more then 1000 an hour my guys start to get wasted way too fast.
Right now I'm blending my own ink using a combination of several products and when we are running fast white it's always on 150/48 base and slightly higher for the top white. 25 newtons on the mesh
check out the instagram here - https://www.instagram.com/p/BU2a8iaD6wj/?taken-by=denverprinthouse (https://www.instagram.com/p/BU2a8iaD6wj/?taken-by=denverprinthouse)
Whats your eom for those?
I know you have played with just about every combination. What made you decide to stick with 150/48?
We are typically around 20-22% for the 150 mesh. It's hard for us to get less then that on that mesh. Anything lower then 150/48 for us here puts down too much ink which takes longer to flash, etc....... I'm getting ready to switch from newmans to tapeless statics now that our auto reclaim is dialed and 90% of our screens will be 150/48 and 225/40.
Danny you going to do s mesh or lx or another brand non murakami? what type sealant?
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G890A using Tapatalk
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What is your flash time?
Is the ink dry or tacky after the flash?
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I can not do more than 720 on my sportsman EX -
120.48 and 225.90 on top - tension 20 newtons.
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I heard of the place doing 1300/hour, that's why I brought it up.
Printing at higher speeds is a combination of the equipment, chemistry and shop knowledge/circumstances.
600-700 seems to be the base number once all the main contributing factors are sorted out. This means, good screens, good ink and properly calibrated equipment. Getting to 1300 is a lot of work!
Pierre
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I printed today around 850/hr, on tri blends though which are trickier to load. Since we got the ECO we have been averaging in the 800's and its not hard at all to get in the 900's if we get the opportunity to print the right shirts. As soon as we have to double stroke it drops us in the 600 range, which feels like torture after going 800+
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Printing at insane speeds reminds me of a slogan at a body shop:
"Perfection is not our goal, completion is."
Obviously tongue in cheek.
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Printing at insane speeds reminds me of a slogan at a body shop:
"Perfection is not our goal, completion is."
Obviously tongue in cheek.
Heck I'm happy if I can print black on white shirts at a speed of 550 an hour, but I'm obsessive with how I load. With dark shirts, I max out at around 38 dozen an hour.
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Faster than I can load, and I shot a video last week and one a few weeks before that where I was loading a little over 1000/hr and got up to 1100/hr for short stretches. We were printing white on one of those jobs I recorded. We usually print white (Joe's ink) pegged out as far as squeegee speed goes, which is around 40-45"/sec on the G3. The RPM is 30"/sec. Once the pallets and flashes are at operating temp it's anywhere from 1-2 seconds so that doesn't slow us down. For most print scenarios/job specs, our ability to load the press is our bottleneck.
We use all regular S thread from Murakami, roller frames, 25-30 newtons depending on mesh count.
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Printing at insane speeds reminds me of a slogan at a body shop:
"Perfection is not our goal, completion is."
Obviously tongue in cheek.
Heck I'm happy if I can print black on white shirts at a speed of 550 an hour, but I'm obsessive with how I load. With dark shirts, I max out at around 38 dozen an hour.
I'm right there with you. I watched Danny's Instagram video, and made some adjustments on my press, but I can not seam to clear my screen with one stroke like most of you guys. I'm always 2 strokes. It's probably because of the air driven print head on my cutlass. We ran 42 dozen per hour today. And for my shop, we are beyond happy with those numbers.
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We use 150/48 smartmesh, typical EOM of 15-20% (usually closer to 20% if I'm not coating...which I'm usually not). QE flash.
I used to be able to load the old Gauntlet IIs pretty reliably all day at 85dz/hr (~1020pcs/hr). In a Print Off I did 134dz/hr (~1600pcs/hr) for almost 15 minutes. God I wouldn't want to live like that. On the new C3, if I ever had to run it, I'm sure I could do 100dz/hr (~1200pcs/hr) pretty reliably all day with the index set on the fastest. Between the greased lightning speeds of the index and the lack of the carriage going up and down it isn't even as hard as it sounds.
Hell, I used to be the trainer for all the new ops which meant as soon as I got one up to speed I lost him to another line. So I spent lots of time printing by myself. A great workout. If I was feeling particularly spry I would do 51dz/hr by myself, for weeks on end. If I was having a ho-hum day I'd stick to 45dz/hr...why those speeds? I don't know, it's just where it fell at whatever dwell times I was using.
Now, the bozos running the presses today? I wouldn't trust them to pull that off without misloading every single print. I love screen printing from the top to the bottom. Those guys are just here for a check.
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Printing at insane speeds reminds me of a slogan at a body shop:
"Perfection is not our goal, completion is."
Obviously tongue in cheek.
Heck I'm happy if I can print black on white shirts at a speed of 550 an hour, but I'm obsessive with how I load. With dark shirts, I max out at around 38 dozen an hour.
I'm right there with you. I watched Danny's Instagram video, and made some adjustments on my press, but I can not seam to clear my screen with one stroke like most of you guys. I'm always 2 strokes. It's probably because of the air driven print head on my cutlass. We ran 42 dozen per hour today. And for my shop, we are beyond happy with those numbers.
How much OC are you using and what kind of screens? I'm on air print heads too and I rarely have to double stroke.
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For me I use 3/16 off contact and rarely double stroke with s mesh. It's just my load that slows me down.
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How do you measure the speed of the squeegee?
I think all machines have different speeds at the same setting.
E.g. 50% on the dial will be a different speed on the Roque, MHM and M&R.
I I turn my MHM up all the way I get a lot of ink splashed onto the inside of the head, I don't see this on Danny's video.
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Perfect press set up- mesh count, tension, eom, off contact, squeegee profile/durometers, angles, squeegee/flood-pressure-speeds. The remaining variable is ink chemistry. Not uncommon for me to modify plastisol white inks with viscosity reducer, at low percentages (5 percent or less), to achieve desired results.
p.s. white on white does not require full gel of first ink deposit, imho.