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screen printing => Equipment => Topic started by: Inkworks on April 28, 2012, 01:41:48 AM
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Well my used 12/14 finally arrived and we had a heck of a morning getting it off the truck and into the shop. Of course it arrived one hour earlier than I was told, while I was still at home getting the (young) kids ready for school as my Wife was working an overnight shift, It only went down hill from there.....First of all it was pouring rain to the point of causing flooding in some cities in the Valley. Second the guy down the street who I had arranged to do the heavy lifting with his big forklift decided the rain was a deal breaker for him. Not that I could really blame him, I was going to pay him for his trouble, but he is a timber cutter with his own sawmill, not a forklift guy for hire, Third of all the centre hub was 80" wide, not 74" as I had been told. My double doors are exactly 74.5" wide when opened, and 78" wide with the entire frame removed, that left cinder blocks to be cut and removed....in the pouring rain, while the two Russian truck drivers waited.... understandably not impressed. An emergency call to a equipment mover one town away yielded a pro with a good forklift with fork extensions to do the big move, that took almost an hour for him to arrive, which left time for my contractor buddy to do emergency "alterations" to my doorway. Luckily he wasn't busy becaus he got flooded out of his jobsite.
After all that was taken care of, the move went slow, but smooth and predictably. I think it took two years off of my life from the stress. I thought I had everything arranged and ready to go, forklift, operator, pallet jack once inside, but it all went to crap and I take that personally when it's something I'm in charge of.
Anyways, it all appears good now, the machine appears in very good shape, was very well crated and I'm stoked to go auto for myself. I've worked on other auto's before so the learning curve shouldn't be a problem, and the machine has a bigger print area and more colours than my local competition which should give me an edge on many jobs, as well as two full size quartz flashes. I've got a certified Tech who I've known for ~20 years coming in Tuesday to get it assembled and purring like a kitten, he's also bringing me an 8000watt Olec light source for my 4' x 6' vacuum frame, as all I have right now is a flip-lid 3k Nuarc that can only do 20 x 24" frames... Did you know if you over-ride the magnet safety on a flip-lid and tilt it ~60 degrees you can shine it on a wall-mount vacuum frame to do bigger screens :P of course it takes 10 minutes to expose at that distance.... the 8K light should fix that up. I've got a pallet of used Hix re-tens to get stretched up, but we'll have 40 rigid frames back from the stretcher next week for the meantime. Good thing as I have some big runs coming down the pipe and the 6/4 Ranar was going to be the death of us... Going to have to update that boat-anchor to a Vastex 6/6 or Anatol thunder in the next year or two too, nut and bolt off contact adjustments suck big time, as do the lash-filled "micros" I can set it up reasonable quickly, but the other guys can't. It does hold registration once dialed in though.
Did I mention we're running "hair-straight-back" busy while all this is going down? 12+ hours days, printing wine glasses like no-tomorrow, 2000+ printed, cured and packed in the first 5 hours today, and we've got 5000 more to do early next week while the Auto is getting brought to life. Thank goodness people still drink in a recession! ;D
geez I need to go fishing....
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No rigging job goes without hiccups. You perservered and made it happen. A good "rolodex" is usually the answer to most problems.
Who the H told you a 6" size difference? Send them the masonary invoice.
GL with ur new press!
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Did I miss what kind and model press it was?
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The shop doesn't have 3-phase, lot's (400amps) of single phase though. It was tough to find a press that didn't need either 3-phase, or a huge compressor....which usually need 3-phase. So I ended up with a used 2006 (post asdf era) Progressive Falcon E with 2 full size (20 x 28") Quartz flashes and youth and adult platens. Bought it from a nice guy out of Texas, and have a local tech for them that I trust.
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Congratulations!! Finding a good, preowned 14/12 or 12/10 at a reasonable price is quite an accomplishment. Enjoy.
steve
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Way to go Jon.....I am going to get over your way one of these days....
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Got all the heads hung, outriggers on, pallet arms on, tomorrow we'll tweak it, lube it, zero the heads and set run-out and fire it up. The tech took off his coveralls after an hour because it was so much cleaner than most of the used presses he's installed. The thing sure dominates the shop now. We even found the original spare parts pack in the box of goodies, two full chopper sets, linear bearings etc.
So far so good, keep you fingers crossed for us when we put the power to it.
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Take pictures!
How many prints on that press?
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well we got it up and running today, had a few hurdles, but all were resolved fairly easily. The thing is a beast. Z-bar with a dial indicator showed all arms within a .002" of each other before tweaking, under a thou after.
It wouldn't rotate CCW at first, but we found a loose wire in the control panel and a quick call to Workhorse yielded the correct location for it, which is good as that is how the dryer is set-up for unloading. It all seems tight, straight and clean for a used press. I'm looking forward to the first job on it. I still have to convert the flashes to single phase.
One of the thing I found strange was that the air and power needed to be run in to the bottom of the machine. I didn't like that idea at all, so we drilled a few big holes in the top-plate and routed the electrical and air to come down from the roof and down the centre of the machine so we wouldn't end up with a trip-hazard on the floor, even with a proper wire cover it would have sucked.
Props to my Tech from Vancouver, he's done all sorts of TAS, M&R and Workhorse auto's but this was his first Progressive, and he was impressed with the build and design, not saying it's better than the above, but decently built and solid.
Pics to come.
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Well, after a busy few days playing catch-up on orders, I finally got the platens all levelled and the shrouds on all the servos, as well as figuring out the controls etc. I had one issue with the servo-index settings, turns out for 16 x 22" platens it still needs to be set for "extra small platens" I had it on "large" and it wasn't stopping perfectly lined up with the forks. 16" x 22" isn't small in my world, I guess that puts the our new print size possibilities into perspective though....
I've also figured out how to change the quartz flashes from 3 phase to single.... can you say 4 gauge copper feed....
I just got a message back from a member on our flyfishing forum and he has a 45cfm Devilbiss air chiller he's willing to give me! talk about luck! I told him I owe him big-time. Used 30cfm's seem to be around $700-$1000 around here.
This weekend I'll get the Olec 8000watt exp light wired up, the 20 x 22" flash wired up and set the off contacts on the other 11 heads. Monday I'll need to hit the industrial electrical supply shop for some 4 gauge copper and a 100amp breaker for the 20x28 flash.
Looks like this week I'll be stretching the Hix retens and setting up for some upcoming runs, I have 6 jobs of 5-7 colour wildlife prints, full back, chest and both sleeves coming up, as well as some big spot-colour jobs.
Anybody have 14 M&R sleeve/double-sleeve platens or ~20 x 28"s they want to part with?
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Take pictures!
(http://gallery.flybc.ca/albums/album826/IMGP1269.jpg)
(http://gallery.flybc.ca/albums/album826/IMGP1271.jpg)
(http://gallery.flybc.ca/albums/album826/IMGP1275.jpg)
(http://gallery.flybc.ca/albums/album826/IMGP1276.jpg)
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SWEET! Looks like a really clean machine.
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Awesome to have a press that big. Now all you need is some good art and seps to show off your capabilities.
Congrats!
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Awesome to have a press that big. Now all you need is some good art and seps to show off your capabilities.
Congrats!
You're on my list Dan, I'll be posting of some of the wildlife prints I'll be doing. The two artists I work with are t-shirt/index colour guys, but are often busy doing their own stuff so I've made a note of your contact info. One thing I am not is an artist, graphic guy yes, but not art.
I hope with good art and seps, and my background in graphic and FFC screenprinting process & controls will translate to some nice work coming off the press.
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Sweet! Did you clean the machine or was it like that when you bought it?
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That's how it showed up. Head # 1 has some ink on it's carriage and clamps etc. but the rest are pretty clean. Head # 11 has an assortment of abused parts, I assume they just got moved there as it was likely a dedicated flash head. The seller disclosed all of that to me prior to money changing hands.
I'm gonna need a better dryer next, the ol' Hix 2414 is going to be the next bottle neck, but then for us 3000pcs is massive, so as long as I can get ~250-300/hour out of it now I'll be ecstatic! Gonna have to go to gas, my electrical is maxed out.
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Looks like a heck of a nice machine there--Servo sounds interesting--if 16x22 is "extra small", what were they running before? (On ours, small is sleeves, or youth platens--but a much smaller press as well)
I feel your pain with the Hix--looks just like the dryer here but with more feed. Keeping deposits thin we crank more than 300/hr if it's not a huge print, but it crawls when the prints get big. Pocket prints we double fold and go pretty quickly.
Ran a 3K 14x20 print last month that got a bit boring loading and unloading by myself, but I guess, it was about the closest thing to time off I've gotten in a while. :)
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When the machine got here, it was set for "extra small" platens, we cycled the machine a few times with just the platen arms on and the servo "stop" point was dead on for the forks, when we put the adult platens on we switched it to "large" on the platen settings and the servo was stopping short of perfect for the forks, I switched to "medium" platen setting and it was still just short of perfect for the forks, so I went back to "extra small" at the suggestion of Phil at Workhorse (who has been very helpful, even though it's a used machine. thanks Phil!) and it was back to lifting beautifully and shudder-free as it engages all of the forks.
These machines now can come with a "Duplex" option where you can use every second head and run true all-over with a print size of 40" x 50" so the larger platen setting are probably for that sort of platen load. Our trends tend to run ~10 years behind cutting edge, so all-over may be a good option down the road or at least close to all-over. But for now even 20 x 28" is huge compared to the max print size of most of my direct competition. As is the ability to print true 8 colours with 2 flashes and 2 cool-down stations along with the ability to go to 9-10 colours without cool-downs if need be. I already have a few customers designing based on the new print sizes and colour options.
I'll be looking for a good gas oven for the auto run flat-out and the manual running too, along with good air for water and discharge inks. The Hix was $500 shipped from Chicago and runs pretty non-stop for T's and a lot of our pad-print pruducts, so it's paid for itself many hundreds of times over. When we do get a nice gas oven the Hix will get dedicated to the padprint and graphic/parts screening line, which will also give us a bit more room as we won't have 5 different types of presses (Auto, manual, rotary clamshell and padprnter) all set-up to feed one oven ;D Good thing the belt on the Hix runs in both directions, or it would be a nightmare.
We'll be looking for decent gas unit 48"-16' or smaller....(244/Winston, if you run across something used 6 months or so from now.... Sprint 38/Heatwave or the like.... ;) )
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I think a 48" for the one auto with the occasional need to have another manual press or pad print being loaded at the same time will work great. I'd say that if you plan on printing with the auto and manual at the same time, you might consider a 60" but the 48" worked for us because we always had just one press feeding the dryer at one time. Now we are printing on the manual a lot more and the auto is usually running at that time as well so the 60" has been freaking perfect. If you plan on doing a lot of WB & discharge, I'd not look at anything under 10' heat chamber. We got a 12' heat chamber and we were running a 2500 piece discharge job last week at full speed on the auto. The belt was covered but we had no bottleneck and I also have plenty of room to go higher in temp and belt speed if we needed to. I don't know if you read any of my posts about our electricity bill being cut by about $700 per month since buying the new dryer. Our old dryer was gas and IR panel and the new dryer is just gas, so the electricity draw from IR dryers is huge. I'm not exagerating this at all, you will probably save as much in electricity to more than cover the payment of a new gas dryer, and that includes the added expense of natural gas.
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Well after catching up on all the pad print and sign jobs put off during machine set-up, we finally have run a few jobs on the Falcon, so far so good. I had to re-tweak my original platen/head alignments, but that's what I get for doing that part myself. ;D I'm sure liking 2-3 second flashes the quartz give, as well as the big print/flash area.
I really want some winged floodbars too! I have an e-mail into Action Engineering unless you guys have any other suggestions for sources. (16")
As suspected the dryer is the limiting factor, but it still blows away pushing squeegees by hand. There are a couple of big 48" SPE gas dryers on Ebay right now, but they look way too long for the space I have. The price ($3000) sure would be right though....
The Al-83 is sure nice too, I have an integrator coming, but so far I've been exposing at 40-60 seconds depending on mesh and suspect I'll be able to cut that down once we run the exposure calculator as the screens show no sign of under exposure at all.
We're getting the 45 Hix retens stretched up and into circulation, I'm already seeing the need for bigger than 23 x 31's due to floodbar/squeegee clearances, which seem to be on the excessive side of safe on the stroke settings on the Falcon for clearance to the screen clamps..... I may tweak that a little...
It's a long weekend up here, I'm hoping to get the compressor moved outside and the air-dryer tucked out of the way and not just hooked up sitting in the middle of the floor. What a great day it was when a fishing aquaintance gave me the Devilbiss 45CFM chiller because he didn't need it anymore! And I'm sure glad I bought that huge parts washer as it makes floodbar/squeegee clean-up a breeze.
A diptank is now on the wish-list too, the Canadian Distributor for CCI hasn't returned my e-mail inquiry.