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screen printing => Screen Making => Topic started by: Gilligan on July 30, 2012, 09:12:41 PM
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I had an mzx that Alan made up for me with some S Thread and tensioned to about 20'ish. We had it ride back in the car with us from Alan's (7 hours), then we printed on it once and reclaimed it. It has been sitting for a couple of weeks now and poof! No one has even touched it and there is no burr or anything on the frame.
Yay!, was gonna use that in a couple of days. *sigh*
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This sometimes happens, we see this every once in a while. One actually scared the crapppppp out of me it was sitting on the floor leaning up against a cabinet the mesh just popped all at once and the frame made a noise against the cabinet...never even touched it it just went BANG.
This is what we diacovered on our screens and believe it or not we have actually watched this happen just out of curiosity.
Sometimes you will hear (while tensioning) a thread or two snap or le go. Nothing happens at that point but in a little time another one or two will let go. When this happens the overall tension of the screen does not change but the threads all around the failed threads carry more load and the vector of the load changes. They let go one or two more than things start to accelerate and you get a real nice run down the screen usually in an accute angle.
So most likely the mesh was damaged in handling transport, moving around in your shop etc just a thread or two but that is all it takes.
A picture of the tear would tell us a lot.
Bottom line is it just happens sometimes, but my guess is the mesh was scratched or damaged somewhere over its short life.
RIP punn intended ;D
mooseman
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I think I know why that one busted. I can see something in that pic you sent. Did you have another screen leaning up against it at any point? We've had screens bust that didn't have any protective tape on them that looked exactly like that. The backside of another screen was resting up against it and where the mesh is against the roller like that, it takes very little to bust it. We always put the polyken tape around the frame for that very reason.
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Well, it was an M3 that was leaned against it. So there was actually nothing touching it at that point since the M3 is so much larger.
So I don't THINK that was the reason... now they have been leaned against by some static wood frames previously I'm sure... and gorilla Terry had reclaimed it while I wasn't around. So it's possible that he was a little rougher than he should. This will definitely give him a cause for pause there. I sent him that pic at the same time and he flipped out, knowing it was just sitting there. If he doesn't get it now how sensative these things are I think I'll kick him in the teeth. ;)
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Do you have any polyken tape yet? Just regular duct tape from lowes will help protect it.
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When a screen is at a higher tension it does not take much. Just pressure from another screen is enough to bust it sometimes.
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Not yet Alan... though I REALLY need some.
J'... I agree, but the M3 isn't even touching on the inside of the MZX (pretty much impossible given the size difference).
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Get Gorilla tape from Lowes, $9.00 / roll we do not dip tank and we are at 3 m onths on the tape and it loos 100%
mooseman
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BOOM!
My M3 just went. Had a "nice" thick EOM that was under exposed and needed to be reclaimed but I wanted to see how thick the EOM was. So I tossed it outside for a "quick" post exposure and went to lunch.
When I got back, the frame was pretty hot. Stuck it back in the shop... granted probably 90 degrees but better than 100+ the frame had gotten. Few seconds later I look and it split. I'm guessing the expansion and contraction from heat was too much.
Le$$on learned. :(
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Are you stretching them your self? Wondering if your not softening them corners well enough, I would bet to much heat and under softened corners could spell doom.
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Both of these were made up by Alan. The m3 was done on a roller master and definitely had sloppy corners.
128n mesh at about 35 (MAYBE 30 newtons).
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Raincloud meshed em? I think we found the culprit :)
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Oh damn, y'all gonna try to put that busted 128 on me, over a month after I stretched it? I see, that's how it's gonna be, tough crowd. I understand, but here's my argument, the corners were over softened so that they had plenty of room to retention and we didn't take that one up to near what I usually do. I think we stopped at 40-45 or so and I could have gotten that count up to 60. It wasnt at a delicate tension level, far from it so i dont think it could have busted from getting hot or cold. It wasnt the corners, it would have busted long ago before it dropped its 10-15 newtons since it was stretched. Was that the first run through production?
We've had our share of busted screens over the last year, but zero of about 35 with bolt roller mesh and at 50-65 newtons have busted so I really don't think it happened from a bad stretching. It would be the first of its kind to do so, but I'm not perfect, so close though :)
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Hey now, not all of us. ;)
I'd bet it was mishandling. I can't count how many times I've pointed out where a rip started--usually near a corner, tangent to the outer face of the screen, where another screen was carelessly stacked against it. Sometimes on the long roller, coinciding with where a smaller static would hit the roller and start a rip.
I know it's not an option for many, but if you're just starting out with rollers, I'd do all the work on them yourself for a month or two--you'll actually know what's going on with them then. If you have other people doing random things to your screens and not understanding the consequences, it will make you crazy trying to figure out what's wrong--because they didn't even know they screwed up...
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Why am I not suprised to read yet another topic about failed S threads.
Change your mesh to standard threads and don't look back.
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Why am I not suprised to read yet another topic about failed S threads.
Change your mesh to standard threads and don't look back.
One was an S thread, the other was a 128N at only 30 newtons.
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Guess you missed the part about the last mesh that busted was Roller mesh (128n).
To everyone else trying to be helpful,
I'll agree that my guy isn't as careful as I would like him to be. I don't THINK he's ever done anything to cause this but he very well may have. Definitely not when it happened though as I was the one that was handling it. Only thing I can think of is that it was possibly "injured" before this production cycle and then the heat (expansion contraction) was too much for that particular part that might have been injured. I literally brought it in from outside, walked around looking for a good place to rest it, leaned it against an mzx (shirt side out) so nothing was touching it at all.
As you can see it ripped in the middle.
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I guess that was my point about doing everything yourself for a while--no matter WHEN the mesh is mishandled, it will manifest itself eventually. Even if the mesh was mishandled before it went on the frame it will do that.
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Oh, Alan to answer your questions.
This was it's 2nd production run.
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I mean no offense (alright, maybe a little) but we see this a lot in the bike world, where some 18 year old squid gets on a bike with over 100 horsepower, after minimal experience on the 250 he learned on.
With luck, only a few scratches, dents, and bruises, (and rips).
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ouch, now I'm a squid.
Hey, I wear pants and shoes when I print... now my printer on the other hand is always barefoot and in shorts. ;)
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When we were using nothing but statics, we might go an entire year without a mesh busting or damage of any kind, but since going with higher tension, we had 30+ last year. When we were using statics, none of them busted because I was the one handling them 90% of the time and they were low tension. Out of all the screens that we lost last year, maybe 5 of them had known reasons or busted while someone was working with them, the others nobody knows where or how they busted, they just did. But I know exactly how they bust because I watch people mishandling screens all the time when they have no idea I'm watching, and they think they are handling them correctly. Almost all of them that bust do so without the person knowing that they hit it on something, or something fell against it, or there is a knick in a table that it was sitting on. But I say if a screen can make it through production one time without busting, it should make it 100 times if handled correctly. If they all just busted for no reason, none of them would be lucky enough to survive for 5-10 years like many of ours have done.
This is something I've been watching intently for the last 2 years or so, and I'll say that if the mesh wasn't overly tensioned, and properly softened corners and no defects in the frame to cause a tear, then 99% of the time that they fail, is because of mishandling by humans. Frame knicks, bad corner softening, defective mesh and too much tension will bust mesh but those rarely make it more than a few minutes off the table before they bust, at least in our shop.
And on the topic of S thread versus standard, yes, S threads are way more delicate, it's not even close, but we've had standard thread and S thread fail at exactly the same rate here, with roller mesh holding up at a much higher rate. If you stretch the S threads correctly and handle them right, they last as long as any other screen. But if you have even a fingernail that has sharp corner, it will bust a 135/48 easily. The only roller mesh I've had bust were 102N panels I bought from ryonet and they split on the first retension way before I got to my target tension level, so I know those were defective panels and not user error. All 3 busted while on the roller master at 40, 35, then 30 newtons, and they should go up to 50 with no issues.
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In the pic the tear did not happen on the edge of the roller on either end. I agree with Alan its been mishandled some where some how. Like Alan if it was something done wrong during stretching it would manifest itself almost immediately surely not after to production cycles.
I wonder about your printer, you explained how he is horrible with a squeegee what makes you think he is any gentler with the screen? I had a guy one time that was such a hammer head he was digging the corner of the squeegee into the mesh every time he finished a print, he printed like he was mad or some thing, well abuse he was causing the mesh would not manifest itself till after reclaim and the emulsion was acting like a glue.
Also I would think with high tensions even miss handling with the scoop coater can abuse the mesh enough to weaken it, just a thought.
BTW I have a roller here it was the first one we bought about 6 years ago I stretched it and retensioned about five times its a 160 roughly 25 newtons, I have used it hundreds of times and it is still going strong.
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Kevin I think you are just abusing those screens somewhere and surviving a car trip at tension is already pushing it.
Newman Roller Mesh is the most durable mesh I've ever seen, no doubt, but you pay for it.
S mesh is very delicate indeed.
Our rate of failure was/is very minimal with both. After making a good screen it's all in the handling.
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Guess you missed the part about the last mesh that busted was Roller mesh (128n).
To everyone else trying to be helpful,
Ahh.. so sorry my answer didn't fall into the catagory you were looking for which obviuosly was you looking for someone other than yourself to blame for using what has been proven to be a very problematic mesh (S thread)
As for the roller mesh, mesh breaks. Remesh and move on. If your guy mishandles them, why have you not got in his face about it to rectify the problem or remove him from your shop. No employee who breaks 30 screens in a yr is worth having period!
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LOL... you aren't even close to paying attention.
I've had TWO screens bust. One was an S thread and one was the roller mesh.
I'm just about as new to this printing thing as my guy is. Granted, I've spent WAY more time learning things on the forum than he has so I have book knowledge under my belt. But he's getting it.
No, I wasn't looking for someone else to blame. Hell, I wasn't even venting. I'm not even mad about it. I'm merely disappointed, I didn't pay top dollar for the mesh so that helps. Thanks to some very generous folks on this very board.
I've been using this as all lessons in the learning process. My shop right now is chaos to put it nicely. There is NOTHING we do right in this shop so it is no wonder why things happen like this. We do TRY to not make obvious mistakes (me more than him) but it's inevitable in this environment we are currently in. This will change shortly as we move to a new location and get set up more properly.
So no, not looking to blame anyone... just adding to the DISCUSSION, on a DISCUSSION forum. ;)
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Just thought I would add that we use only S mesh and only had popping problems with 310s when we first made the switch because we attempted to push the envelope with our tensions. After we learned that lesson we have had no problems and would much rather the S mesh over the standard mesh from our local supplier that we were previously using.
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Well I think you ought to ..... nope I got nothing...
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Just thought I would add that we use only S mesh and only had popping problems with 310s when we first made the switch because we attempted to push the envelope with our tensions. After we learned that lesson we have had no problems and would much rather the S mesh over the standard mesh from our local supplier that we were previously using.
Ditto here. If everywhere your screen rests is "mesh safe" and nobody is being a dingus about handling them and you don't try and over tension mesh you'll see about the same rate of failure, across the board, on any type of thread.
S thread is problematic only for shops that aren't giving their screens a safe home everywhere they rest.
....and probably for shops that have certain equipment limitations I would imagine. But it's a shame because it just has to be outperforming standard thread mesh at those low static frame tensions.
I still want to emphasize that there's something to the roller mesh that made it tough as nails compared to good quality mesh at the same thread diameter and tpi. And I guess there better be for the price they charge for that stuff!
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I still want to emphasize that there's something to the roller mesh that made it tough as nails compared to good quality mesh at the same thread diameter and tpi. And I guess there better be for the price they charge for that stuff!
And that is my only complaint... though due to some kind soul ;) I didn't have to pay that much for this mesh I DO know what it's worth and seeing it breaks my heart in that manner.
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I still want to emphasize that there's something to the roller mesh that made it tough as nails compared to good quality mesh at the same thread diameter and tpi. And I guess there better be for the price they charge for that stuff!
And that is my only complaint... though due to some kind soul ;) I didn't have to pay that much for this mesh I DO know what it's worth and seeing it breaks my heart in that manner.
Oh lordy, I totally forgot about that and was like "why is he winking at me?". Haha.
Don't stress it, it's part of learning. Make everywhere you set a screen mesh safe. Everywhere. No exceptions for anyone. No screens clanging around against each other stacked on the wall, ever. It will solve 99% of these sort of problems and certainly isn't hurting anything or costing too much to arrange your shop like this.
The 128n should not have popped at 30, they can go to some sphincter-tightening high tensions and hold them for many cycles. If Alan built your screen I'm sure he softened the corners correctly.
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The 128n should not have popped at 30, they can go to some sphincter-tightening high tensions and hold them for many cycles. If Alan built your screen I'm sure he softened the corners correctly.
The 128n can handle 60n with ease on an M3 frame.
I've got some 205n's, 230's and 255's that I made last year.. been sitting at 40 ever since and i used the heck outa them over the last year. I do have one of them that has a small nick down by the bar and it hasn't grown or given me a problem. I've not broken a screen yet over the past year and I'm not that gentle with my screens.
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The 128n should not have popped at 30, they can go to some sphincter-tightening high tensions and hold them for many cycles. If Alan built your screen I'm sure he softened the corners correctly.
The 128n can handle 60n with ease on an M3 frame.
I've got some 205n's, 230's and 255's that I made last year.. been sitting at 40 ever since and i used the heck outa them over the last year. I do have one of them that has a small nick down by the bar and it hasn't grown or given me a problem. I've not broken a screen yet over the past year and I'm not that gentle with my screens.
That's about what I ran them at when I used that mesh, I think it was around 65 n/cm.
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That's about what I ran them at when I used that mesh, I think it was around 65 n/cm.
Run white bases on those tensions for awhile and everything else feels like rowing a boat against the tide.
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yeah, it was sweet for thick bodied plastisol, especially for being a manual shop. I must say that the 150s/48 outperforms it though. but I miss the ultra low o.c. with the roller mesh.
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Hell I busted two 150/48 s-threads on Monday learning how to soften the corners just right. Think I got it figured out now!
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My first two years working with newmans was on 18x20's with all mesh stretched to 50n. Maybe that why I have roller sickness and always strive for the best screen possible.
25 yrs later, I'm still chasing high tension.
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My first two years working with newmans was on 18x20's with all mesh stretched to 50n. Maybe that why I have roller sickness and always strive for the best screen possible.
25 yrs later, I'm still chasing high tension.
I think you get there easier with a more square frame, like an 18x20 or the 25x30 M3s that we use. The screen is more balanced it seems than with, say a 25x36, although I greatly prefer that longer frame size.
Aside from getting your staff to handle them correctly the much bigger challenge is having a press that can accurately hold the very low off contact and other parameters that high tensions allow and require to take full advantage of the situation. I think some of the newman gear puts the cart ahead of the horse in this regard.
With roller mesh, it's not difficult at all to have all your screens stabilized at 45 n/cm+, I think you could make that happen in a high production environment and reap the benefits of reduced press time for the effort.
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I have to keep an eye on our press a little more often to make sure it's within a certain tolerance because we use higher tension screens, but if I had to do 3-4 times as much maintenance as I do now, I still think it would be worth it. The ink consumption, press setup time, more likely to get a "One Hit", never having to double stroke anything, quality (subjective), etc. all make it worth it to me to get, and then maintain high tension.
If a mesh is supposed to be able to handle 25 newtons max, I can and have been taking them up to 30-35 and then letting them relax down to 25, then retension them back to 30 and by the time they work harden, they are usually right at that 25 newton target level. On our roller mesh, I don't take it up past it's max tension level, but right to it, then try to keep them all around 40-45 newtons. I just haven't been able to convince myself it's worth it to get a 205 up to 60 newtons and keep it there when 45 works great. The 205N's that I have printed at 60 newtons were great, but so are the ones at 45.
I love tension and screen talk, it's my second favorite topic in this industry.
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I reached a similar conclusion. The Roller mesh seems to really settle into 40-45 n/cm naturally and requires very little upkeep after it becomes stable and work-hardened.
It's been said that you don't start seeing additional benefits until you get up into 80 n/cm territory or something like that. I think there is a benefit to being in the 60s but it only becomes apparent when doing some crazy shizzle like printing top colors over a wet underbase. You do need to retension a lot more to hold it at 60 though.
I think dedication to press maintenance and the ability of your press to make that maintenance easy and then hold it's tolerances are what makes high and ultra high tension work for a shop. It's a systemic commitment that goes beyond simply increasing tension.
I found we were spinning our tires with ultra high tension as our platens could not stay in close enough parallel and the press heads could not hold o.c. consistently enough to take advantage of it. With the right machine I'd wager you would reap many hours of saved press time for every hour you put into adjusting the press.
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I wonder if any autos out there right now could really hold it's parallelism enough to calibrate it and forget it for a year or so? I doubt it, I know ours needs tweaked here and there and there are lots of autos out there that aren't near as stout in those areas so I bet they need constant care to keep within 200 microns or so between all pallets and printheads. I think our old centurian could have been one to hold everything in place once you got it dialed in, but getting the pallets parallel was hard for me, and took a lot of time each time I tried. But the way it was engineered, having pallet tips and printhead stabilizers with a double track printhead and not a single would have helped a lot over the more traditional press you see today.
I tried keeping our pallets within a sheet of paper of one another and all of our newmans at the maximum tension level for that mesh count and I couldn't keep up and still do other things I wanted to do around the shop. Setups were fast, but not that much faster than they were with 35 newton screens. Now with a working regi system, as long as we are within a certain tolerance of parallel, our screens all at a good tension level, we can setup a 6 color in 10 minutes including test prints and taping off regi marks. I've preached about high tension and the benefits for a few years now, and I certainly understand the arguments against, but when I look back at all the headaches we used to have and the crap we went through during setups, now we don't have any of that and most of it has to do with proper tensioned screens. Sure there are plenty of other things that went into it, but it had as big of a role as any other variable that we've changed around here. You can get quality with 15 newtons, most of us have done it, but you can also get from LA to New York on a stagecoach, or you could fly first class.
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Having never used Newman's roller mesh, what benefits do you see of that mesh over the S mesh? Obviously you can hold higher tension, but is that necessarily a better thing than the S mesh, which is recommended to be at 15-30 newtons depending on the mesh count? Is the open area between the threads the same? I'm imagining not, as that is what seems to make the s mesh so delicate - the fact that its threads are so thin and thus the open area in between the threads larger. I'm guessing that's the trade off: only capable of lower tension with the S mesh, but it comes more open area? The three brand names of mesh I've always heard very good things were Murakami, Newman, and Sefar. Anyone wanna give a crash course on the pros/cons of each? I haven't encountered any registration issues with the Murakami Smart mesh, which was one of our big concerns moving to a lower tension mesh.
We use to use an unknown brand name from our supplier and maintained 40-55 newtons on our m3's, but I'd take the lower tensioned s mesh over it any day -- less headaches and stoppage on-press has been so worth it with the s mesh (especially with white underbases and solid/spot top colors), even if it meant a learning curve on accepting that we shouldn't go above 20-23 newtons on the 310s. I'd rather have delays, if any, while off-press than the headache of having to double stroke things to get the ink to clear with a butt-load of pressure with high tensioned mesh -- of course I was also using a v-squeegee at the time too.
And lastly, Alan, I see that you are still avoiding accountability for Gilligan's busted screens. Tsk.. Tsk.. Tsk..
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LOL... if I would have faulted Alan I would have never posted this. I know it was a joke but I don't ever look a gift horse in the mouth or leave them hanging out to dry.
Clearly we did something wrong... we are holding off on the rollers till we get moved into the new space (more motivation?)... really sucks because I just got 24 M3's in today 14 of them still have mesh on them and just need to be retensioned back up! Maybe that will motivate?
Since we are discussiong S mesh vs Newman... how does the opening affect what kind of detail you can hold? I would think that with more open mesh you are essentially lower the mesh count in a sense... am I wrong in thinking that? Or is it slightly the case but not much given that you still have X threads per inch?
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I'm far from a guru (obviously), but I haven't notice any loss in detail. If anything it may have improved because what I couldn't push through a 200 before, I can now whistle through a 310s. I remember double stroking Union's Ultrasoft Lemon Yellow on our Freedom on a 200 and still not having the opacity I am getting with a 310s (as a top coat) [don't know how much the v-squeegee and non-triple durometer squeegee accounted for that though] -- in fact, we are easily clearing the screen with Union's Maxopake inks with the 310s for top prints. So if detail is lost by more open area when comparing same non-s mesh counts to s mesh counts, it would, it my estimation be offset -- if not made better -- by being able to go higher in mesh counts with the S mesh. Back to my dark corner now...
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I'm going to say I had nothing to do with it's short life :) I'll just post this link and let you guys read the article about the benefits of S threads and most of your questions can be answered within that article. It's really a great technical article that I've printed out and read a dozen times or so. http://www.murakamiscreen.com/documents/MURAKAMITECHNICALFOCUSSTHREADS.pdf (http://www.murakamiscreen.com/documents/MURAKAMITECHNICALFOCUSSTHREADS.pdf)
I plan on having a 50/50 combo of S thread screens and roller mesh screens in our shop. They both do everything well, the roller mesh will hold amazingly high tension and we all know the benefits of that, plus on the lower mesh counts, you can deposit a lot of ink with one stroke, and I have had great luck with "one hits" using the 102N. They both will do the same thing essentially, but I think the S threads are more versatile. However, I want the roller mesh on hand for my workhorse mesh. I know the roller mesh will last forever and will do all the grunt work, any of my "one hits", then the S threads will be for my discharge jobs, along with any process jobs and underbasing for sim process on darks with a 225S. I like the S thread because it will hold some great detail at lower mesh counts and it's obviously easier to print with with the higher % open area. Any shop could be successful with either mesh and I want to have a combination. I want 88N and 102N's for one hits, 205N as a great all-around mesh as my workhorse that can do anything from underbasing to halftones, and maybe one of the higher mesh counts like the 272N. The most common mesh count we use in the shop right now is the 205N. In the S threads I want 135S, 150S, 180S, 225S, 300S and finally the 330S. Now there is no way anyone needs that many different mesh counts maybe you could get by with the 110S, 150S, 225S and 300S without having any real problems, but I really like to have as much control over the process as possible and have the perfect mesh count for any occasion.
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... how does the opening affect what kind of detail you can hold? I would think that with more open mesh you are essentially lower the mesh count in a sense... am I wrong in thinking that? Or is it slightly the case but not much given that you still have X threads per inch?
Yes, thinner threads dump ink at higher counts like low count standard threads do. Our 150/48 screens print like std 110 or 125 or so in terms of ink deposit yet hold much higher detail. To answer the question on detail....
Someone out there in the world of screen printing will have a better answer than this but the short of it, to me, is that if you have proper eom, that is your emulsion is adequately bridging the mesh, you will see increased detail on your printed substrate with increased open area. Where the emulsion fails to adequately bridge due to improper coating or simply failure of the emulsion to hold it's shape over too large an area then you see a decrease. It's a fact that fat threads will block your dots and fine lines and higher TPI mesh will support the emulsion better, but it's all relative.
The best screen on earth would be one that had epic amounts of open area, ultra strong, slick, whisper thin threads and was paired with a super emulsion that could bridge vast mesh openings while magically holding a perfect film thickness and shape yet remaining highly elastic.
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The best screen on earth would be one that had epic amounts of open area, ultra strong, slick, whisper thin threads and was paired with a super emulsion that could bridge vast mesh openings while magically holding a perfect film thickness and shape yet remaining highly elastic.
Get to it raincloud - "make it happ'n capt'n".