TSB
screen printing => Equipment => Topic started by: ScreenPrinter123 on April 09, 2013, 11:39:21 AM
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Ok, so on our last job of a decent size run (and it seems to be worse for wb and dc), we were stopping a lot to remove lint "boogers" (seems to be the industry's term) from the bottom side of the screens that block the ink from flowing through the open area, which was very very very frustrating.
So, I have questions for any of you using a roller squeegee in your first screen to help mitigate this:
(1) Is it really better than just using a standard squeegee with light pressure? How many of you use a regular squeegee with ink in the screen (no image shot out on the screen, of course)?
(2) My major concern: With wb and d/c we have a lot less need to make sure the pallets are as tacky as printing with plastisol. So, if I'm misting the print side of the screen with adhesive, how does that affect the shirt insofar as it lifting the shirt from the pallet? I can foresee a situation where shirts get lifted up and then creased and then the print is all screwed up if the pallet isn't tacky enough to keep the shirt down, since the tack on the bottom of the screen will, however minimal, be pulling up on the shirt as the table lowers.
(3) How often (i.e., how many shirts do you go through) are you having to wipe down the roller squeegee screen's print side and re-apply the adhesive?
(4) I presume most of you use the waterbase glue (we use "Textac") -- what ratio of water/glue do you use? Are you literally spraying it from a misting handle sprayer (a standard water bottle sprayer? - see attached)?
(5) Do you use ink in that screen with roller squeegees or do you do it ink-less?
(6) Any other issues/recommendations/pitfalls you've encountered now that you've had experience with it?
Thanks.
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Just a side note that in my 25 years, "Dust Bunnies" has been the standard. Today's "Lint Boogers" is a first timer.
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I've always called them boogers but I never heard that from anyone I just started calling them that when I first started.
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And I don't use a roller squeegee or whatever it is that's popular right now. Maybe one day I'll see the benefit and it will be worth the effort but right now I don't really see a need for it for many reasons that are shop specific. I see how others can benefit though, just not something we need right now.
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We actually aren't really seeing any benefit to the roller squeegee either... I've been trying to use it over and over for various applications, but I'm not really seeing much of a benefit if any... Maybe I'm doing something wrong? My whites are pretty flat as it is, so I'm not sure if I even need the thing now
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Is anyone using a booger remover screen in their first head??? Do we only have boogers in New Orleans? Many of you are printing tons more shirts than we are, so you all must have to stop to remove the lint from the open area of the screen or are using a technique to mitigate this issue -- what's your technique? Pitfalls of it? etc.?
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Hey, I'm sorry that I sidetracked this with my long-eared reference, but now let's get back on track. 123 is just trying to specifically solve the "lint picking first screen" issue.
The whole general roller squeegee debate can be handled elsewhere, as it has been like crazy in the past.
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I'm not using one now, but when we did, we just put pallet paper on the print side of the screen and a light mist of adhesive. Threw some base or extender, or even grease in the screen. Soft squeegee, light pressure. Just enough to kiss the garment and pull those boogers off the shirt. (we just call them plugs when they are in the screen). For us, it's not worth the time putting that screen in and out. Even with 16 colors, sometimes we need that head.
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Hey, I'm sorry that I sidetracked this with my long-eared reference, but now let's get back on track. 123 is just trying to specifically solve the "lint picking first screen" issue.
The whole general roller squeegee debate can be handled elsewhere, as it has been like crazy in the past.
I'd like to start the "Ban Frog From TheShirtBoard" bandwagon -- he hijacks threads... Oust him! Oust him!
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We've had some booger issues before but usually a good pop of the shirts and a quick swipe of the hand a few times gets rid of most of the boogs. The few times I've used a booger picker screen I just used a blank screen with soft hand clear in the screen, regular squeegee with very little pressure and a light misting of spray tack every couple hundred shirts.
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On large orders 5,000+ we have a person with a larg lint roller role the shirts prior to printing. Some brands are more prone to this than others. Also if the order calls for a LC and Full back we run the LC (smaller) print 1st, most of the lint will fall off due to handeling.
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We've had some booger issues before but usually a good pop of the shirts and a quick swipe of the hand a few times gets rid of most of the boogs. The few times I've used a booger picker screen I just used a blank screen with soft hand clear in the screen, regular squeegee with very little pressure and a light misting of spray tack every couple hundred shirts.
Water/tack ratio (estimated if not precisely done, but I know in your shop it must be logged in at the 13th decimal)? :-)
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I used to not put any water in our tack but due to recent issues with my printer putting entirely too much tack on the pallets I've started cutting it about 60% tack/40% water. We've had some distorted prints, and even a shirt ripped with a big enough hole to put a backetball through (literally the first time a shirt has ripped while trying to take it off the pallet). I decided since he won't listen and put less adhesive on the pallets that I had to start diluting the stuff so it was less potent. He was putting so much tack on the pallets that one of our smaller guys and a girl who has helped out from time to time couldn't remove the shirt at all.
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We are running a roller in head #1 right now. 850 shirts, frt/bck. Watebased tac on the boards, just a light misting of spray tac
on the bottom of the lint screen. makes life a whole lot easier not having to stop the press every coupla dozen shirts.
no lint boogs anywhere except on the bottom of the lint screen.
John
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Well, it's ordered. Will post results when able to - hopefully we'll have some major time saving benefits as some have and not have to worry about adding ink/taping/possible breakthrough of the ink, etc. with the standard squeegee.
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One trick I use is if the shirt is 2 sided, print the side with less coverage first, all of the handling will make most of the lint fall off so there is less when you print the side with more coverage.
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I all ways pop my shirt before putting them on the pallet for printing and that only gets lint in my eyes, I hate to waste a head to remove lint, having a 7 color and one for flash leaves me pretty tight. My shop is like a lint and dust bunny ghetto, and I would love to move them out to low rent LOL.
Darryl
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Ours is a "no-pop-shop" It raises way too much lint and makes a huge mess of everything including wreaking havoc with lint for the padprinter and graphics screenprinting. We have a big press so sticky screens get used when needed.
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On larger WB/DC jobs we use what we call a pick up screen. It's an exposed and hardened screen with no image obviously. We run it on head 1 with a small amount of curable reducer as lubricant. This also makes any pin holes invisible. We lightly mist the bottom with adhesive. Print 1 stroke with light pressure. After only 500 pcs. here is the result:
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I'm not using one now, but when we did, we just put pallet paper on the print side of the screen and a light mist of adhesive. Threw some base or extender, or even grease in the screen. Soft squeegee, light pressure. Just enough to kiss the garment and pull those boogers off the shirt. (we just call them plugs when they are in the screen). For us, it's not worth the time putting that screen in and out. Even with 16 colors, sometimes we need that head.
I adhere the pallet paper with spray adhesive so the tape does the lint pickup. Works beautifully up to 1k shirts. First few uses are pretty tacky so watch out for that / use a shirt to get rid of some of the stickiness.
There is really no added setup if you are a bigger shop and use the roller squeegee, have the screen setup ahead of time, throw in (don't even need to tri-loc) put in squeegee, less than 15 secs and done, put pressure to 10-15psi for us.
I don't use one often and like deep said, I have a 7 color as well and 1 flash so the flash is 99% of the time in the second head.
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I'm not using one now, but when we did, we just put pallet paper on the print side of the screen and a light mist of adhesive. Threw some base or extender, or even grease in the screen. Soft squeegee, light pressure. Just enough to kiss the garment and pull those boogers off the shirt. (we just call them plugs when they are in the screen). For us, it's not worth the time putting that screen in and out. Even with 16 colors, sometimes we need that head.
I adhere the pallet paper with spray adhesive so the tape does the lint pickup. Works beautifully up to 1k shirts. First few uses are pretty tacky so watch out for that / use a shirt to get rid of some of the stickiness.
There is really no added setup if you are a bigger shop and use the roller squeegee, have the screen setup ahead of time, throw in (don't even need to tri-loc) put in squeegee, less than 15 secs and done, put pressure to 10-15psi for us.
I don't use one often and like deep said, I have a 7 color as well and 1 flash so the flash is 99% of the time in the second head.
This is very interesting to hear that you have used the pallet paper for this. Earlier today we began brainstorming a new product which uses a roll of pallet paper mounted onto a frame for use as a de-linting tool. This will allow you to simply pull the paper forward and tear off the lint covered paper.
As always - we sincerely appreciate any input on this project from our favorite group of veterans - TSB.
I will post pictures when available but for now - consider us - on the job!
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I will say we use our roller squeegee's for a lint pickup screen all the time. We just ran an order of over 30,000 prints and the roller squeegee worked great for picking up lint. We keep the teflon sheet on the print side of the screen and use a light mist of albatross waterbase glue. Every 1,000 shirts we do a quick wipe/spray which adds about 20 seconds to every 1000 shirts. We only had to stop once or twice to get lint balls out of the screens that the pickup screen missed. Otherwise we probably would have been stopping every 10 minutes or so. I'm not here to endorse action by anymeans(I pay full retail for everything I buy from them) but the roller squeegee really does benefit "my" shop. Our quality is really good without it but there's certain types of shirts that we print almost daily which certainly come out better using the roller. We've put over 100,000 prints on one of our rollers and it's still in perfect condition so the quality has been good for us. Anyways, to answer the question it works really good for us as a lint pickup and even better for hoodies/shirts that have tons of loose fibers.
Danny
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I will say we use our roller squeegee's for a lint pickup screen all the time. We just ran an order of over 30,000 prints and the roller squeegee worked great for picking up lint. We keep the teflon sheet on the print side of the screen and use a light mist of albatross waterbase glue. Every 1,000 shirts we do a quick wipe/spray which adds about 20 seconds to every 1000 shirts. We only had to stop once or twice to get lint balls out of the screens that the pickup screen missed. Otherwise we probably would have been stopping every 10 minutes or so. I'm not here to endorse action by anymeans(I pay full retail for everything I buy from them) but the roller squeegee really does benefit "my" shop. Our quality is really good without it but there's certain types of shirts that we print almost daily which certainly come out better using the roller. We've put over 100,000 prints on one of our rollers and it's still in perfect condition so the quality has been good for us. Anyways, to answer the question it works really good for us as a lint pickup and even better for hoodies/shirts that have tons of loose fibers.
Danny
Wow! this is really great to hear Danny. Thanks for taking the time to provide your experienced viewpoint sir. Perhaps we should redirect our attention to using your setup as a delinting station. After-all - why reinvent when we have something that will work so well for two different applications.
Danny - Your testimonial means a great deal and i sincerely thank you sir!
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total dumb question, but does the teflon go on the inside or outside of the screen?
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total dumb question, but does the teflon go on the inside or outside of the screen?
Outside
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total dumb question, but does the teflon go on the inside or outside of the screen?
Eric - BTW thank you very much for the great job Night Owls did on our new shirts. Our staff wears them everyday here. It's real morale booster to our team and an enhancement to our company image.
If your considering a Roller squeegee - they come with a 100% satisfaction gaurentee.
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I adhere the pallet paper with spray adhesive so the tape does the lint pickup. Works beautifully up to 1k shirts. First few uses are pretty tacky so watch out for that / use a shirt to get rid of some of the stickiness.
We do this as well and has always worked nice.
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I will say we use our roller squeegee's for a lint pickup screen all the time. We just ran an order of over 30,000 prints and the roller squeegee worked great for picking up lint. We keep the teflon sheet on the print side of the screen and use a light mist of albatross waterbase glue. Every 1,000 shirts we do a quick wipe/spray which adds about 20 seconds to every 1000 shirts. We only had to stop once or twice to get lint balls out of the screens that the pickup screen missed. Otherwise we probably would have been stopping every 10 minutes or so. I'm not here to endorse action by anymeans(I pay full retail for everything I buy from them) but the roller squeegee really does benefit "my" shop. Our quality is really good without it but there's certain types of shirts that we print almost daily which certainly come out better using the roller. We've put over 100,000 prints on one of our rollers and it's still in perfect condition so the quality has been good for us. Anyways, to answer the question it works really good for us as a lint pickup and even better for hoodies/shirts that have tons of loose fibers.
Danny
Well this certainly puts my mind at ease -- I was really worried about how many times I was going to stop on my forthcoming 30,000 piece job! :-).
Seriously though -- thanks for letting me know. Do you have a repeatable ratio of water/glue that is done by weight or do you just estimate all the time? Thanks!
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Reporting Back:
Roller Squeegee came in -- used it today on white ink plastisol that was showing on a purple shirt (lots of open area) and having a top color. I will never ever ever ever ever ever ever print white plastisol ink without this again - it's almost comparable to printing on top of clear packaging tape for those of you who use that method when registering screens. While it may be cost prohibitive for some, you'll kick yourself after you've tried it for not doing it sooner. I'd recommend using it whether it's white ink on dark garment or white underbase for plastisol -- even makes the print feel lighter aside from smoother and you'll be able to get more one hit whites than you would without it (at least we will).
Only question -- those of you who use a teflon sheet, what kind've glue do you use to stick the sheet to the print side of the screen? I just used some of the yellow roller tape for the jobs today, but it sags in the middle and doesn't remain flush on the mesh. So, while I initially planned on using the same 23x31 frame screen for lint pick up and white smoothing (I planned on just removing the teflon sheet when using it for picking up lint), it looks like I may just have to permanently adhere the teflon sheet to the screen so it doesn't sag during production and make a separate screen for the lint picker-upper. Any suggestions on glue that would be permanent? I coated the mesh 2/2 with WR25, exposed it for 20+ minutes and used a boat load of Permx, so this screen should last until my 2 year old son retires, but I don't know if some glue would be better to use than others? I have some gorilla glue -- yes/no? Anyone from Action have any suggestions? Erik?
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Reporting Back:
Roller Squeegee came in -- used it today on white ink plastisol that was showing on a purple shirt (lots of open area) and having a top color. I will never ever ever ever ever ever ever print white plastisol ink without this again - it's almost comparable to printing on top of clear packaging tape for those of you who use that method when registering screens. While it may be cost prohibitive for some, you'll kick yourself after you've tried it for not doing it sooner. I'd recommend using it whether it's white ink on dark garment or white underbase for plastisol -- even makes the print feel lighter aside from smoother and you'll be able to get more one hit whites than you would without it (at least we will).
Only question -- those of you who use a teflon sheet, what kind've glue do you use to stick the sheet to the print side of the screen? I just used some of the yellow roller tape for the jobs today, but it sags in the middle and doesn't remain flush on the mesh. So, while I initially planned on using the same 23x31 frame screen for lint pick up and white smoothing (I planned on just removing the teflon sheet when using it for picking up lint), it looks like I may just have to permanently adhere the teflon sheet to the screen so it doesn't sag during production and make a separate screen for the lint picker-upper. Any suggestions on glue that would be permanent? I coated the mesh 2/2 with WR25, exposed it for 20+ minutes and used a boat load of Permx, so this screen should last until my 2 year old son retires, but I don't know if some glue would be better to use than others? I have some gorilla glue -- yes/no? Anyone from Action have any suggestions? Erik?
Wow! - Everyone here at Action is going to hear about this feedback. It's so fantastic to get this type of positive reinforcement for our efforts and we sincerely thank you for taking the time to write this follow up.
We will continue to focus on solutions to your challenges. The following is from the instruction sheet that goes out with each Roller squegee. It's important to glue the Teflon to the screen and let it bond overnight - see instructions below.
Instructions for Use:
Glue & Tape the Teflon sheet to the contact side of a frame. The Teflon sheet is specified for a 23” x 31” Frame. The Teflon has been scoured on one side to make it attach to the mesh better. Use spray glue and apply it to the Teflon. Carefully place the Teflon onto the contact side of the mesh in the print area of the screen. Smooth it out with your hands by starting at the center and working your way outward.
Use frame tape and outline the edges of the sheet.
Only outline to 3/4” in from the edge.
Tips -
Use a low tension inexpensive frame. Not Shown above.
Use pallet spray tack directly on Teflon only.
Spray a liberal amount of adhesive onto Teflon. Wait 30 seconds before proceeding..
After the Teflon is fixed to the frame - place it face down on a flat surface. Place something thick and flat over the area with the Teflon and then place weighted objects on top to apply pressure to your glue bond.
Allow the Teflon to set overnight.
Mr. 123 - Thanks again!
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Yes, I read the instructions, but didn't know if anyone had suggestions on the type of glue to use (i.e., "make and model"), since I'm doing this to a screen with hardener on it and not, for instance, gluing two pieces of construction paper together -- didn't know if some glue might not be suitable for this application (especially since I'm trying to make it permanently adhered to it -- don't know if that's what others are trying to attempt as well -- I am uncertain as to whether or not spray adhesive we would spray on a pallet would render a permanent bond?), while other glue may be made that would be good for this application? As I mentioned, I have gorilla glue, but no idea if that should do...? If nobody knows, that's cool, but if somebody does, please pass on your wisdom.
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Glue it on with the go rilla glue and get on with it. Any reason you are using a coated/emulsified screen? Is that the prefered method or is it ok to use a screen with no emulsion present?
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I coated it for two reasons:
(1) To help block dust/any airborn junk that the roller may push through from the top that land on top of screen and (2) need emulsion to spray watered down glue on print side for lint picking up when we use it for that purpose.