TSB
screen printing => Equipment => Topic started by: ScreenPrinter123 on July 12, 2013, 12:00:19 PM
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As you know we were looking for a new exposure unit. It seems like this aspect of the industry could change drastically with these LED units coming out so we are going to hold off for a little while to see what comes of it. If they work well the savings in bulb purchases and electricity are quite appealing.
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And, of course, our own Pierre was one of the first to try and report on the first of these by one of our members, the Baby Joe 2000 from LDTRONIX.
We have a thread here from February. http://www.theshirtboard.com/index.php/topic,7229.0.html (http://www.theshirtboard.com/index.php/topic,7229.0.html)
It was inevitable that this new technology would catch on.
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I remember that thread well. I wonder how those units have been fairing now that some shops have been able to use them long enough to give a good evaluation.
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And, of course, our own Pierre was one of the first to try and report on the first of these by one of our members, the Baby Joe 2000 from LDTRONIX.
We have a thread here from February. [url]http://www.theshirtboard.com/index.php/topic,7229.0.html[/url] ([url]http://www.theshirtboard.com/index.php/topic,7229.0.html[/url])
It was inevitable that this new technology would catch on.
LED exposure is going to be more of a game changer than retensionable frames or CTS imaging. The next 2-3 years will see huge improvements in screen cycle time.
~Kitson
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I'm interested in seeing how these fare as well.
It would be a purchase for us not just to save on electricity / bulbs but redundancy with our old unit. We use a CTS so I wouldn't even need the vacuum. I could almost make an LED exposure unit myself with how simple it would be. We've already made and wired our own LED backlights for the washout booths.
The things the baby joe didn't have that I would want would be storing many more presets and 1/10ths of a second setting.
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Lawson already has their new led out, we might be getting one to do some testing on here soon since we use their dts machine.... They have a vertical unit that mounts to the wall next to the dts machine so everything can be in one area.....
http://www.lawsonsp.com/screen-printing-equipment/auxiliary-equipment/exposure-units/led-5000 (http://www.lawsonsp.com/screen-printing-equipment/auxiliary-equipment/exposure-units/led-5000)
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That great teammates :)
my question for these LED`s vs. metal hallide compare in real time
exposure time, quality imaging for instance
clearly I`m in the dark here 8)
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The thread I linked to a few posts back covers some of that from Pierre's test drive of the Baby Joe
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I'm interested in seeing how these fare as well.
It would be a purchase for us not just to save on electricity / bulbs but redundancy with our old unit. We use a CTS so I wouldn't even need the vacuum. I could almost make an LED exposure unit myself with how simple it would be. We've already made and wired our own LED backlights for the washout booths.
The things the baby joe didn't have that I would want would be storing many more presets and 1/10ths of a second setting.
while it might be easy to put some bulbs together, getting the proper light distribution is a bit more work. The problem is that the light has to be uniform across the whole exposure area. While it might sound simple to think you just space the light sources evenly, the problem is that the light intensity drops with the square of the distance so the outer edges of the cones will produce less light than the centers. An easy way around that seems to be to overlap the light sources similar to the bottom image, but then the light is coming from 5 different directions (under, front, back, left and right) or potentially even more adjacent bulbs and undercutting is introduced. The intensity of the bulbs will dictate the proper distance to the screen, the angle of the light distribution dictates the distance between the bulbs. All of this has to be done right and somehow measured to confirm the uniformity of the light field (which Lou from LD tronix has done). It seems easy, but it really does take more than wiring LEDs on the backing board to get good results.
As much as I believe I could figure most of these things out and build it myself, it just seems to make a lot more sense to buy it from Lou or Vastex. . .
pierre
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(http://www.vastex.com/Screen-Printing-Equipment/Exposing-Units-Drying-Cabinets/images/LED_Poster_product.jpg)
http://www.vastex.com/Literature/BB-0826_LED.pdf (http://www.vastex.com/Literature/BB-0826_LED.pdf)
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The great thing about our industry is there is so many screen printers and suppliers that its only a matter of time before these are super affordable new and used. Pierre is right about building one of these. The materials are cheap but the time and trial an error is not worth the cost of one of these. That is until they jump the price to like $4000 or more. (if they haven't yet) Like I said the competition between the vendors is only going to bring down the price and that is great for us screen printers. It’s about time we win one.
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I see Vastex is also suggesting an insert to convert existing units to LED, kind of wish I didn't sell our old Atlas exposure unit, might start looking for a used one to convert and try out.
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I'm interested in seeing how these fare as well.
It would be a purchase for us not just to save on electricity / bulbs but redundancy with our old unit. We use a CTS so I wouldn't even need the vacuum. I could almost make an LED exposure unit myself with how simple it would be. We've already made and wired our own LED backlights for the washout booths.
The things the baby joe didn't have that I would want would be storing many more presets and 1/10ths of a second setting.
while it might be easy to put some bulbs together, getting the proper light distribution is a bit more work. The problem is that the light has to be uniform across the whole exposure area. While it might sound simple to think you just space the light sources evenly, the problem is that the light intensity drops with the square of the distance so the outer edges of the cones will produce less light than the centers. An easy way around that seems to be to overlap the light sources similar to the bottom image, but then the light is coming from 5 different directions (under, front, back, left and right) or potentially even more adjacent bulbs and undercutting is introduced. The intensity of the bulbs will dictate the proper distance to the screen, the angle of the light distribution dictates the distance between the bulbs. All of this has to be done right and somehow measured to confirm the uniformity of the light field (which Lou from LD tronix has done). It seems easy, but it really does take more than wiring LEDs on the backing board to get good results.
As much as I believe I could figure most of these things out and build it myself, it just seems to make a lot more sense to buy it from Lou or Vastex. . .
pierre
Any of these multisource strips, panels, or whatever will only be approximations of 'collimated' light, but with the proper spec of LED it would be an excellent one.
For me, the photo-polymer emulsion is the deal killer. If theirs is good enough to quickly and properly expose thicker dual cure stencils, I would be more likely to think of it as something I might want...
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I will totally buy one of these if they truly can perform as well as a point source halide. Glad to see vastex has one, they build solid equipment. My benefit would be space, our exposure/screen/washout area is freaking cramped. With a unit the size and thickness of a fluoro bulb expo unit I can open things up a lot more. Also, no light flooding everywhere on a little self contained unit like this v. our big vac frame and Olec. And I would hope they incorporate an "inspection" mode, i.e., light table which would save even more space.
What's ballpark pricing on the largest models? I would need at least a 60"x50".
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Has LED exposure been tested on long run discharge screens?
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Has LED exposure been tested on long run discharge screens?
I think is to early to tell the new LEDs exposure is still
in it`s infancy, eventually
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Has LED exposure been tested on long run discharge screens?
You would hope so; otherwise, a manufacture blazing this new trail would be spinning its wheels given the rise of discharge usage. That would be a great question to ask vastex and report back about, unless someone reading this thread from vastex is reading this -- what are the exposure times on dual cure/diazo emulsions? Surely with such a new method, buttloads of testing on every emulsion on the market should be tested, which reverses the usual way you get an estimate of exposure time with the emulsion manufacturers rather than the exposure unit manufacturers putting that valuable info in their product literature.
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I really do not see where the diffrence would be with types of emulsion. UV is UV, the LED's are still producing a UV wave length and from what I understand its more concentrated and evenly emitted. As long as the source is emitting the correct wave length (360-380 nm if I remember correctly) it shouldn't make a diffrence. Keep in mind we can not see the UV spectrum of light but relate the blue hue of our exposure units, we see the blue hue and assume its exposing. The light we see exposing is simply a by product of the bulb producing the UV. We do not burn photopolymer on a different exposure unit then we would diazo.
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I really do not see where the diffrence would be with types of emulsion. UV is UV
My thoughts exactly. Just not sure if there's some spectral (and power within each wavelength) differences btwn what the LEDs can do and metal halide. Having ran so much discharge, it would no surprise me at all if this was an issue- everything becomes a potential problem with DC it seems.
like 123 mentions, this is flipping the R&D schedule around. Many emulsions were formulated to expose on fluoro or metal halide lamps. Now we have lamps being tuned to existing emulsion.
If somebody really wanted to kill it with an LED expo unit, they would work alongside an emulsion mfg and make a companion emulsion to their bulbs.
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If I remember correctly talking to the Saati people a few months ago the engineers said they had developed there own LED insert to convert existing tube type exposure units working with their product line. I think I may have a brochure on it at the shop.
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Hey Guys long time no post!
Thanks for all the support, and kind words!
I see the cat is out of the bag about the new Vastex machine!
Take it from me this exposure unit is the cats meow.
I know because it is powered by LDTronix.
Look at the bottom left corner of the E2000
http://www.vastex.com/Literature/BB-0826_LED.pdf (http://www.vastex.com/Literature/BB-0826_LED.pdf)
Vastex is a great company, and I am proud to work with them on this and future products.
I hope to release more great products in the near future. So stay tuned
Thanks to the great people of this forum!
LDTRONIX
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I really do not see where the diffrence would be with types of emulsion. UV is UV, the LED's are still producing a UV wave length and from what I understand its more concentrated and evenly emitted. As long as the source is emitting the correct wave length (360-380 nm if I remember correctly) it shouldn't make a diffrence. Keep in mind we can not see the UV spectrum of light but relate the blue hue of our exposure units, we see the blue hue and assume its exposing. The light we see exposing is simply a by product of the bulb producing the UV. We do not burn photopolymer on a different exposure unit then we would diazo.
What I'm getting at is so what if the unit can properly expose a pp emulsion. If it can't expose a dual cure/diazo emulsion in a non-time-prohibitive length of time, its not worth getting over the 5k+ watt halide units. And by "properly expose" I mean quickly expose a du cure/diazo much quicker than those 5k units and still get the same durability results on large dc jobs.
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I've read more than a few articles like this:
http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/STMG/sp_20131201/index.php?startid=8 (http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/STMG/sp_20131201/index.php?startid=8)
Unfortunately, I have no laboratory to confirm these results, but I believe different sensitizers do in fact expose better with the proper spectral output...
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from what I understand, PP/SBQ and Diazo link at different UV wavelengths. While it might be possible to have the UV LED bulbs peak at the correct number for the PP/SBQ and produce a very small amount of the light needed for the Diazo, it is not very likely to be the case.
Lou, do you have anybody using the unit with dual cure or Diazo emulsion? Can we get some feedback on how it works with it? Did Vastex test it with Diazo? You mentioned they were getting spectacular results with it. Was it with PP/SBQ only?
pierre
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I've read more than a few articles like this:
[url]http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/STMG/sp_20131201/index.php?startid=8[/url] ([url]http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/STMG/sp_20131201/index.php?startid=8[/url])
Unfortunately, I have no laboratory to confirm these results, but I believe different sensitizers do in fact expose better with the proper spectral output...
great article to demonstrate the potential issues. As mentioned above, it looks like one emulsion likes mid 300s and the other is around 400. Even if the bulbs have a rather narrow band of light, it would still expose correctly, it is just that the sensitivity and penetration of the emulsion are less suited for the bulbs with different wavelength and would thus take longer.
pierre
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So pricing on the LED units from Lawson is competitive with similar halide bulb units. Sounds like this definitely is the way to go if you are buying new.
For replacing our existing unit, hard to justify it. To replace our halide setup with LED would run appx 8k. It would take awhile to see an ROI, even with the reduction in power consumption. We have two functional Olec AL53 units in the house and many can still be had for a few hundred dollars so I'm not sure if that day will ever come here.
Saati has a drop in LED bulb for halide lamps? Might be interested in going that route at some point.
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Here are the prices
Vastex
"The LED upgrade for metal halide units is not really an option at this time. The mounting is an unknown and controls will not work.
In terms of the complete unit, the 23” x 31” unit is: $4,600 UD + shipping and the 47” x 31” is $7900 USD + shipping"
The Lawson LED-5000 #3248 is $3,695.00 which as far as I can remember is the medium sized unit, which will hold a tri loc frame.
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Oh and here are the exposure times
Real-Life Exposure Times using the LED-5000:
Lawson SBQ-501 Emulsion on 110 mesh with 1 + 1 coating method: 12 seconds
Lawson Dual-Cure-510 Emulsion on 110 mesh with 1 + 1 coating method: 35 seconds
Ulano EX-Film 50 micron on 110 mesh: 25 seconds
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Hey everybody. We're glad to see all of the conversation on exposing with LED so I'll chime in a little bit. We have done a lot of testing on our new E-2000 before releasing it and have compared it with a 1200W metal halide and high output fluorescent tubes.
We used Ulano (Orange and TLX) along with Kiwo (Polycol Onecoat and SWR Red) during our tests. We have also tested Kiwo Polycol Onecoat with diazo added to make the stencil waterproof for discharge inks. We used a Kiwo exposure calculator to get precise times. We also use the glisten method (3 coats shirt side and 2 coats ink side) of coating screens which give a much better stencil that 1/1. I'm not sure about testing a dual-cure on a 110 mesh as Lawson tested because most screen printers would be using a much higher mesh for that. Our dual cure tests were on 230 and 305 with the 305 easily holding 85lpi halftones and very readable 3pt text.
Our times were comparable and often quicker than the 1200W metal halide with better detail and 5-10 times faster than fluorescent on dual cure and about 15-20 times faster on single part emulsion. If anybody will be at the Printwear show in Long Beach this weekend, head over to our booth and check out the unit. We will also be printing a 4 color process (Kiwo SWR Red on 305 mesh) and a discharge print (Polycol onecoat with diazo on 156) all exposed on the new E-2000.
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Hey everybody. We're glad to see all of the conversation on exposing with LED so I'll chime in a little bit. We have done a lot of testing on our new E-2000 before releasing it and have compared it with a 1200W metal halide and high output fluorescent tubes.
We used Ulano (Orange and TLX) along with Kiwo (Polycol Onecoat and SWR Red) during our tests. We have also tested Kiwo Polycol Onecoat with diazo added to make the stencil waterproof for discharge inks. We used a Kiwo exposure calculator to get precise times. We also use the glisten method (3 coats shirt side and 2 coats ink side) of coating screens which give a much better stencil that 1/1. I'm not sure about testing a dual-cure on a 110 mesh as Lawson tested because most screen printers would be using a much higher mesh for that. Our dual cure tests were on 230 and 305 with the 305 easily holding 85lpi halftones and very readable 3pt text.
Our times were comparable and often quicker than the 1200W metal halide with better detail and 5-10 times faster than fluorescent on dual cure and about 15-20 times faster on single part emulsion. If anybody will be at the Printwear show in Long Beach this weekend, head over to our booth and check out the unit. We will also be printing a 4 color process (Kiwo SWR Red on 305 mesh) and a discharge print (Polycol onecoat with diazo on 156) all exposed on the new E-2000.
Thanks for stopping by Vastex boy
if there is not too much to ask, for those who can`t make it to the show
could you shoot a short vid of the new exposure unit
thanks welcome to TSB ;)
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Agreed that nobody is coating their 110's 1/1...unless they are putting out a bunch of sawtoothed prints all day.
So who's going to come out with an LED drop in for an Olec AL-53? I see that there are LED bulb replacements that screw into low bay halides so it's gotta be doable. I would be pumped just to eliminate the crazy amount of heat our 5k puts off. Brian, you said Saati has one?
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123, I understand what your saying, I know I want to take hostages if it takes 3 or more min to burn a screen. I will say this much though if i was looking at a new exposure unit even if it took the same amount of time to burn screens as our 3140 I would seriously consider it. Between the lack of heat, amp draw and bulb life for me it would be a no brainer. Even the cost around $4-5k for one to do one 23x31 screen at a time, two units would be a little more then one larger MH. Then I would be able to do two 23x31 at a time.
Zoo, yes when I was talking to the engineer from Saati while at Mindseye a few months ago he said they had a unit that would replace the tubes in a flurocent exposure unit. I looked through my lititure but was not able to find anything. If I had to guess they were just marketing someone else's product like the currently do with other equipment.
Besides rumor has it (not from a purple dinosaur) something is coming out within the next year that will top the LED exposure unit.
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Someone got that plasma HID system up and going yet? I want something that ACCURATELY simulates the sun. 8)
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Hey everybody. We're glad to see all of the conversation on exposing with LED so I'll chime in a little bit. We have done a lot of testing on our new E-2000 before releasing it and have compared it with a 1200W metal halide and high output fluorescent tubes.
We used Ulano (Orange and TLX) along with Kiwo (Polycol Onecoat and SWR Red) during our tests. We have also tested Kiwo Polycol Onecoat with diazo added to make the stencil waterproof for discharge inks. We used a Kiwo exposure calculator to get precise times. We also use the glisten method (3 coats shirt side and 2 coats ink side) of coating screens which give a much better stencil that 1/1. I'm not sure about testing a dual-cure on a 110 mesh as Lawson tested because most screen printers would be using a much higher mesh for that. Our dual cure tests were on 230 and 305 with the 305 easily holding 85lpi halftones and very readable 3pt text.
Our times were comparable and often quicker than the 1200W metal halide with better detail and 5-10 times faster than fluorescent on dual cure and about 15-20 times faster on single part emulsion. If anybody will be at the Printwear show in Long Beach this weekend, head over to our booth and check out the unit. We will also be printing a 4 color process (Kiwo SWR Red on 305 mesh) and a discharge print (Polycol onecoat with diazo on 156) all exposed on the new E-2000.
Thanks for stopping by Vastex boy
if there is not too much to ask, for those who can`t make it to the show
could you shoot a short vid of the new exposure unit
thanks welcome to TSB ;)
Keep checking back on our website because we are hoping to get a video on the E-2000 posted in the near future
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I will have limited access to one of these soon and will be doing some test exposing with some of my screens. I'll keep everyone informed when the time gets near. My supplier is getting one in pretty soon and he said he'd let me test it out and get some real life exposure times and hopefully enough info to do a nice review on it. I have a feeling it might get sold before it ever makes it out of the crate but hopefully I'll get a chance to play on it.
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I would be most appreciative as we have held off on purchasing a MH because of all of the buzz about soon to be released LED units
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I`m wondering if M&R will ever enter the market of LED exposure units.
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I`m wondering if M&R will ever enter the market of LED exposure units.
Something tells me that if LED is for real, they will be in the market with something soon.
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I`m wondering if M&R will ever enter the market of LED exposure units.
yes we are. Our units are done and waiting on patents.
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Smart move, we are switching all of our office lights to LED and I can tell you they are so much cooler than fluo-tubes. I had to wear gloves removing the old ones...and the ballasts get wicked hot, and a couple of them were leaking a sticky black goo...nice I know.
I wish I would have gone LED instead of the Amergraph, well, sort of. I can do 2 screens at one time, and I spent about what it would have cost for 1 LED unit on the Amergraph + new electrical. It would have been nice to be able to avoid almost $1k in new wire and service panels, and breakers and so on.
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What ever happened to that independent guy that blazed the trail of LED exposure units. He was super confident and it came off cocky but he sent the unit to Pierre and I thought it all checked out.
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What ever happened to that independent guy that blazed the trail of LED exposure units. He was super confident and it came off cocky but he sent the unit to Pierre and I thought it all checked out.
It is his machine that Vastex is selling.
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NICE, Kudos to him!
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Glad people are checking these LED units out.
I was one of the guys a while back following the whole beginnings of the LED unit posts. Pierre took my call which was super cool of him and talked me through his experience with the baby joe 2000 LED unit. I took a risk, but not really cause Pierre is legit, and bought a unit. I'm so stoked I did. From fluorescent bulbs to LED is night and day. I was exposing for 3:30 minutes. Now only 35 seconds on my 110-230's. Anything higher is 25 seconds. Would be faster in a dryer environment, but i'm in Hawaii. But, the main thing is that my exposure definition is waaaaay better then before and thats what gets me all psyched! Faster exposer times; Better exposed screens; no heat; regular 110v; and supposedly the LED's last a long time. Can't go wrong.
Before it was wait around for a bit and hope my screens would come out good. Now I can't keep up and my screens are friggin awesome!
Thanks to everyone that chimes in on this forum, I've learned so much from you all!
Aloha
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Great to hear inkstain.
We don't have a backup exposure right now so I want to upgrade to a LED exposure unit within a year. We don't need a blanket / glass either so I'm hoping someone comes out with the CTS option which should be 1k+ less expensive. Heck it's so simple I could almost make the unit myself...just need a good controller to quickly select presets.
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I`m wondering if M&R will ever enter the market of LED exposure units.
yes we are. Our units are done and waiting on patents.
Let me know when they are live, I might be in.
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I'd be interested to see how these LED units do with no glass for CTS shops like us, and using a slower exposing emulsion, like a diazo emulsion. If PPP emulsions are zapping fully at 30 seconds with glass, figure the math it should be about the same with slower emulsions and no glass huh? Interesting. Especially to have a unit that new will be under 6,000 bucks and be able to shoot 2 23x31's at a time and not $300 bulb to replace all the time. Will be cool if M&R has theirs up and showing at the SGIA in Orlando come October!!!! wink wink wink ;) ;) ;) :o
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I`m wondering if M&R will ever enter the market of LED exposure units.
yes we are. Our units are done and waiting on patents.
Let me know when they are live, I might be in.
We have them running here in Chicago now.
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I`m wondering if M&R will ever enter the market of LED exposure units.
yes we are. Our units are done and waiting on patents.
Let me know when they are live, I might be in.
We have them running here in Chicago now.
When are they available? Costs? (email me if you like).
brandt@graphicdisorder.com
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I`m wondering if M&R will ever enter the market of LED exposure units.
yes we are. Our units are done and waiting on patents.
Let me know when they are live, I might be in.
We have them running here in Chicago now.
Photos, info, prices it`s all welcome. We are looking to replace our unit next year. Cost of electricity in this part of the world is outrages. Just gone up again. Just glad we got a gas dryer last year to replace our electric one. Will change all our lights on the print floor as well to LED soon.
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And whoever is replacing their MH unit let me know. I really should upgrade my 240 watt flouro unit.
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..I second that. We are very eager to pull the trigger on one of these VERY soon, It fits our needs perfectly (plus my old one is an ancient fluo POS).
...Rich, can you at least give us an idea on release date, if nothing else? ???
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I helped uncrate a part of this unit today but I didn't get to play with it. Hopefully tomorrow I will get to do some exposure testing to match it up against a metal halide that is probably in the 6-8K watt range in power. I did exposure testing with HVP and our Richmond unit last week and got the proper exposure down to the seconds as well as light units. Assuming my bulb hasn't lost a lot of power over this past week it should be a very fair comparison and we can get more feedback on the LED questions that I know are still out there.
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Alan, it would be awesome to see how the led does on 2 over 2 diazo screens, and how those hold up in production.
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I hadn't planned on testing it on a dual cure because I don't have any coated and ready to go. If I got some mixed up (highly doubt it) I'll coat a few and do them as well. But then testing them will be harder because we don't have anything too big coming up to see how durable they are. I would mix in some diazo to my hvp but I don't think I've got any.
I guess more of you guys would prefer to see dual cure testing over pure photopolymer?
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Ok, I got 30 minutes on one today and I don't have all the info you guys are wanting yet but I do have solid expo times that I can examine when I have more time to look at the screens through my loupe. I'm not ready to say it's the next best thing or it's meh yet but I'll go ahead and say that I wouldn't trade our unit in on one and I don't think any additional testing (coming next week to get real detailed info now that I have proper exposure times) will change my mind. But with that said, our unit is one of the best made and double the price of this unit so pound for pound the LED unit is a very strong tool. From the small sample size I can say that an 83/71 with a very thick stencil didn't expose at 60 seconds and needed more time. The 305 at 60 seconds was way overcooked. The 180/48 at 25 seconds was the best screen of the bunch and I got a lot of detail on that screen. The 230 held some very fine halftones, 65 line 97% held every single dot but the 3% side didn't turn out well. The unit shows lots of promise. My first opinion is that I think it's going to be better than a metal halide under 5K power but our Richmond outperformed this unit by a decent margin, especially on thick stencils. I think exposure times are fairly similar but our unit seems to penetrate to the squeegee side better. The LED unit showed signs of underexposure on the squeegee side yet gave signs of overexposure on the shirt side on the 83, 110 and 180. The only true dissapointment was vacuum time, 90 seconds with every screen so we need to find out if we had something obstructing the seal or if that's what people can expect (I hope not, defeats the purpose of fast exposures).
I'll elaborate more when I have more time but I gotta get out of here and call it a week, it's been a rough one to say the least. Hopefully next week will be better.
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The only true dissapointment was vacuum time, 90 seconds with every screen so we need to find out if we had something obstructing the seal or if that's what people can expect (I hope not, defeats the purpose of fast exposures).
Alan,
The lawson led5000 I have vacuums 10 seconds so it does sound like something is obstructed. I found that this unit actually has a tighter draw on the vacuum without using a rope over the screens.
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Thanks for the review.
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I spent a little time at the shop this morning looking at the stencils at 60X magnification and I am going to burn a few of the same mesh counts with our Richmond unit on Monday to compare side by side. The chromaline expo calculator has several different areas like most calcs do and since I was really only concerned with finding correct expo times I didn't get to test the unit like most of you are wanting to see. But I've got solid times to go on now so maybe early this next week I can go back and test the 65, 85 and 105 lpi halftones. The highest mesh I have to test is 305/34 and all my 330/30's have been blown up for quite a while so I won't be able to do much with the 85 and 105 lpi part of the calc. Because I doubled my expected expo time the finer detailed text didn't come out on any of the screens except the 180s. One thing I can say though is if we would have exposed the same screens for the same time, essentially overexposing with our Richmond, the finer text and halftones would have sprayed out much easier. I guess I'm saying that I think the metal halide has a broader exposure latitude. I've developed screens at 3 light units that showed no physical signs of underexposure and then burn the same screen at 15 light units and the image comes out the same as the 3 light unit exposure screens. I didn't get those kind of results on the LED unit but that will be something that I look at in more detail when I go back and test again.
As far as a dual cure emulsion and testing for long term durability with DC inks...I don't know when our next long DC run is going to be, there is nothing in line currently. With our Richmond, we had screens breaking down prematurely due to underexposure even though there were no physical signs of underexposure with any of the screens. We doubled expo time and then had screens that were durable but seeing how easy it was to overexpose with the LED I'm wondering how hard it will be to fine tune your DC screens. Since the expo time needed on our Richmond for DC screens is so much longer than plastisol screens need, the LED will need to be able to penetrate the entire film layer quickly yet not overexpose which is what I was seeing that the LED kind of struggled with.
I hope nobody reads this and thinks the LED isn't up to the hype it's gotten because the sample size is so small, only 5 screens total and that's nothing. I am very confident that we did everything right and there were no pre-exposed screens or anything that could have given the LED an unlevel playing field but I think the real test is yet to come. When I go back we will be able to get more info and more definitive results. Even after looking at some great results today under the loupe, I still think our Richmond metal halide, 10K bulb outperformed the LED unit by a good margin, but I was surprised by how good the stencils looked under magnification. I know nobody needed my review to prove the LED is solid technology but it really does work and next week we'll be able to say just how close it compares to a strong metal halide unit. It should be pretty equal to the lower powered metal halides but I can't really say what wattage the LED will be equavalent to in a metal halide but I think it's going to be around 3-4K as a wild guess. Stay tuned screen printing nerds, more to come.
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Alan, I think that it would be a downgrade for some one like you with a 10K metal halide. I had a 1K nuarc and so far, I've noticed faster exposure times using the ulano step wedge. I've just received the Chromaline Calculator and am going to test some screens with the CCI wr25 probably towards the end of next week but I'm like you, I have no long runs coming soon to test for durability. Although I don't print discharge often
"maybe once a month" I was exposing 420 lt units with the nuarc and still after roughly 500 prints the screens would break down even with a hardener. I'm pretty anxious to try the led out on the wr25.
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What's the ballpark difference in price between this and the various MH units?
Let's compare similar sized fruit here.
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What's the ballpark difference in price between this and the various MH units?
Let's compare similar sized fruit here.
The lawson unit I had delivered was right at $4000 and it's capable of exposing 2 23x31 screens at once. I know on their website they claim that it's comparable to a 5000 watt halide. I was looking at getting a tri-light here while back and it seems like if I remember correctly it was somewhere between the $12000 and $13000 range without the extra electrical work needed. Of course it was a 6000 watt so not an exact comparison.
I can't verify it's 5000 watt comparable but it sure seems a lot stronger than the 1000 watt I had.