TSB
screen printing => Screen Making => Topic started by: screenprintguy on November 08, 2013, 10:05:54 AM
-
What pricing are you getting on chromablue when buying by the case? My last quote was for $55 a gal if bought by the case. I won't mention the distributor openly but if you have a better price point or find this to be a better price than you get, let's email or PM swap some info. I'm a huge fan and user of CCI HXT, mainly for the use with discharge printing, we have been using it all around, but now that we are doing a ton of plastisol contract printing, I want to use Chroma blue as well for the plastisol screens as we found that emulsion to be the best match up with our cts and exposure speed. Last time I used Chroma blue with our I-Image, and exposed in our tri-light, it was 5 seconds, pretty awesome if you have 50-80 plastisol screens to shoot in a day. I'd rather save the HXT and the time it takes in exposing for waterbased screens.
Thanks guys
Mike
-
I'd say that's pretty good. Better than I used to pay for it.
-
Main reason I asked, is when we were using it before we used to pay 45 per gal buying a case at a time, now it went up 10 bucks each same supplier, and most of their other pricing went way up on other items that other places sell quite cheaper, was hoping to find someone still holding low, but may have to go for it. It's a great emulsion for plastisol and what I really want it for, for plastisol prints, is it's super fast exposing, and the fact that I can run my CTS at it's fastest speed and on chroma blue it will hold highest image resolution with the perfect density of ink, where other emulsions require slower settings in the rip printing at 1440x1440, not complaining, but on your standard spot color designs, that's a little over kill and just want to speed things up a little for those jobs.
-
We were paying $45 last year they bumped it to $55. Just had a talk with the rep to get it back to $48 if we buy 3 or more
-
How is the exposure latitude on this? If you overexpose is your stencil toast? That's what im worried about and that's why I have stuck with diazo emulsions cause if I overshoot by a minute it doesn't kill me. Not to mention that the Murikami sp1400 is only $35.
-
Chroma blue seems pretty forgiving and very easy to use. I brought some sp1400 in to test for discharge and wb inks. But time is a factor and CB on 230's exposes at 42 sec. compared to 2 min for most diazos on our exposure unit.
-
Chroma blue, "for plastisol use only", is very forgiving. I've posted this before, and several shops are now using it, CCI HXT, by far, is theeee best strongest emulsion we tried and use it now exclusively for water based/discharge printing. The HXT is dual cure, so it's a lot slower exposing but totaly worth it. No diazo needed, NO hardener. No post exposing needed. We've used on runs up to 5,000 peices now. In close to 100 gallons of HXT used now, we've only had 2 pre-mature break downs, both of those, we realized that flood bar had scrapped into the screen a little too deep, more than likely damaging and setting that stencil up for failure. We used just about every other emulsion mentioned on this board, non of them did what the hxt does for us. The only close runner, was Nova, but you had to add diazo, and it is almost 2 times the cost per gallon as the HXT. At 47 a gal for HXT, which also works very well with inkjet based CTS units unlike any of the other water based resisting emulsions, no diazo in the mix, and never needing to harden, it's awesome. We never ever worry about going into a discharge job like we used to that maybe we needed to burn back up screens, or man did this one get set out in the sun, or did the hardners work right bla bla bla. No need for any of that time wasting crap with HXT, and your reclaiming dude won't be back there buring up the time clock trying to reclaim it either. 20 seconds in the dip tank and it comes right off. CCI did a great job with this stuff. Like I said, my only reason for re-installing Chrmoa blue in the mix here is for all the plastisol contract work we are taking on and it's super fast exposing time and also that with inkjet CTS, it's the one emulsion that really takes that dye based ink like glass. I've just got through 5 gals of Elite ttx, basically re-lalbed ulano qtx for Tubelite, it works great too, not as flawless of a cts print with our unit, but no issues at wash out, the ulano pure photopolymers just are a little slower exposing. 5 seconds in the tri-light for the chromablue with a 3 over 1 or 2 over 2 coating, very fast. And, another bonus, the only tape need in this mix is inside the frame around the rollers, zero pinholes if your screens are perfectly clean, makes things go really fast. =)
-
Definitely need to check out this HTX stuff as we start expanding our horizons.
I guess there is no better time than now to bring up my Grand List of Emulsions that I setup on Google Docs for everyone to partake in and take from.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AgdPJ7c6eSh6dFZ4bVBSTFVXZzZ5eFNvX3JyVk9vQ0E&usp=drive_web#gid=0
-
So it means CCI HXT not a plastiol emulsion. Why dont you try for plastisol cci pfx hv ?. Whats the difference cci hxt and chrmoalite blue ?
-
HXT is for use we are using exclusively for waterbased printing. As I had mentioned above, it's the only emulsion of it's nature that we have used that actually performs the way we need it for water based/discharge printing. It's a dual cure emulsion that you can use "without diazo", "without hardener", and if properly exposed will hold up for thousands of prints.
Chromablue is not an emulsion for waterbased inks, plastisol only. Like previously mentioned, the reason for adding Chromablue back into the mix is we started doing a ton of plastisol contract work and have the need for the super fast exposing speeds of Chromablue as it's about 80-90% faster in it's exposure speeds for all of the plastisol used screen set ups. HXT has a lot longer exposure time need to properly crosslink and achive it's maximum performance for water based screen use. This is fine for those jobs as everything in it's process is a little more time consuming to be set up with zero failure rate. But when you want to knock out 60-80 plastisol screens in a day on top of what ever else you are doing, you surely want to have a fast high performance emulsion for plastisol, and for us we really like using Chromablue.
Hope that clears up your question.
-
whats the time diffrence?
-
20 lu for chromablue, 400 lu for HXT, drastic enough for me to want the two different lines in our process.
-
lu means? sorry new in emulsion
-
sorry, LU= Light Units. So for instance on our 3k Trilight, that equals about 20 or so seconds at 20LU, and about 5 or so minutes at 400LU.
-
So whats the exposure time for hxt use in discharge and water base without hardener. We have 5 k light
-
That would depend on the life of the bulb, and if you have an integrater. Remember we measure in light units not time.
-
Tony is spot on yet again. Also, are you CTS, "no glass and draw down blanket", or through glass and drawdown? Is your unit self contained, or free standing wall style exposing? All of that factors in. There are a few other guys on the board here now using HXT for their water based prints using different types of exposure units. I've chatted with guys using HXT exposing normally through glass film and drawing down the blanket with 1,000 watt, 1,200 watt, and I think a guy with a Richmond who is probably using the 10k bulb. Contact your local CCI rep, or Robert Luca at CCI, they are very open to sending a sample for you to try. Dial in your times, trust me, once you get it right, you won't go back to anything else for WB printing. I know we won't it's flawless reliable every time emulsion when dialed in correctly.
-
We already have hxt emuslion According to hxt data sheet exposure time for 5 k for 86 white mesh is 55 seconds . Is that correct for water base and discharge wthout hardener?. What about plastisol exposure time ?
-
I would be concerned about an emulsion co listing exposure time in seconds without exposing with a step wedge test. They know darn well that there are outside influences such as those mentioned above that can affect the final outcome. On this subject you need to test yourself in real time using your equipment instead of just asking (if you want to get it right the first time). This is too important, no matter what ink or emulsion you use.
-
different emulsion time difference between 20 second to 4 minutes. so we just idea for small time bracket.
-
I would be concerned about an emulsion co listing exposure time in seconds without exposing with a step wedge test. They know darn well that there are outside influences such as those mentioned above that can affect the final outcome. On this subject you need to test yourself in real time using your equipment instead of just asking (if you want to get it right the first time). This is too important, no matter what ink or emulsion you use.
Step Wedge Man says "Manufacturers' listed exposure times can be useful as comparisons within their line of emulsions, and of course, as starting points of a specific shop's tests.
All users of a new emulsion should be prepared to, and even expect to sacrifice at least one screen in the name of king and country (or owner and shop)"
-
Psssh, no way. You want to plan on wasting at least a few screens if you want a good baseline... ;)
Not to say you can't use a step wedge on an athletic print, way overexpose it, and get an OK one color screen along with a good time for that mesh/stencil...
-
so exposure time for plastisol is less than water base and discharge?. Any comment.
-
A properly exposed screen is just that and independant of ink chemistry. That said we obviously have emulsions designed around ink chemistry and while many take extra steps for WB others do not.
-
We checked hxt emulsion on 5 k light and 40 t around 100 mesh TIME 60 second. But failed all emuslion lie down through screen . We also checked chromablue and it expose in 30 second . Whats wrong with hxt ..