TSB
General => General Discussion and ??? => Topic started by: mooseman on November 18, 2013, 06:29:46 AM
-
Well it finally happened, damn near burned my self out of business on Friday afternoon.
Left the shop at 4:25 to pick up my wife at her work and drop her off at home ...returned to the shop AT 4 :45 to find the first of Seneca Falls Finest rolling up and my shop full of smoke and visible flames rolling off the flash dryer.
Fortunately the fire was isolated to the pallet and flash that I had left over the shirt, a quick dump of a 5 pound dry chemical kicked ass ....fire out.
Here is the reason I share this with you all.........
I NEVER leave the dryer and flash on when I leave the shop even when my folder and boxer helper is there working.
On Friday I broke my routine. I was about a dozen shirts from finishing a job and did not want to wait for the heaters to came back on line after shutdown so I didn’t hit the switches.
Would have been fine IF I REMEMBERED to swing the flash off the pallet but no my brain was off and out the door well before my body.
Rule no 1 Never break your rules
Rule no 2 don’t scrimp on fire extinguishers, we have 4 in a 1000 square foot shop...one of them saved me a ton of water damage.
I have insurance but apparently I do not have an agent as I still have not been able to find her for nearly two days now. It is going to be a little warm all over again when we finally do make contact.
The pics below tell the story....mooseman LUCKY
-
had that happen 15 years ago, glad it was only the pallet and flash. Same here. That's why I LOVE quartz flash.
-
unless you sustained more damage than that, i wouldn't mess with insurance. it will jack your rates and they might drop you.
do you need a new flash panel? What size is that? I might be have one lying around.
-
Sorry to say after bubbling some rubber in the 20 years, this happened to
me just last month. Always say to myself Flash, Flash, Flash...but a customer
came in, just ran up front and dilly dallied around showing pens for about
15 minutes, and walked back to smell first, then see 3" flames from pallet to flash!
Man, that was very discouraging. It gives you a gut check for the longest time to come.
Maybe a couple of strategically placed smoke alarms.
Flash is a silent killer...
Glad nothing else went Moose
-
Could have been a lot worse!
-
been there , done that , got that t-shirt.
-
Glad no other damage was caused, and your right Moose rules!!! never break them
Darryl
-
Yikes!
All your equipment is still ok other than the flash and pallet?
-
need anything moosey, I'm just a short car ride down the 90. glad you still have a job.
-
Glad that it wasn't nearly as bad as mine.
Of course, I ended up with a new and improved building, new and improved equipment, a new and lasting relationship with another printer in town, and, perhaps the most important, helped lead to my introduction to industry forums, especially TSPMB where I spent a lot of time for a few years and was known to make a post or two.
The catastrophe also did wonders in kicking up my marriage a notch, but all in all, I still recommend caution with flash dryers! ;)
-
Hey all thanks for the kind offers and shared stories.
my big issue here is a bunch of inventory I had for live orders that I am going to replace if insurance covers or not. A new flash is on order, shop all scrubbed and painted everything else is good to go. Insurance guy was by yesterday pretty decent guy not sure what that will bring but we are going forward with or without a check from the company............should be throwing ink later today.
Thanks everyone
mooseman
-
We upgraded to a swivel flash for the consistency and ease, bonus is you can't burn the place down with it really. Same with quartz on the auto for us.
Removing the under / over flashed screw ups on the manual pays for the more expensive flash.
-
We upgraded to a swivel flash for the consistency and ease, bonus is you can't burn the place down with it really. Same with quartz on the auto for us.
Removing the under / over flashed screw ups on the manual pays for the more expensive flash.
I keep thinking about getting an automatic flash for the manual. I have a bad habit of walking away for a minute while the pallet is under the flash. Does the automatic flash slow production down at all?
-
Shane, just buy and auto... ;)
-
We love our auto swivel!
Press the foot pedal down and keep on doing what you do, my guy has almost NEVER had to even think about dwell time on the flash other than testing to make sure the dwell is set properly. But he doesn't have to worry about timing anything as he prints.
Only think I covet is a quartz with a proxy. Hommer just recently got a 3rd party made one that is reasonably priced... I thought he was supposed to give that bad boy a review but I'm guessing he's busy making money with it.
-
We have a few Hopkins swivels with timers and proxies to prevent this. They are the best way to prevent this.
-
Yeah, until then, I'm still working on a proximity switch wired to my presence and attention.
Mounting a burned board for prominent display is also a good reminder.
-
i always wanted to put an indicator light mounted about 2 or 3 feet above the flash so that you know it's on. wire it into the power switch and it turns on and off with that.
i have quartz flashes now.
-
Shane, just buy and auto... ;)
It's in the works Brad. I should have it all wrapped up very soon.
-
Glad it wasn't worse!
How much is a foot pedal swivel? Is there an easy/cheap DIY way to make one? I have a diy flash (intek panel, cut sheet metal, high heat insulation, etc), but my stand is just a pole on an "X" with casters. I always have to be conscious of whether the pallet is under it.
My unbreakable rule is if I am not in the shop, EVERYTHING that could start a fire gets turned off and unplugged. Yes it takes a few minutes to plug everything in each day, but I never worry about something catching on fire while I'm gone. One of my first flash dryers, bought used, was off but plugged in and I look over to sparks and flame coming from the switch. I'm not an electrician, so I don't know what failed, but that was enough to convince me to unplug the flashes, conveyor, and heat press every night. I have fire extinguishers in a few places too.
I have warped a few wood pallets over the years though from taking too long to fix something and having a flash on. The smell is always a good early indicator.
-
Glad things didn't come out worse mooseman, good luck.
-
Quick solution...get a divorce or buy your wife a car. :)
-
How about a shock collar when you get 50ft from you shop you get the sh#t shocked out of you, then think did I turn everything off.
-
How about a shock collar when you get 50ft from you shop you get the sh#t shocked out of you, then think did I turn everything off.
Heck, how about a rope from the flash to our neck?
-
In all seriousness a foot pedal does not necessarily solve the problem. You have to remember to hit it. Proxies think on their own. Set the timer and the panel automatically swivels out of harms way.
Still you have to remember to turn it off at the end of day but if you forget at least it is not in danger of catching anything on fire. Which reminds me about 8 years ago almost to this day the print crew at Alternative Apparel left a IR flash (on an auto) on for FOUR DAYS during Thanksgiving Holiday.
-
was the flash over a platen? I would imagine is wasn't.
-
No it was the M&R IR flash which retracts
-
An auto swivel jobby would not help in my situation, I keep the flash over the pallet when printing as I roll each shirt under so I can PFP on the fly so to speak.
It is not uncommon for the flash to be set in place over the pallet for two full revs of the platens, we have a 6/6. It is swinging the flash away at the end of the cycle of 6 to 12 flashes that gets me in trouble.
I am going to have a smoke alarm mounted down from the ceiling stopping about 3 feet above the flash as it sits over the pallet.
this will be just above the screens as they swing by yet close enough to read smoke at the earliest possible interval.
naturally this will not help if I pull another Elvis and leave the building with the flash over a shirt like my dumb ass did last Friday.
mooseman
-
Perhaps I'm not understanding but we do this on all our hopkins manuals. As soon as the next shirt is indexed under the flash it immmediately swivels back. Also eliminates scorching if your'e printing a lot of top colors. If you get pulled away for a phone call just walk away.
-
See, we need a like button. ;)
-
I see a new moderator coming on... ???
-
He would be an excellent option if there was one. I rather like the 3 musks as they are personally. Sometimes fixing what is not been broken is a better path.
tp
-
See, we need a like button. ;)
lets see if I can better explain what we do.......6 black shirts with ub white, 1 top color (red) + finish white
load 6 shirts
print station is at 6:00 o-clock
flash station is one index left
all screens are loaded and ready to print
UB White on #1 shirt advance one index #1 shirt is now at flash station, we introduce the flash while we print #2 shirt
Flash remains at swing in position for all 6 shirts flashing each shirt as we print the following shirt
shirt #1 has cooled on round trip returns for red print... the sequence repeats while flash remains at swing in position
shirt #1 returns for finish white while flash hitting #6 with last red print
One index moves #1 with all colors finished to flash station
AT THIS POINT WE PULL THE FLASH OUT
finish shirts 2 thru 6
unload all to dryer
Start all over again...........
So as you can imagine the flash is at the SWING IN position for two complete print color cycles
At the timing we typically print I would be handling the flash more than the squeegee.
We have never done it any other way on multi color jobs or one color PFP jobs, and I have never been successful at wet on wet anything except a big mess.
mooseman
-
What we do is more "traditional" I guess.
If we were to PFPFP like you are we would do it as thus:
Load shirt 1 print UB, index and click foot pedal to swing flash over, repeat for each shirt.
When shirt 1 comes back around we print red index and hit foot pedal... now in this case I think we would be waiting on the flash to be done as we could print red pretty quick on a loaded shirt... but the timing would be automatic and idiot proof as the flash would swing away and we would know it's time.
Rinse and repeat.
Not much different really... we just hit a foot pedal each time we index to swing the flash over and then it does the rest. The flash never over flashes nor will it under flash unless we practically purposefully screw it up.
Obviously you can adjust the height of the flash to speed things up and adjust the dwell time to fit. We just aren't that fast and the extra few seconds if pfpfp'ing gives my guy a second to catch his head and breath.
-
Well if you need to have the flash auto shut down once away from the press then a mat switch is a good bet.. As long as you're standing at 6 oclock the flash is on.. Walk away and it's off. http://www.zippswitch.com/products/safety-mat
Posted with Tapatalk