Screen Printer Daily
by screen printers for screen printers
Free Screen Printing Pricing Software
I developed PrintShopQuoter.com because I needed something to use in my shop. See my post here about that. After using it for a year or so, I have decided to just give it away for free to anyone who wants to use it. I don’t want to mess with marketing it for sale, but I don’t want to get rid of the web site either because I (and my customers) use it every day.
It is customizable. It works in any web browser on any device. And now it is FREE! Check it out.
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Curing Ink With a Flash Dryer
Can I Cure Ink With a Flash Dryer or Spot Dryer?
So… You are getting into screen printing for the first time and you are spending the least amount of money possible, so you buy a cheep press, a couple of wood screens, a hand full of chemicals and inks, and some bright idea of burning your screens in the sun so you don’t have to even buy an exposure unit. The last step on your agenda is how to cure your ink. A conveyor dryer is too expensive, but you found this guy on Ebay selling flash units saying they will cure your ink, for WAY less than a dryer. Will it work?
Does a Chicken Have Lips?
- NO!
This might be my shortest article in a while. The answer is NO. At least not if quality of your print has anything to do with your decision. In my opinion, if you can’t afford the right equipment, then you are not ready to start your shop. The introduction paragraph above has a scenario that has so many problems, we will have to tackle them in a later post, but for now, lets talk about curing ink.
- Why?
Chickens DON'T have lips.
Here is why it wont work. Your ink has to hit a specific temperature (around 300 degrees), and should stay in the heating chamber of a conveyor dryer for around a minute. All ink is different, so check with your ink manufacturer for specific times and temperatures. If you take a white shirt with a print on it and stick it under a flash unit to cure for a minute, chances are you will scorch the shirt or worse, catch it on fire.
A flash unit is designed to flash cure ink to where it is tacky, not cured. There are several reasons to use a flash unit (once again another topic for a later post), but curing ink is not one of them. They simply aren’t designed to do that. Yes, you can cure it enough to where it “feels” dry, but wash it a few times and most likely the ink will wash out of it.
If you printed 100 shirts (would take you forever with a flash unit), some might actually cure correctly, but I could almost guarantee you that most of them would wash out. You need to be consistent in your quality or you will never get anywhere in screen printing.
Like I said, short post. That is because the answer is short: NO. Don’t do it. Cut corners everywhere else, but not in your curing equipment. Don’t try to use a heat gun, hair dryer, or your kitchen oven to cure your ink either. Don’t laugh, I have heard of people trying all three of those methods, just in my small town! Some of those Ebay guys even tell you to do that in their equipment instructions!!!
Save your money, buy a used press, wood screens if you have to but preferably aluminum screens (retensionable ones would be even better), a used exposure unit (do NOT expect to use the sun no matter what you read), and a used 8 foot conveyor dryer. You won’t regret the decision to spend money half as much as a decision to cut corners. Go get a piggy bank and start saving nickles. You will thank me later.
Pin ItCracked or Peeling Ink
Why is my ink peeling or cracking off the shirt?
Are you having problems with your ink falling off a shirt after a few washings? Is your ink cracked or peeling? Are there faded spots in the design after several washings? Then you may have a curing problem.
Do You Have The Right Stuff?
- Curing
Most t shirt inks need to reach a temperature over 300 degrees, then stay there for a set amount of time (30 sec to a min). It depends on what brand and type of ink you are using, and the time involved depends on what equipment you use. Contact your ink manufacturer to find the exact temperatures and times.
- Equipment
What are you trying to cure your ink with? Do you have a conveyor dryer, or are you using a spot dryer, or are you trying to cure your ink some wacky kind of way with a heat gun or even your kitchen oven? If your answer was not “conveyor dryer” then you may have to just resign to the fact that your ink will usually fall off. It is very hard to cure t shirt ink properly without using a conveyor dryer.
- Temperature Control
You need to know exactly what the surface temperature of your ink is. The easiest way to do this is with a laser thermometer. You can get one at an auto store for around $100.00. I bought one on ebay for $50.00. Print a shirt and stick it in your conveyor dryer (dont have a conveyor dryer? Skip this step), then go to the other side and point the temp gun at the ink on the shirt and watch the temperature go up as it comes thru the dryer, then down as it comes out. The peak of the temperature is what you are looking at. Make sure it matches the temp the ink manufacturer gave you (usually around 315).
- Time
The amount of time your shirt stays in the dryer is important too. We like to have ours stay at least 1 minute. That is from the time you put the shirt in the dryer to the time it comes out the other end. If it is less than a minute, that might be your problem. Turn your belt speed down a little and try again.
- Environment
Your surrounding environment makes a big difference too. Humidity, temperature, and wind are the biggest culprits. The first two sound pretty normal, but what the heck it up with the wind you say? Let’s say it is the middle of the summer in the south and the outside temperature is 95 and the inside temperature is 110 because your equipment is putting off more heat than your air conditioner can keep up with, or worse, you don’t even have air conditioning in your production area. So, what do all good press operators do? They open the garage door, fling open all the windows and crank up the big chicken house fan to circulate air. The problem is that usually all that circulating air can run right up your dryer, changing your ink temperature. Sometimes your ink temps fine, then you get a good breeze and all is lost. You really need to control the amount of air movement in your production area.
Keep an eye on your temperature. Check it regularly. Make sure your equipment is working correctly. Make sure your shirts are in the drying chamber for at least a minute. Control your environment. And if you are trying to cure ink with any other method than a conveyor dryer, either invest in a dryer, or live with the fact that your ink could wash out at any time.
Pin ItMacGyver Modification on a Roland VP 540
MacGyver
Today we have a reader-submitted MacGyver inovation from Andy Boyea of Lil’ Dogs in Ludlow, Massachusetts. You can read the shop profile on Lil’ Dogs here.
The things we do in the screen printing industry to make equipment perform for processes not necessarily originally designed for is amazing. I’ve seen “tricked-out” clamshell presses, vacuum systems rigged into textile auto’s, exposure unit’s where you’d think the shop was trying to make some sort of mechanical monster and many other odd variations to equipment that was being used for processes that it wasn’t originally designed to do. Heck, we are screen printers and we must get “creative” if we are going to turn a profit in a very competitive marketplace where price seems to be the only used sales tool in a sales pitch. Of course, sometimes I wonder if the time we spend on “tricking-out” these pieces of equipment is worth the lost warranties and the money we “saved” instead of just purchasing a piece of equipment to do that specific task. An argument to be discussed for a later article maybe!
Anyhow, I got “creative” by applying a piece of equipment to do something it wasn’t originally designed to do. I wanted to use my Roland VP 540 to make wide format film positives. I print graphics at my shop in addition to textiles. Textiles is what we print 95% of the time and we use a CTS device for all our 23X31 textile frames. However, when it comes to printing on our M&R Saturn 2538 clamshell press our CTS device just can’t handle the 42X50 frames we use in the clamshell press! So, in my infinite wisdom I thought printing film positives on my Roland would be an easy thing to do. I was wrong….at least in the beginning.
The first step was finding a film positive material that would work on an eco-solvent printer. Roland recommended their clear film but this was a terrible film for film positives. The film couldn’t handle the ink load necessary to make a good dense black. I searched and experimented with over 20 different materials from several manufacturers and none of them would work. Either the ink wouldn’t adhere to the film properly and thus the print was inferior or the print was great but the black was “see through.” The issue is that most film positive materials are made for aqueous printers and the Roland VP 540 is an eco-solvent printer. Everybody I talked to thought I was “nuts” trying to make film positives on an eco-solvent printer. Everybody kept telling me it couldn’t be done. “You can only make film positives on an aqueous printer,” everybody claimed. Why would I go buy a 54″ aqueous printer for another $25,000 when I had a perfectly good 54″ eco-solvent printer already. Buying a new aqueous printer would require a TON of film positives produced in order to justify that expense…and I am a t-shirt printer for crying out loud! Roland, told me that film positives CAN BE MADE with a solvent based printer but then they couldn’t tell me what film or what settings inside VersaWorks to use to make good, dense film positives with….they didn’t have the experience with this type of application before. I was about to give up. Then, by chance, while looking for a nice artistic canvas for another job I had, I found a company right in my back yard! Intelli-Coat out of Hampden, MA. I noticed they had a material ADVERTISED as a solvent ink film positive material called SCF-7 Clear Film Positive. I called the company and got a sample of it and tried it out. It worked GREAT! Ah-ha! Now, I had to fine tune VersaWorks so I could gain control over ink density, halftone frequency, dot type and angle.
I tried printing directly from Corel Draw with all the appropriate dot settings but found that you had no control over ink laydown when I did this and thus the print wasn’t very good. The film was a little weak….probably still good for most shops but I’m a stickler for clean, dense black film positives. So, I called Roland tech support and they told me that VersaWorks can be setup to allow control over the dot variables as well as the total ink limit when printing. So, they walked me through setting up a custom profile that would allow me to not only use Intelli-Coat’s SCF-7 profile within my custom profile but also allow me the flexibility to adjust halftone frequency, dot type and angle all out of VersaWorks! For more info on how to specifically do this please go to Roland’s website http://www.rolanddga.com/ and there’s an article I wrote in their tech sheets as well as a user forum article I wrote on the necessary steps.
The one down side to making film positives this way is I find that there are some extra steps necessary now when sending film positives to the Roland. Each color plate must be manually separated in your graphics application, colored in 100% black, then exported out of your graphics application (usually as an EPS or high res TIFF) and then imported into VersaWorks. Only from VersaWorks can you control density of ink, dot type, angle and frequency. There is a RIP program on the market by CadLink that is compatible with Roland’s VP 540 and will allow you to print directly from any of your graphics applications so you can control the printer’s variables from there and make life a little quicker and easier. I believe the program is $1500, which was an expense I didn’t want to pay for the occasional film positive I had to make.
I guess most people would say the moral of the story here is to never give up and believe in what your gut is telling you. I’d say, given the total time it took to make this happen, I probably should have just spent the $25,000 on an aqueous printer!
Do you have a MacGyver inovation that you would like to share. We want to hear about it! Contact us today.
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