I Image CTS

[Doug S]

Hey Doug, sorry I didn't post this sooner, crazy day yesterday. Here is the home made CTS exposure rack we have in our tri-light. Glass removed. Then this frame that can seat two 23x31 frames. The big shop we got this unit from had already done this as they use CTS, all we did was lower the rack an additional 4 inches closer to the bulb. Really sped up the already quick times. The only thing that ticks me off from time to time is raising and lowering the lid. I think our's may need new lifts cylinders as it seems pretty tough to lift sometimes. I actually rigged the magnetic sensor switch on the side so that we don't have to have the lid closed all the time, "if we don't want to". Usually if it's later in the day or at night and I'm here shooting screens I'll just leave the lid open not worrying about any ambient light getting on the screens. Only bad part about that is making sure you don't have some rum head who wants to walk by the exposure unit and look in at the pretty bright light. Anyway, it's a solid work around as far as the rack goes. I would like to maybe add a d-scan in the future to replace the tri-light, but it's an awesome unit as is.

Pretty nifty.  I managed to experiment yesterday and unhooked the vacuum hose and taped off the end to see if the exposure light would still work and it did.  Now for just building the rack to hold the screens.  I'll probably still shut the lid but that's not a big issue.  Thanks for sharing that.

[screenprintguy]

Anytime brother! Before we got the tri-light, we had 2 other units. A richmond screen maker 10k. That one we had to do the hose bypass. I had ended up just putting a plug in it and it held no problem. Got rid of that unit, and used our back up unit that we had the photosharp 1000. Smaller surface area, so I had go to lowes and got some pieces of flat 1" aluminum angle, cut the lengths to go from side to side of the surface area, notched the angle and flipped the angle downward so that the flat side was up, then just used double sided 3m tape to hold those pieces in place. On one end, I put a peice of half inch agle connecting the two with the angle up as a stop for the top of the frames. Same thing 3m double side tape to hold together, then got a roll of one sided gasket tape for the tops of the angle to give a non skid surface for the frames. Once I knew it worked I used little self tapping screws to do a more solid lock of everything. It worked good, just that the unit itself was a 1 screen at a time and too weak of a light for us with emulsions for w/b printing. I'm sure a similar work around like that would go good in your unit. You will probably be at 2-5 second exposures with that unit and the I-Image.