MHM platen deflection and other issues

[Extreme Screen Prints]

We have a MHM4000 auto reg, the new Xtype and a small Etype. I can say that the only MHM machine that doesn't have drastic pallet deflection is the 4000. Now we all know how terrible pallet deflection is for printing high end process work or waterbase and discharge. I was a MHM loyalist but after looking at an sroque and how there built I would go Sroque unless your going with a 4000. The arms are huge on the Sroque and extend further out. That is the only negative on mhm presses but it is a huge negative that they need to do something about. Now the benefit of the MHM presses is rarely having to take your floods and squeeges out of press. Pop the head up and scrape the ink off and give it a quick wipe and your on to the next color, that alone lets my guys setup a few more jobs per day. I do not post here very often but I would hate to see someone not give Sroque a try just because everyone with MHMs says there comparable to a BMW in car terminology.
I would also like to add, no matter how good you register on the FPU you still have to micro 50% of the heads, if you say you don't then your not printing detailed stuff or you have a huge choke.

[GraphicDisorder]

I would also like to add, no matter how good you register on the FPU you still have to micro 50% of the heads, if you say you don't then your not printing detailed stuff or you have a huge choke.

 

[Screened Gear]

We have a MHM4000 auto reg, the new Xtype and a small Etype. I can say that the only MHM machine that doesn't have drastic pallet deflection is the 4000. Now we all know how terrible pallet deflection is for printing high end process work or waterbase and discharge. I was a MHM loyalist but after looking at an sroque and how there built I would go Sroque unless your going with a 4000. The arms are huge on the Sroque and extend further out. That is the only negative on mhm presses but it is a huge negative that they need to do something about. Now the benefit of the MHM presses is rarely having to take your floods and squeeges out of press. Pop the head up and scrape the ink off and give it a quick wipe and your on to the next color, that alone lets my guys setup a few more jobs per day. I do not post here very often but I would hate to see someone not give Sroque a try just because everyone with MHMs says there comparable to a BMW in car terminology.
I would also like to add, no matter how good you register on the FPU you still have to micro 50% of the heads, if you say you don't then your not printing detailed stuff or you have a huge choke.

Extreme Screen Prints,

Do you have issues with deflection on your presses? I have an etype and I have not seen anything. (that effect registration) I do use the stock MHM pallets. I know some guys use Action pallets and they are thinner and do deflect. They use half inch honeycomb, stock pallets are close to 5/8th I think.  I have a local guy that has some of them and has to use a board under the ends of them so it supports the end of the pallets. That's more of a Action Engineering problem then a MHM one. I never print with more than 4 bars of pressure (60#s). I think most of the time I am in the 1.5 to 3 range. You print a ton more than me having 3 autos. I am just curious what issues you have.

I agree with your advice the Srouge is a good press. I have only seen the Ryonet one and the display features or lack of turned me off. I think that was the cheaper press so the one above it may have more controller features.

[blue moon]

We have a MHM4000 auto reg, the new Xtype and a small Etype. I can say that the only MHM machine that doesn't have drastic pallet deflection is the 4000. Now we all know how terrible pallet deflection is for printing high end process work or waterbase and discharge. I was a MHM loyalist but after looking at an sroque and how there built I would go Sroque unless your going with a 4000. The arms are huge on the Sroque and extend further out. That is the only negative on mhm presses but it is a huge negative that they need to do something about. Now the benefit of the MHM presses is rarely having to take your floods and squeeges out of press. Pop the head up and scrape the ink off and give it a quick wipe and your on to the next color, that alone lets my guys setup a few more jobs per day. I do not post here very often but I would hate to see someone not give Sroque a try just because everyone with MHMs says there comparable to a BMW in car terminology.
I would also like to add, no matter how good you register on the FPU you still have to micro 50% of the heads, if you say you don't then your not printing detailed stuff or you have a huge choke.

try using a 10X magnifying glass to place the films. It just about eliminates the need for registering (8 out of 10 are right on and don't need to be touched). Our standard stroke is 1pt for the spots and everything falls within that jsut fine. On the sim process jobs that are registered within few thousands of an inch, we need to do a little bit more, but not much. . .

what issues are you seeing with deflection? We hold the registration to under 5/1000th and have not had any problems with it. What should I be looking for?

pierre

[Extreme Screen Prints]

We have a MHM4000 auto reg, the new Xtype and a small Etype. I can say that the only MHM machine that doesn't have drastic pallet deflection is the 4000. Now we all know how terrible pallet deflection is for printing high end process work or waterbase and discharge. I was a MHM loyalist but after looking at an sroque and how there built I would go Sroque unless your going with a 4000. The arms are huge on the Sroque and extend further out. That is the only negative on mhm presses but it is a huge negative that they need to do something about. Now the benefit of the MHM presses is rarely having to take your floods and squeeges out of press. Pop the head up and scrape the ink off and give it a quick wipe and your on to the next color, that alone lets my guys setup a few more jobs per day. I do not post here very often but I would hate to see someone not give Sroque a try just because everyone with MHMs says there comparable to a BMW in car terminology.
I would also like to add, no matter how good you register on the FPU you still have to micro 50% of the heads, if you say you don't then your not printing detailed stuff or you have a huge choke.

try using a 10X magnifying glass to place the films. It just about eliminates the need for registering (8 out of 10 are right on and don't need to be touched). Our standard stroke is 1pt for the spots and everything falls within that jsut fine. On the sim process jobs that are registered within few thousands of an inch, we need to do a little bit more, but not much. . .

what issues are you seeing with deflection? We hold the registration to under 5/1000th and have not had any problems with it. What should I be looking for?
Pierre

I have not seen the deflection affect reg. just causes problems with coverage and having to double stroke on our discharge underbase. We run everything discharge under with plastisol on top and our underbase head has to be at 5 bar. We are running 180-230 mesh 32nm and have to double hit 50% of the time mainly because of deflection. The print will clear at the bottom of the stroke but not the top.  I here you guys talk about points, who sends vector art these days, 99% of the time we are working with crazy bitmap files created in photoshop. I think 1 point = 3 pixels at 300 dpi if i'm not mistaken. If we choke 3 pixels we either lose alot of detail or you can see the color falling off and to me it doesn't look very good.

[alan802]

That's the first I've heard of big pallet deflection on an MHM.  I hate to see pallet deflection and even print head deflection on an auto and that is a huge weakness if that is common for all non-4000 MHM's.  Other MHM owners have chimed in and it doesn't seem to be an issue for them whether or not there is a lot of deflection.  You MHM guys, would you describe the deflection as worse than other presses that you've seen?  I know it's probably not something you look for when your looking at another auto at a show or another shop visit but I'd be interested to hear how it compares if you have any experience or have seen another brand of auto. 

[IntegrityShirts]

This is a question for Pierre and Extreme which may be linked and may be a good/bad side effect.

Are all MHM pallets honeycomb with no rubber tops on them?

Pierre, do you think not having rubber tops helps you maintain finer detail for less dot gain for those super nice prints? Also, does NOT having rubber top pallets hinder ink penetration and laydown for maximum coverage like in Extreme's example of discharge having to print with a metric ton of pressure?

I know that when I switch to my sleeve/pocket pallets from Action, they are purposely bare aluminum for the ease of pocket printing, but I do notice less opacity over the regular rubber top pallets.

[blue moon]

We have a MHM4000 auto reg, the new Xtype and a small Etype. I can say that the only MHM machine that doesn't have drastic pallet deflection is the 4000. Now we all know how terrible pallet deflection is for printing high end process work or waterbase and discharge. I was a MHM loyalist but after looking at an sroque and how there built I would go Sroque unless your going with a 4000. The arms are huge on the Sroque and extend further out. That is the only negative on mhm presses but it is a huge negative that they need to do something about. Now the benefit of the MHM presses is rarely having to take your floods and squeeges out of press. Pop the head up and scrape the ink off and give it a quick wipe and your on to the next color, that alone lets my guys setup a few more jobs per day. I do not post here very often but I would hate to see someone not give Sroque a try just because everyone with MHMs says there comparable to a BMW in car terminology.
I would also like to add, no matter how good you register on the FPU you still have to micro 50% of the heads, if you say you don't then your not printing detailed stuff or you have a huge choke.

try using a 10X magnifying glass to place the films. It just about eliminates the need for registering (8 out of 10 are right on and don't need to be touched). Our standard stroke is 1pt for the spots and everything falls within that jsut fine. On the sim process jobs that are registered within few thousands of an inch, we need to do a little bit more, but not much. . .

what issues are you seeing with deflection? We hold the registration to under 5/1000th and have not had any problems with it. What should I be looking for?
Pierre

I have not seen the deflection affect reg. just causes problems with coverage and having to double stroke on our discharge underbase. We run everything discharge under with plastisol on top and our underbase head has to be at 5 bar. We are running 180-230 mesh 32nm and have to double hit 50% of the time mainly because of deflection. The print will clear at the bottom of the stroke but not the top.  I here you guys talk about points, who sends vector art these days, 99% of the time we are working with crazy bitmap files created in photoshop. I think 1 point = 3 pixels at 300 dpi if i'm not mistaken. If we choke 3 pixels we either lose alot of detail or you can see the color falling off and to me it doesn't look very good.

yes, there is a little bit of deflection, but it is very, very minor and I have not seen it impact anything so far.  'few thoughts here:

-we had the same problem with top not clearing when printing too close to the seam. It is the neck seam bulk that's holding the screen away from the shirt and thus making you stroke twice and push harder (5bar is a lot). Move the print away from the seams, load with the seam off the platen or place foam on the pallets when you have to stay close.

-as far as art, we get almost everything in vector or convert it ourselves, it prints cleaner.
-Instead of chocking, trap! Since only the ink that was underbased is visible, trapping is the way to go. Your ubase stays the same and thus you don't lose any detail. BTW 2pts at 300dpi is the same as 1pt stroke in illustrator (stroke is centered so it is really only half a point. both are 6/1000th of an inch. you will not see that without a magnifying glass if trapped).
-look into a double squeegee from Action, that might solve your problem.
-try S or LX mesh. Bigger openings will clear better.

I'll look at what's going on next time we print DC, but any issues there (for us) are not deflection related.

pierre

[blue moon]

This is a question for Pierre and Extreme which may be linked and may be a good/bad side effect.

Are all MHM pallets honeycomb with no rubber tops on them?

Pierre, do you think not having rubber tops helps you maintain finer detail for less dot gain for those super nice prints? Also, does NOT having rubber top pallets hinder ink penetration and laydown for maximum coverage like in Extreme's example of discharge having to print with a metric ton of pressure?

I know that when I switch to my sleeve/pocket pallets from Action, they are purposely bare aluminum for the ease of pocket printing, but I do notice less opacity over the regular rubber top pallets.

no rubber on MHM platens. You could put it on aftermarket, but the servos are not designed for the extra weight so I would not.
There is no question that printing on bare metal is significantly less forgiving. When starting I was tempted to buy the rubber so many times. And yes, it will deposit less ink from what I can tell. Biggest advantage is less heat retention. We print without a cool down station all the time with very little slowdown. I don't think it has any visible impact on the print quality.

pierre

[IntegrityShirts]

Gotcha. If I ran my choppers up to 75psi I'm pretty sure my squeegee would buckle into a rainbow and I'd be laying down ink with the flat part of the SIDE of the squeegee lol.

It'd be nice to see the differences on the interfaces between the C3 and the G3 presses. Heck I haven't even seen a video on the Sroque interface, anyone have one of those? Just for fun comparing and to attempt to stay on topic!

[screenprintguy]

I spoke with Dan at Forward printing several months back and he told me that was a big issue for them on their E type machine. The two little center pins that hold the pallets down seem to be the culprit. He said when ever they did images larger than 14 or so inches wide, they would experience deflection and a side to side rocking of their pallets. The machines they use now he said have zero head, and zero pallet deflection due to their design.
 The deflection we experience on our press is the heads actually flexing upwards during a heavy print stroke at the front, and the pallets themselves flexing downward at the front, causing the need for more pressure at the top of the design, but then what sucks is getting mid way on a bigger design, the flexing starts to relax and then you see your squeegee laying down more because of the increased pressure that was needed at the top of the design. We've learned how to sort of counter that with some front of pallet adjustments ect, but it is a major pain in the arse and I get really tired of having to explain why things go a certain way. I've tried every remedy ever presented, but it's just what it is. I really can't wait to add a higher end machine, and I want to be CERTAIN, that some of these frustrating issues are not existing on it. My suggestion to the original poster. This and other forums are great to get lots of info and testimonies, but now use this forum to network with shop owners, and or production managers at different facilities running different gear, and try to see if they will let you come hang out during full on production. This way you not only look at the gear, but you see it running in a real to life setting. See how they set up break down. See how they handle an on press issue, and how different gear compares. Here their personal testimonies as they are in the hustle of getting jobs done and out. See it all first hand. I love the tech and and a gear head, but I really am someone who wants to not only get info, a good look at a trade show or a manu's show room. I want to see and hear from the operators. What happens if a screen tears, if the separator ordered screens in a bad configuration and the already inked set up needs to be reconfigured and up and running to meet the end of the day deadline ect. How long the stuff runs weekly. The little and big issues, if there are any. How many service calls have been needed, if any, how easy was the issue addressed, fixed ect, if there were any needed. You are looking at a big ticket item, or set of items as we are, so you, as I know I, want to be sure the proper decision for "your shop", is being made. I'm not the only one in my shop making decisions, as my wife is my business partner, and she has really stepped up to setting up jobs, running jobs, her and her girls doing pallet change overs, what makes her life easier, surely makes the business run better, but also makes my life better. At the end of the day, we all want the best print at the best pace so that we can maximize our efforts and be successful at what we do. Just my 2cents. Glad that link to the G3 went up! I've been talking about it for a few months and just imaging what it would look like. I was told it's basically the C3 55 series, with a different control panel, and a few minor mods. So at that, it's a beast of a press. I've seen the C3 55 and C3D 55's up close and personally and in action and have a feeling there is a zero deflection on them, which would mean, if the print arms and pallet arms are the same on the G3, that's a non issue. I want to get up close and personal with one for sure and see what it's really all about. Which brings me to a closing. Before you pull your trigger, take a couple days and go directly to the manufacture. For sure M&R has not only where you can take a tour, which would be cool, but an actual real setting with the gear so that you can get all over it yourself and that is one thing we are trying to put together right now. Being right there will give a perfect final arena to have all questions answered that maybe in some cases where we are fighting something in our process, we may just be doing it wrong from lack of training, and that's what they are set up for there. Not sure if other's offer it, but they openly extend the invite to any M&R owner or prospecting owner.

At any rate, the best of luck to ya man, I hope what ever you do, is the best for your shop and you!!

Mike

[T Shirt Farmer]

Not challenging Dan's comments but... The squeegee is held by a floating center pin similar top the Javilin so there is no way you can have more treasure on one side of the pallet than the other. In fact having a cylinders with height adjuster( common set up on most machines) is far more likely to have unbalanced squeegee pressure side to side.

[blue moon]

Gotcha. If I ran my choppers up to 75psi I'm pretty sure my squeegee would buckle into a rainbow and I'd be laying down ink with the flat part of the SIDE of the squeegee lol.

It'd be nice to see the differences on the interfaces between the C3 and the G3 presses. Heck I haven't even seen a video on the Sroque interface, anyone have one of those? Just for fun comparing and to attempt to stay on topic!

we had a chance to see the interface and it is better than what they have now, easier to read and operate.
I do think though, they are still behind the few of the others and especially the MHM when it comes to the actual user interface. It is currently a number one reason I would not switch to M&R as silly as it seems.
There is a plus though, a significant one at that. M&R has some functions that are not available on other presses and the upcoming cloud/monitoring system is very impressive (think sitting at lunch and finding out on your phone how the press is doing, that includes the number of jobs, the set up times and production!).

pierre

[T Shirt Farmer]

[/quote]

no rubber on MHM platens. You could put it on aftermarket, but the servos are not designed for the extra weight so I would not.
pierre
[/quote]

I have Rubber tops and love them.. bet the weight of one piece of rubber is not much more that the weight of heavyweight hoody, I doubt this will effect the machine.. on my S Type I can slow down the index speed as well  so there is bit less inertia with the movement.

JMO

[blue moon]

I spoke with Dan at Forward printing several months back and he told me that was a big issue for them on their E type machine. The two little center pins that hold the pallets down seem to be the culprit. He said when ever they did images larger than 14 or so inches wide, they would experience deflection and a side to side rocking of their pallets. The machines they use now he said have zero head, and zero pallet deflection due to their design.
Mike

huh, interesting. I used to say noo waay to things like this, but now I go and check. Again, it is not something I've seen before.
I can also see that if the platens are not properly leveled there would be play on the side of the rails and very high pressure could rock the platen. My first reaction is, the issue is with the operation rather than design. This is not to say that the design is without faults as no press is, but it is my feeling that MHM is still the press to beat.

pierre