Possibly going CTS

[Alex M]

It would make me very happy to know if any of these machines can fit through a 36" door

32" for the i-image st/ste/steII

[ebscreen]

Why do you guys run horizontal while others go vertical

I only play an engineer on tv and not real life, but if I had to guess, size of stepper motor.
Vertical would require a lot more holding torque.

[screenprintguy]

A little birdy told me that the servo that drives the frame up in the printer is the same servo used on the Diamondback s models =). Now that's a strong motor for just moving a screen up and down.

[inkman996]

TV engineer here as well so my guess would be gravity plays with the ink. A bullet coming out of a gun is immediately effected by gravity, albeit minutely but with printing I would imagine any deviation is not good. Not to mention wet ink sitting on a flat surface may be better than sitting on a vertical surface.

[mk162]

yes, but you can easily adjust for it and as long as the droplets are all the same size or really close, they will all fall at the same rate ...unless you have a fan blowing on them...

[ZooCity]

Personally, I like the upright, cabinet style of the Kiwo unit.  Seems like a nice way to control humidity and take up minimal space.   Wouldn't require a special room I imagine. 

I set us up to drop a unit of this style and size in when we are ready to upgrade from the little Goblin unit.  Smaller LED expo unit that shoots fast will free up major real estate as well v. our current 2-4 up sized vac frame and freestanding lamp. 

I like the idea of expo separate from the CTS actually, only because I've found that there are times when you don't want one machine/process/station in a shop holding up the other.  I prefer to keep each part of the process standalone as much as possible.  Not a necessity day to day but very nice to have when production has to go through the roof and you pull extra hands in.  Also, unless your CTS can handle your largest screen and image size, film will still be an occasional reality.  I also see the value in expo being part of the CTS, closer to an all in one type outlook and that's nice.  But consider if a major component craps out on that "all-in-wonder".  You're just plain down, can't image at all in that scenario, whereas if you have a separate expo unit that could have the glass put back in and keep an epson on hand for proofing you could run off some emergency films and get by for a day or two.

I haven't done all my research but from what I have done I'd say if you want ultimate dot shape go with a wax unit, ultimate speed then check out ink.  But then again look at Danny's prints done with ink CTS....when you get down to brass tacks, it may not make a huge difference for most textile printers if the ink systems aren't quite as perfect with dot shape, this is probably more of a concern for the flatstock folks. 

I believe the M&R units would need to be the way they are because they are ink printers, right?  Wouldn't gravity be a real problem trying to spray picoliters of ink horizontally onto the screen?

[screenprintguy]

yes, but you can easily adjust for it and as long as the droplets are all the same size or really close, they will all fall at the same rate ...unless you have a fan blowing on them...

Exactly correct, with ours, printing 1440x1440 small dot size in the rip, there is no puddling, it's 100% opaque black and very little ink sitting on there. If we go with say a medium dot 4 channels and 720 720 it's got quite a bit of ink on there, not enough to run off on the slant model like we have, but a little more and it might, so like Brad says, it's all in the rip adjustments.

[inkman996]

yes, but you can easily adjust for it and as long as the droplets are all the same size or really close, they will all fall at the same rate ...unless you have a fan blowing on them...

Exactly correct, with ours, printing 1440x1440 small dot size in the rip, there is no puddling, it's 100% opaque black and very little ink sitting on there. If we go with say a medium dot 4 channels and 720 720 it's got quite a bit of ink on there, not enough to run off on the slant model like we have, but a little more and it might, so like Brad says, it's all in the rip adjustments.

Maybe there is other things to consider, is it good to have a print head sitting sideways having all the internal ink pool to the bottom leaving the upper nozzles to dry out?

[ebscreen]

TV engineer here as well so my guess would be gravity plays with the ink. A bullet coming out of a gun is immediately effected by gravity, albeit minutely but with printing I would imagine any deviation is not good. Not to mention wet ink sitting on a flat surface may be better than sitting on a vertical surface.

Hahaha, derp. I guess that makes sense to....

[244]

TV engineer here as well so my guess would be gravity plays with the ink. A bullet coming out of a gun is immediately effected by gravity, albeit minutely but with printing I would imagine any deviation is not good. Not to mention wet ink sitting on a flat surface may be better than sitting on a vertical surface.

Hahaha, derp. I guess that makes sense to....

None of the reasons stated here is why we do it the way we do but that is proprietary. The i-screen printed vertical and never had any issues with the ink running or the dot being affected. Just a fyi.

[ZooCity]

Crazy.  I guess the ink dries fast enough and sprays with enough velocity that it doesn't matter?

[islandtees]

How come I never see any demos with roller frames. Its always sq frames.

[screenprintguy]

How come I never see any demos with roller frames. Its always sq frames.

good question, probably because at the shows the ridges are lighter, but we use M3's, MZX, and ridged with ours, no problems even if a job has a mix and match of frames.

[Zelko-4-EVA]

How come I never see any demos with roller frames. Its always sq frames.

i noticed that as well when i was doing my research...

our 23x31 MZX and 25x33 / 25x36 M3 frames work fine

a previous post by Alex said to use blue painters tape if a part of the mesh/tape is too high - remove the tape before you expose and reuse for the next screen if needed.

[ZooCity]

Why aren't all the machines set to simply never travel outside the emulsion area?  That is, never pass over tape? 

I believe the 2nd gen Kiwo is setup this way.