Band-Aids or Tools/split from Fibrillation frustration Thread

[Frog]

Another thing. Stay away from smoothing screens, rollers, double squeegees, beveled squeegees, hard flooding, s-mesh, super high tension screens and high EOM emulsion. All these are band aids for something your not doing right. Learn your press with basic stuff. Get a feel for what your press needs when something is going wrong. You do this and you can print any ink with any combination of variables. After that you can use these items to even further your skills and even further your ability to use your press. They are good tools and will improve your prints. Just spend some time dialing in your press and lean how to control it.

Good luck. It took me a long time before I could print a perfect white print on my press. Now I can do it every time.

I pity the worker who, from the get-go, with no previous grasp of the process, learns in a shop with all of the bells, whistles, band-aids and tools, who then hits the real world realization that in new surroundings, he has to make do with "average equipment".

[tonypep]

I do it here daily

[ericheartsu]

we use alot of these tools, but it's to help make our products look better. I Know i'm still learning a ton, but i don't think it's a bad thing to have some of these items. The roller squeegee, although not necessary just helps for an overall smoother print.

[mimosatexas]

I wholly agree with Jon.  I LOVE my s mesh, but I was able to produce similar work without it.  It just hurt a lot more

[jsheridan]

It just hurt a lot more

work smarter, not harder.

I choose to use any and all tools at my disposal because it makes be a better printer with less work.

telling someone to use old tools ad figure it out is like telling a driver to get in a 10yr old car and go compete with a guy in a brand new race car.. try all you want you'll work twice as hard as the other guy to get the same result.

[mimosatexas]

I would say the prints that inspired this thread show a lack of very basic know-how, and using tools that might improve that but do not actually help illuminate the problem are hot helping in the long run.  I don't think the old car vs new car anology fits.  Cars drive the same way, and understanding the basics is essential in both cases, but the new car will obviously allow someone who has mastered the basics to compete at a higher level.

[tonypep]

One could argue that a great printer knows how to exploit what you have to work with in order to print first quality graphics. All the other stuff is icing. You should have seen what printers pulled off on old Precisions for instance. One can simply site Winterland. Not arguing tools, toys, bells, whistles just making an observation.

[Frog]

telling someone to use old tools and figure it out is like telling a driver to get in a 10yr old car and go compete with a guy in a brand new race car.. try all you want you'll work twice as hard as the other guy to get the same result.

I was bringing up something more analogous to learning on a new car with a computer working the clutch and now trying to drive a car with a proper manual transmission.

[Gilligan]

I can understand the point of the exercise... we put out some pretty terrible looking stuff when using awful equipment (wooden frames).. we jumped straight to S-Mesh newmans and things changed amazingly.

I do think that we "cheated" bit and that we would be better printers if we had learned to be better on the lesser gear.

I'm not about to take those tools away from my guy, but I see the point.

[Screened Gear]

Printing with wood frames would never help you get better.

[Gilligan]

I agree with that, my point is we leap frog'd the normal steps most people grow through.

[DannyGruninger]

The items mentioned above are not band aids in my book, rather advancements to production tools that make us print faster, better, and easier. I have rollers, s mesh, double bevels, etc all in my shop and I feel like we are pretty respectable printers here. Do we use them on every job? Nope but they sure do make things easier for certain jobs. If a screen supplier came in my shop with 20 wood screens as well as 20 s mesh rollers I would take the s mesh rollers all damn day long. Not because I would use the s mesh rollers as a band aid but personally I think it's a superior mesh then everything else out there along with rollers. All industries have made advancements in technology and to me everything mentioned above is exactly this. Maybe those tools can be used as a band aid in some shops but in my shop they are not band aids by any means. Like tony mentioned a great printer will be able to use whatever they have and bang out great prints but if your able to do something faster and easier I don't see why you wouldn't. My shop is filled with tools to make certain jobs run faster, cleaner, etc and I will continue to add these tools. I've never walked into a new marketing agency and seen the young staff working on old original IBM computers, rather they are working on state of the art apple's along with tablets. I look at my shop the same way, I'm going to give my guys the best tools I can because sooner or later your production will not be competitive with other shops. They will be doing stuff cheaper, faster and better then the shops that aren't updating their tools. Just my opinion

[Screened Gear]

Wow this thread was not started so people use out of date machines and tools. Funny how things go some times. Well have to get back to my table clamps and wood frames.

[Frog]

Jon, threads have a way of evolving and taking on a life of their own.
I saw your initial post as good advice to folks wanting to understand the fundamentals of what goes into a good print, and mastering their press to help them do so. I added that there are undoubtedly some screen print workers out there, having only worked in wonderfully equipped shops who would be lost in a shop lacking the benefit of all of these great new breakthroughs.

[DannyGruninger]

My problem with the statement is Jon is telling guys to "stay away" from these what he calls "band aids"........ The above mentioned is neither of those in my book just sayin