Ink Carding stations and methods?????

[screenprintguy]

Hey guys, hope everyone's Monday has kicked off great! I just wanted to see if anyone would be willing to share/post pics of their preferred way of ink-carding of their screens. We are considering a fixed area for this, but not sure if that is the best way. Right now we rack screens in rolling racks and end up carding ink right at the racks at different times, but it always seems to risk colors dropping on to other screens making a mess, carts wanting to roll away from you when pushing pressure against them ect. Or even risk popping screen mesh trying to work within the rack itself. I'm thinking a big table top area that carts can roll up to a screen at a time come off onto, card ink, put the dirty screen on another rack to head to the back on so on. I'm curious to see everyone else's methods.

Thanks guys!

Mike

[ZooCity]

I'm trying to do the same in our shop, looking forward to seeing what other do as well.

Currently my staff likes to de-ink and at least start pulling tape on the press.  Right now, everyone likes to poke their finger up through the corner of the roller frames (we trim the corners in a 'half moon') to pop the tape out of the corner and that's easiest to do right on the press.  Most of the time doing this on press is fine and is no more/less efficient or beneficial to the schedule than doing it off press, but I'm trying to get us into the habit of getting jobs off the press as fast as humanly possible to start setup between jobs asap.  There are times when, even with 2 autos and a manual, we'll need to move all day on all presses with someone doing nothing but teardown and my printers doing nothing but setup and printing.  I imagine this is ultra crucial in bigger shops with higher production for a number of reasons. 

I have a big rubbermaid cart that I was going to setup with maybe a little C channel or some hold down clamps or whatever works that is mesh safe that you could hold the screen down with to pull tape efficiently. 

[screenprintguy]

Last year, we started pulling tape off at the washout booth. My screen guy will put an inky screen up in the booth, squirt a couple squirts of beenie doo on the print side, give it a quick rub with the soft brush, then fan it with the pressure washer, then he reaches in and pulls the tape. This way, any ink residue that was on the tape is now washed off with beenie doo, filtered out in the filter system we built at the washout booth. Plus the water hitting the screen usually shoots right under the natural rubber adheasive tape we use so it pulls fast, and since it gets wet it doesnt' stick all over the garbage bag as much. That made things faster for us rather than pre-pulling the tape. We noticed pre pulling the tape was putting plastisol in the garbage pail and we wanted to eliminate that.

[3Deep]

I just remove ink while on the press, gotta take the squeegee and flood bar out anyway then detape at the wash out area later.

[dirkdiggler]

take screen off press and immediately put in back in bucket, is there a better way than that?

[ebscreen]

Screens come off press onto rubbermaid cart that also has all the ink buckets for the job as well as squeegees & floods.
Goes to reclaim room and ink is carded off while on the cart, it works pretty well as a table, and your ink buckets are right there
on the bottom shelf. Tape isn't pulled until all ink is out to avoid getting ink in the channels between frame and mesh.

Only thing I would change is maybe making a dedicated table to do so, kind of like a draftmans table, tilted at about 60 degrees.
Gravity can help with runny inks.

[screenprintguy]

take screen off press and immediately put in back in bucket, is there a better way than that?

We used to do it like this, but when things are slammed that method just slows down the process, at least for us so with a couple hundred screens in the stock we rack and move on to the next set up until there is a lul to be able to card screens that are done.

Eb-I like that drafting table style table idea, maybe one on the wall near the ink storage area that carts can wheel up to, come off one at a time, card, re-stock the ink and dirty rack the screens to go to the back.

[mooseman]

we use cake frosting spatulas to load and unload ink  from screens right on the press (manual printer here )
mooseman

[Catnhat]

Ours is a little 4' banquet table covered in pallet tape. (probably switch to a bigger one this spring).  Screens/squeegees/floods come off press and go to table.  Ink gets carded off and ink shelves are right behind it.  Screens go right to washout.  A little beanedoo is sprayed and scrubbed on and left to sit for a bit while we do something else.  After about 5-10 minuntes, rinse with lukewarm water and the tape falls off and screens go in rack until reclaim/diptank. 
When we are slammed, screens go to table, get ink cleaned, then into a rack.  When rack is full it goes to washout to get tape pulled and reclaimed later.
Reclaim gets done when 2 racks are about full, so about every 35-40 screens.  Which right now is about once a week.  In the spring and fall it's every other day.

[ZooCity]

Catnhat, is that a CCTV setup to check ink in print heads?   How do you like that setup, as useful as you thought it would be?

We were talking about doing this on our 8 color but trying to get the cameras to feed to a tablet.

Thread officially jacked.

[ericheartsu]

We've also been talking about doing the same thing!

[Catnhat]

Yep.  We were having a bunch of problems with gang taggers and vehicle prowls on the back side of our building.  The boss had a rock thrown threw his car window in the middle of the afternoon and they stole his phone that he'd forgot and left on the seat.  So him and the landlord split the cost of one of those Defender security systems from HomeDepot.
Landlord put up 2 cameras outside (still has 2 more to put up) which left us 4.  So I rigged 3 around the press focused on heads 2/3, 4/5, and 6/7  and one at the end of the dryer.
The ones on the press are helpful on runs over a couple hundred pieces, since you can keep on eye on things without having to break your rhythm we all get into when printing.

The one at the end of the dryer...LIFESAVER!  especially if you run solo and/or don't have a dedicated catcher. 

And we can see the back alley for UPS/FedEx deliveries and such, and when the other 2 get put up I'll be able to see the parking lot on the far side of the building and around our dumpster, all from the press.

[farmboygraphics]

We use a small hand cart that was left in the building. Perfect size. Clean one color at a time, put it away and move to the next. Keep in mind that this is only a 2 or 3 person shop. We use backer board from Uline that we cut down to roughly 3x4 pieces, I like them cause you just toss them. Nothing to clean and nothing with ink on it laying around.

[ebscreen]

Catnhat, is that a CCTV setup to check ink in print heads?   How do you like that setup, as useful as you thought it would be?

We were talking about doing this on our 8 color but trying to get the cameras to feed to a tablet.

Thread officially jacked.

Webcams with the tablet browser on the feed page? I'd think trying to do it hardware straight to the tablet would be
pretty difficult, they generally don't support that sort of thing. Plus you could watch it remotely and make sure your
press isn't getting high in the ink room at night.

I've thought about this a million times as well, and like you, wonder if it's yet another one of those ideas that I thought would be the
cat's meow but ends up a sad trombone sound.

[Gilligan]

I have a spare analog DVR sitting in the closet (I'm all IP camera for anything "important")... I may have to source some cheap analog cameras to strap on the press and behind the dryer for this.

Shouldn't cost me much.