Small holes appearing in mesh?

[sqslabs]

I've had a lot of small holes appearing in my mesh lately, and have no idea where they are coming from.  I'm used to seeing them on older mesh, but now they're popping up everywhere, and I have screens popping left and right.  Still looking into our process here but figured I'd ask in case there was an easy solution.  Any insight would be appreciated.

Thank youuuu.

[blue moon]

check the process of scooping out the ink or reinking during the run. It could be the corners of the spatulas or even cleanup cards  on finer meshes. . .

pierre

[Homer]

look for crap in the ink too.....we had a bolt in the ink once. caused all kinds of fun. 

[sqslabs]

Ah that makes perfect sense.  We have a new(ish) unloader who has been adding/carding ink from screens and is still a bit iffy with a spatula.  I think 20-30 lashes with a busted mesh panel will ensure it doesn't happen again.   

Thanks for the input guys.

[shurloc]

Quite a few times pinholes like this can be caused by cleaners that leave alkalines on the mesh. If this is the case, you might notice a "white residue" or some small "lint like" fibers on the mesh. You can check the mesh through a loop. If you see anything like that, it's a simple fix.

Mix a spray bottle with 1/2 white vinegar and 1/2 water. Give them a quick/light spray after you clean them to neutralize the alkaline that is left on the mesh after reclaiming. The pinholes should not be an issue after you use that mix on the mesh.

[ScreenFoo]

Just small holes would lead me to excessive off contact or (unlikely) too high of tension.

Small holes + popping would lead me to wanting to smack people around for mishandling stuff.
Definitely sounds like scratches from metal implements or frame corners.

Homer:  Got nothing on the local shop that broke a spring on the manual, part of it hit a fluorescent overhead light, and dropped broken lamp shards onto the auto--which was running at the time...

[Rockers]

How small is small? Small holes can happen for several reasons.  We had this issue and we traced it back to the recycling process. We had some shitty tape on the squeegee side of the screen to mask up images at the other end of the screen. Did not always peel of 100% and left some very small pieces of tape on the inside of the screen that where hardly noticeable. Then during the recycling process this tape residue might be blown through the mesh by the force of the water from the pressure washer. That of course leaves small holes in the screen. Other reason might be that the corner of a winged floodbar is being banged into the mesh when removed from or inserted into the floodbar holder.

[Underbase37]

Also check your flood bars for any for any nicks and burrs.

Murphy37

[mooseman]

My bet is it is a handling problem. I would strongly suspect the new guy working on the card out crew.

if you have the opportunity or the mind set to repair the mesh there is a simple pretty effective method to patch the mesh.

get some 5 minute epoxy cut a piece of scrap mesh about the size of a nickel.

Cut two pieces of scrap film way bigger than the patch area .

mix the epoxy ...soak / saturate the patch piece in the epoxy and place it centered over the hole ON THE SHIRT SIDE of the screen.

Cover the patch area on both sides of the screen with the film pieces NOTE if you have waterproof film MAKE SURE the ink, print side of the film does not contact the epoxy or it will stick to it.

Throw the screen with the patch film, epoxy patch in your vacuum frame and draw it down. This will compress the patch and epoxy into the mesh spreading it evenly.

The result is an extremely smooth  and tight patch that obviously not print but will prevent the hole from popping your mesh.

 Using the vacuum frame squeeze the patch area is nearly undetectable to the  emulsion coating process when the coater passes over the patch area on the shirt side and absolutely no report on the squeegee  side.

The patch lasts us  through hundreds of reclaims ..note we do not dip tank reclaim.
mooseman

[GaryG]

Awesome!   

[Inkworks]

Probably not this, but I will throw it out there.

We are also a sign shop and have a table saw back behind the Auto, sometimes we get little tiny bits of cut materiel on the platens, and even with a shirt on they were enough to put pinholes in S-mesh.

Soo do you have any debris on your platens?

...I need a bigger shop...

[Gilligan]

We don't let any scoops touch the mesh any longer (all S-Mesh here)... we use clean up cards or biz cards misprints to scrape the ink off the scoops and into the screen.  The problem went away.

We also did the vinegar trick as well as we don't want to chance it and it's a quick easy step.