Nearly burnt down

[Maxie]

 Yesterday our plant almost went up in flames.
End of a busy summer and the roof is packed with dust, not real dust.
The dust we get in silk screen plants, bit of glue,cotton, dust etc.
A  fluorescent lamp above the printers head caught fire and in seconds the flames shot along the electrical wires that were coated with dust, along the roof beams as well.
Fortunately the printers acted fast with fire extinguishers and there was no damage at all, just a lot of powder from the extinguishers.
Place is now spotless, we were very lucky.
Lesson to be learnt, keep the place clean and don't leave fluorescent on if you are not in the building.

[jsheridan]

yep.. seen it myself before.

Had a pellon curl under a quartz bulb before touching it and catching, the ember fell to the lint covered floor under the press.. I've never seen fire spread so fast.. within seconds the entire floor was ablaze and it was catching the lint on the lower carousel.

20 seconds in and the extinguisher took care of it.

The rest of the day and the next were spent cleaning the shop top to bottom and from there on cleaned weekly and mopped monthly.

[jvieira]

Wow. Sometimes I guess we all need a wake up call. Haven't had any problems yet but a couple months ago our insurance company came over to have a look and pointed a bunch of problems we would have to fix otherwise they wouldn't pay in case of fire (this was in the middle to high season, just our luck!).

Some were easy, others are just not fixable (ceiling, etc). We are now in the process of having the entire shop clean (today is the 3rd and final day of our general cleaning) and wow, it looks so much better. Will need a truck to haul out all the trash we had laying around, though.

[mk162]

In case anybody really needs a good "blow gun" for getting lint off of things and the blow nozzles don't work, take the quick-connect fitting off the nozzle and put that in the air coupling.  Zero restrictions.  I moved more junk in 30 seconds than I would have moved in 20 minutes.  Wear some earplugs though...

[jvanick]

this is making me reconsider our use of kraft paper on the floor in our shop...

but then I'd need to figure something else out as our landlord is super anal about the floors.

-J

[mk162]

used carpet.  it's free usually and it will handle a lot of ink

[GKitson]

this is making me reconsider our use of kraft paper on the floor in our shop...

but then I'd need to figure something else out as our landlord is super anal about the floors.

-J

Apparently you sleep with your landlord....

[Zelko-4-EVA]

always turn off fixture when changing bulbs...



how i clean dust off the ceiling/pipes/fixtures:

i have 13-15 foot ceilings so i took a peice of 8ft conduit, ran a 3/8 air line through it.  valve on one side, open end on the other.  we have a 90 degree press to lock fitting that can go on the end to make it easier to get over things.  we have to wear eye protection, earplugs and a dust mask.

with that much air going through it, there is a lot of kick.  its not the best solution for lint cleaning, in fact it kept our air compressor (25hp variable speed drive) at 40% load.  i just used what i had for spare parts lying around. 

i had tried a 1/4" air line but it didnt work as fast. 

version 2.0 will have a proper nozzle on the end, a better valve and a 90 degree handle to reduce operator fatigue.

[jvanick]

this is making me reconsider our use of kraft paper on the floor in our shop...

but then I'd need to figure something else out as our landlord is super anal about the floors.

-J

Apparently you sleep with your landlord....

Good one Greg, but we are leasing at this point...  The landlord actually drops in from time to time to see how things are going/etc.. while I know we can deal with the cleanup when we move out, I'd rather not have it get to that point.

We replace the the kraft paper every few months, the floors underneath look like the day we moved in.

[Screen Dan]

I too have seen exactly the same scenario as OP...a couple times. 

While printing a left chest print on denim vests with fringes.  A fringe hits the flasher bulb, index, something on the next head burns up, the flame spreads up the glue/lint combo, rapidly climbs the wires to the ceiling.  Ceiling is now on fire.

Act fast with the fire extinguishers. 

We never had any real damage from that, luckily.  It's why we clean the everything, ceiling included, a couple times a year.  Cleaning over the dryer on the scissor lifts is a harrowing experience, but it really needs to be done.

...more annoying for me are the tiny pallet-fires where it's just enough burn to stay lit on the pallet through a couple indexes and you only notice once the burnt shirt gets to the unload station...you now have to replace every single screen besides the base plate and there is gallons of ink on the floor and every pallet besides the load station, base plate and first flash...if that happens on the Challenger III while its on it's fastest index mode it can even whip ink all over the place.  Impressive stuff.

Keep fire extinguishers hand and up to date.  Glad it wasn't worse, Maxie.

[mk162]

FYI, the fire extinguishers in a spray can are really good.  Our fire inspector didn't really know much about them.  I saw on thing on the news about them being tested on a Christmas tree fire.  It was amazing how fast it was out.

I don't think they count as fire extinguishers, so you'll still need those, but these make much less mess.  it will at least buy you time while somebody f*cks with the pin and crap on a normal one.

It's a good thing to have a couple around for small fires.

[mk162]

Funny this was brought up, the closest other shop to us had a fire that burnt up the press.  they were welding a print arm and the lint and glue on the floor caught fire and burned up their press.  they wanted to come over and print on ours, but I'm tied up with other work and really don't want that liability.

[kingscreen]

pellon curl under a quartz bulb

This just happened at our shop last week.  Forgot a pellon under head one and put a test tee on and hit sample print.  Pellon caught fire and proceeded to catch two screens on fire before we could hit the emergency stop.  Scary few moments.  Luckily, there was no damage besides two burned up screens.

[Homer]

pellon curl under a quartz bulb

This just happened at our shop last week.  Forgot a pellon under head one and put a test tee on and hit sample print.  Pellon caught fire and proceeded to catch two screens on fire before we could hit the emergency stop.  Scary few moments.  Luckily, there was no damage besides two burned up screens.

pfft..you can patch that....


Darryl would....

[bimmridder]

And it's so easy....


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