Author Topic: Humidity Control in screen storage area - how far do you take it?  (Read 2259 times)

Offline Stinkhorn Press

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Recently learned just how important good humidity control in the screen storage room is. All upside – better, faster burns, no film to emulsion issues, no downside (yet).

In our screen storage room we let clean screens dry off, we emulsion, we store screens, we tape film to screens.

We have a dehumidifier in the room.
Where humidity goes UP:
1 entering and exiting the room
2 clean, wet screens drying
3 wet emulsion drying on screens
4 anything creating a vacuum and drawing in outside air

1 nothing to really be done there, rather inescapable
2 considering drying them in a cabinet outside the storage room before entering...
3 we currently use a drying cabinet that is IN the storage room to quickly dry the screens and to vent that emulsion humidity OUT, but it's the source then of
4 options as we see them:
a drying cabinet in storage room but directly vented to pull and exhaust with OUTSIDE the room air
b move all drying cabinets to a place outside the storage room, carry the screens back and forth

How far do you go to keep your screen storage room low in humidity?


Online ebscreen

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Re: Humidity Control in screen storage area - how far do you take it?
« Reply #1 on: January 19, 2017, 12:37:50 PM »

We have a dehumidifier in the room.
Where humidity goes UP:
1 entering and exiting the room
2 clean, wet screens drying
3 wet emulsion drying on screens
4 anything creating a vacuum and drawing in outside air



1. Strip style or restaurant doors will do a lot for you here, but yes, no point in having a room you can't enter or exit.
2. Do this outside the room if possible, preferably in a passthrough to the room. If not, a cabinet in the room. Vertical drying preferred for us.
3. Do this in a cabinet in the room.
4. Yeah. We have dehumidifer and fans drawing from side of room facing AWAY from wet area, hopefully producing positive pressure to
mitigate air from wet processing area.

Today notwithstanding our relative humidity levels are fairly low, despite being near the ocean.
Them midwest/southern folks got it rough.


Now I have two questions:

Screw compressor produces a pretty large volume of warm, filtered (and I'm assuming dry) air, any reason not to use it in the screen room?

MH unit produces a pretty large volume of warm air and is ventilated to outside the room. I vaguely remember that these produce ozone
though so use in the screen room would be a no no?

Offline Prince Art

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Re: Humidity Control in screen storage area - how far do you take it?
« Reply #2 on: January 19, 2017, 01:07:47 PM »
Is your screen room in an air conditioned area, or not? It seems to me that when people discuss & advise on this topic, this aspect doesn't always come up. (Just realized reading your post that I vaguely assumed everyone keeps screens in a/c. And we know about assumptions...)

Our screen room is under air, next to the office. This alone does a lot to regulate humidity. Immediately after coating, we run a large dehumidifier @ highest setting for several hours. And we have a heavy cloth curtain @ the door, which may prevent some humidity entering, but it's really to block light on entry/exit. Oh, we keep our screens in cabinets with doors, but these were built with fabric bottoms so that they breathe, and get the benefit of the dehumidifier. (A lot easier to build than a real dry box, and it works for us.)
That's about as far as we go, and it seems to be enough.
Nice guys laugh last.