How fast can you print flash print white ink on darks?

[Doug S]

Printing at insane speeds reminds me of a slogan at a body shop:

"Perfection is not our goal, completion is."

Obviously tongue in cheek. 

Heck I'm happy if I can print black on white shirts at a speed of 550 an hour, but I'm obsessive with how I load.  With dark shirts, I max out at around 38 dozen an hour.

[alan802]

Faster than I can load, and I shot a video last week and one a few weeks before that where I was loading a little over 1000/hr and got up to 1100/hr for short stretches.  We were printing white on one of those jobs I recorded.  We usually print white (Joe's ink) pegged out as far as squeegee speed goes, which is around 40-45"/sec on the G3.  The RPM is 30"/sec.  Once the pallets and flashes are at operating temp it's anywhere from 1-2 seconds so that doesn't slow us down.  For most print scenarios/job specs, our ability to load the press is our bottleneck.

We use all regular S thread from Murakami, roller frames, 25-30 newtons depending on mesh count. 

[im_mcguire]

Printing at insane speeds reminds me of a slogan at a body shop:

"Perfection is not our goal, completion is."

Obviously tongue in cheek. 

Heck I'm happy if I can print black on white shirts at a speed of 550 an hour, but I'm obsessive with how I load.  With dark shirts, I max out at around 38 dozen an hour.

I'm right there with you. I watched Danny's Instagram video, and made some adjustments on my press, but I can not seam to clear my screen with one stroke like most of you guys. I'm always 2 strokes. It's probably because of the air driven print head on my cutlass. We ran 42 dozen per hour today. And for my shop, we are beyond happy with those numbers.

[Screen Dan]

We use 150/48 smartmesh, typical EOM of 15-20% (usually closer to 20% if I'm not coating...which I'm usually not).  QE flash.

I used to be able to load the old Gauntlet IIs pretty reliably all day at 85dz/hr (~1020pcs/hr).  In a Print Off I did 134dz/hr (~1600pcs/hr) for almost 15 minutes.  God I wouldn't want to live like that.  On the new C3, if I ever had to run it, I'm sure I could do 100dz/hr (~1200pcs/hr) pretty reliably all day with the index set on the fastest.  Between the greased lightning speeds of the index and the lack of the carriage going up and down it isn't even as hard as it sounds.

Hell, I used to be the trainer for all the new ops which meant as soon as I got one up to speed I lost him to another line.  So I spent lots of time printing by myself.  A great workout.  If I was feeling particularly spry I would do 51dz/hr by myself, for weeks on end.  If I was having a ho-hum day I'd stick to 45dz/hr...why those speeds?  I don't know, it's just where it fell at whatever dwell times I was using. 

Now, the bozos running the presses today?  I wouldn't trust them to pull that off without misloading every single print.  I love screen printing from the top to the bottom.  Those guys are just here for a check.

[Nation03]

Printing at insane speeds reminds me of a slogan at a body shop:

"Perfection is not our goal, completion is."

Obviously tongue in cheek. 

Heck I'm happy if I can print black on white shirts at a speed of 550 an hour, but I'm obsessive with how I load.  With dark shirts, I max out at around 38 dozen an hour.

I'm right there with you. I watched Danny's Instagram video, and made some adjustments on my press, but I can not seam to clear my screen with one stroke like most of you guys. I'm always 2 strokes. It's probably because of the air driven print head on my cutlass. We ran 42 dozen per hour today. And for my shop, we are beyond happy with those numbers.

How much OC are you using and what kind of screens? I'm on air print heads too and I rarely have to double stroke.

[Doug S]

For me I use 3/16 off contact and rarely double stroke with s mesh.  It's just my load that slows me down.

[Maxie]

How do you measure the speed of the squeegee?
I think all machines have different speeds at the same setting.
E.g. 50% on the dial will be a different speed on the Roque, MHM and M&R.
I I turn my MHM up all the way I get a lot of ink splashed onto the inside of the head, I don't see this on Danny's video.

[Orion]

Perfect press set up- mesh count, tension, eom, off contact, squeegee profile/durometers, angles, squeegee/flood-pressure-speeds. The remaining variable is ink chemistry. Not uncommon for me to modify plastisol white inks with viscosity reducer, at low percentages (5 percent or less), to achieve desired results.

p.s. white on white does not require full gel of first ink deposit, imho.