tri loc pallet not flat

[Rockers]

I checked our tri loc pallet this morning and it turns out it`s anything but flat.
After placing a 4ft level across the tri loc pallet i noticed that the front half is sloping. At he very front end where the stop block is it deviates by at least 0.11 inches down.
What issues might this cause on press

[Dottonedan]

If I understand you right, it should not hinder in any way.   That's near an 8th inch. That's pretty big, but I suspect that leaves near 70% in good contact. As long as there is good contact in all three points, it should be as good as any flat one.
As you can imagine, it's not the flatness of the tri-loc that makes or breaks registration. Maybe something like a warped or bent screen in the extreme might introduce an issue, but I don't see this being a problem.

[Rockers]

If I understand you right, it should not hinder in any way.   That's near an 8th inch. That's pretty big, but I suspect that leaves near 70% in good contact. As long as there is good contact in all three points, it should be as good as any flat one.
As you can imagine, it's not the flatness of the tri-loc that makes or breaks registration. Maybe something like a warped or bent screen in the extreme might introduce an issue, but I don't see this being a problem.

For some reason in most instances the screens do not make contact with the front stop block. Most our prints are out in hight and slightly off to the left. Well that`s for at least one or two screens in a set of let`s say 5 screens.

[mimosatexas]

I use a pretty ghetto DIY triloc pallet, also bent. If i setup my screens properly on my FPU, it is still dead on for registration purposes. Skewed frames and issues related to my press calibration make a much bigger difference than the pallet.

[Stinkhorn Press]

when chasing our triloc errors, 90% of the correction came from tightening up the parallelism of the press, your mileage may vary.

bent jig - can be an issue. GOAL is to have the same three points on each frame touch on the FPU and on the jig on press. BECAUSE static frames aren't flat and true and square. and those little inconsistencies can add up. if you touch at the same x and y AND depth, you're better off.

bent jig - clamp that mother to something immovable. use a 2x4 to bend it back to true. it will flex. you will need to put more mustard on that action than you will think. you can get it much more true. just bend it. 

[Lizard]

You can take the stop block off and shim it up with some washers.  Go to lowe's and get the metric sized washers. 

[alan802]

If your stop blocks don't match the exact angle and contact spot on the screens then you'll see issues.  I'm sure a geometry nerd could figure out exactly how far a .11" difference would make.  When I exaggerate the issue in my head I can see the difference being mainly vertical registration but at that small of tilt might only make a hairline difference at the print area.  If your results are consistently off the same direction and distance over the course of a few dozen jobs then I'd bet it has at least a little bit to do with it.

On a similar note, as the time goes by between press calibration our registration is less consistent since the pallets are not as level to one another as they were a year ago.  I'm still setting up most every job in less than 3 test prints and most are 2 or less.

This might not be something that most people would agree with, but accuracy is important, but if your first test print is close enough that you can get the 2nd test print dialed in then I wouldn't spend a ton of time chasing the issue.  It takes a few test prints just to get things flowing and pressure/speed settings right so you are doing them anyway on most multi-colored jobs.  Take it from a psycho who has literally spent hundreds and hundreds of hours trying to figure out things that once fixed didn't make much, if any difference in overall production capability.