Water base tack spray set-ups

[RICK STEFANICK]

We are switching the shop over to all water base tack . we have been rolling it on and filling in with mist. I am looking for some photos of your set-ups. If we have to we can have a 5 and gun at each press but Im not sure that's necessary. Please help me out here

- how far can we run the lines if we have 1- 5 gallon for 2 presses.
- what brand of applicator and gun do you have? we like the tekmar
- whats your annual cost per press for product?
- How do you have your guns hanging above the load/unload area?

THANK YOU IN ADVANCE. My email is rick@eaglepromotions.com    if you want or would send a video.

[ericheartsu]

very excited to see the info on this thread.

[tonypep]

Once again the variables come in to play. At one shop, we could go for two months without re applying. Scrubbing with water and a stiff brush will reactivate in most cases. Watch your shoes! In other shops they just over coat until it is time to change the paper. Time consuming no matter what, however I was impressed to see a skilled operator find his own method of application on a 14 color press. 8 second dwell and he is done. He is a young genius. No gun, not necessary for him. Garment construction and dyes do come in to play though. A pigment dyed garment verses a triblend may require different applications. And then there is fleece. This is where it becomes tricky. I have used the guns in the past however they junked up the first head fairly quickly. That may have changed'

[tonypep]

An afterthought but known to most. Over tacking can result into circles turning to eggs and general warping, at least in the first cycles.

[Doug S]

I have 10 squeeze bottles with 1/2 being 50/50 tack to water for the typical 100% cotton t shirts and the other 5 just straight tack for fleece and the lovely comfort colors.  If I'm printing fleece, I apply with a cleanup card at an angle so that it lays down more.  I quit using any aerosol tack last year. I have no experience with guns but I would imagine like tp said they would clog up pretty quickly.

[Maxie]

We apply Tekmar with a squeeze bottle and small roller, it’s fast.   I’m not sure a spray will be much faster.
I hate spray, it gets into and into everything.
We dilute 1:1, I must try Doug’s idea with fleece.

[ZooCity]

We do have Tekmar's dual gun model but have only used it with their starch slurry for tacking down pockets and plys for all over the whatever style prints.  I don't have experience spraying platen tack through it.

Tekmar has a wb tack product that they claim works for fleece and distributes through the sprayers.  If this is true, then the potential advantages are pretty nice:

• One tack for the majority of fabrics- Ts to fleece without changing tape or spray types.
• Bulk product, no more cases upon cases of aerosol cans in the garb.
• Atomization control, no need for masks when using mist for example.
• Can hang on a tool balancer over the station, free hands and less motion needed to get the can of web spray for instance

All the units would needed cleaned after each shift I imagine to prevent clogging.  As per mfg, we run...I want to say a solution of acetone...through ours after use when using the starch spray.

Overspray could be an issue but not if your press ops aren't a bunch of mouth breathers- they'll figure out how to keep it tight just like they do with web spray.  You can always keep a roller around if they are having trouble getting the edges of the platen for some reason.

Let us know how this pans out!  I think tacking is overlooked in our shop and want to revamp it soon here too.

[RICK STEFANICK]

We do have Tekmar's dual gun model but have only used it with their starch slurry for tacking down pockets and plys for all over the whatever style prints.  I don't have experience spraying platen tack through it.

Tekmar has a wb tack product that they claim works for fleece and distributes through the sprayers.  If this is true, then the potential advantages are pretty nice:

• One tack for the majority of fabrics- Ts to fleece without changing tape or spray types.
• Bulk product, no more cases upon cases of aerosol cans in the garb.
• Atomization control, no need for masks when using mist for example.
• Can hang on a tool balancer over the station, free hands and less motion needed to get the can of web spray for instance

All the units would needed cleaned after each shift I imagine to prevent clogging.  As per mfg, we run...I want to say a solution of acetone...through ours after use when using the starch spray.

Overspray could be an issue but not if your press ops aren't a bunch of mouth breathers- they'll figure out how to keep it tight just like they do with web spray.  You can always keep a roller around if they are having trouble getting the edges of the platen for some reason.

Let us know how this pans out!  I think tacking is overlooked in our shop and want to revamp it soon here too.

Yea, I have used these al ot and converted other smaller operations but I am looking into other options than having a unit on each press. As far as the over spray its honestly next to none. in fact you really cannot even see it coming out of the gun. This all started this week with the Tech in here. It was not only the over spray on the presses is all up in the chili d's which cause less air and longer flash times, less bulb life and the fact that we spent 20k on mist last year.

[1964GN]

We bought a gun and sold it. That stuff goes everywhere and I don't care how careful you are. Strictly squeeze bottles and small foam paint rollers here.

[RICK STEFANICK]

We bought a gun and sold it. That stuff goes everywhere and I don't care how careful you are. Strictly squeeze bottles and small foam paint rollers here.

Please back up your bold statement. What kind of gun did you have? where did you buy it and the pump, was your air pressure set at?, what kind of glue were you using, did you do a 50/50 mix as you should? , was your tip clean with the Correct tip. BECAUSE IT DOES NOT GO EVERYWHERE.

[1964GN]

Tekmar gun and glue, 50/50 mix, all different air settings. Clean tip etc... soaked it every night, yada, yada, yada. Didn't work for us. Your mileage may vary.

[mimosatexas]

I've tried rollers and cards, but always end up with beads or streaks and it's messy to a degree if you over apply out of the squirt bottle. Fastest and cleanest method in my opinion is squirt in the middle and use a balled up test shirt to do a quick circular wipe from center put with a quick cleanup stroke around the border of the pallet. Once you get the hang of it you can reapply while pallets are warming auto indexing. We typically have 2 guys scrub lint, then one guy apply the glue real quick if needed. We run a crap ton of triblend so we have to reapply glue frequently, and in my experience reapplying without scrubbing leads to pills that will cause print issues.

[tonypep]

Good point. Regardless of applications, triblends etc will pick up any deffiencies. They are so thin. As far as cost goes, I believe that though one should look at that of course, ease of application and reduced downtime when applied properly far outway the cost of the product.

[Atownsend]

I have a TB 1000 sitting around in a corner somewhere if anyone wants one.... Nice fancy setup, but the maintenance outweighed the benefit for me as well. Easier to just use a squirt bottle and an ink card IMO. Maybe we'll revisit it sometime, but the cleaning was a real PIA and took way too long.

[TCT]

We had basically a modified car painting gun on extremely low pressure. Did it work? Yes. Did it work faster/better/cleaner than the squirt bottles and a scrub pad we have used the last few years? No, no and no. I think the idea is right, but it sprays it too far past where you want it on the pallet. With the squirt bottles(we have one that is straight adhesive and one that is diluted with some water) and scrubber brush we get the adhesive RIGHT where we want/need it, for printing bandannas on oversized boards this is big. We apply the adhesive and run it 1 revolution on suspend with the flashes on and are ready to go.

FWIW- When I was in Portugal years ago they had machines(I only saw them on ovals) that looked like flash units with a thicker canvas material around the perimeter that would hang down maybe 1/8" off the pallets that would spray adhesive on the pallet. Think maybe like a DTG pre treatment unit with a stop and start location it runs depending on the print area. Anyway, I was super interested in these. Just asked the tech this last year in Long Beach when we would see them here and his response was they kinda died off. The spray heads would get clogged easily and they basically turned into bigger problems than they were supposed to save....