ulano orange

[Sbrem]

We're using it on Murakami 110s, great mesh bridging for fine detail.

Steve

[alan802]

Got my gallon in and coated up about 10 screens with it using the glisten, round edge and mesh counts ranging from 34 (yes...not a typo) to 180 standard thread.  I'd put the solids content and viscosity as pretty good, along the same lines of the chromablue, but slightly runnier, not near as thick as the PHW Red, and maybe on par with the Kiwo One Coat.  It coated easily, dried quickly from what I could tell, truthfully I didn't really monitor that variable.  I'll be exposing a few in the morning, I think it's going to be a good emulsion.  Hopefully it will be a great performer for us.

I thought I remember reading a price for this stuff from a post on this site but I couldn't find it last night.  Anyone care to share the per gallon price with me?  Email or PM would be fine if you don't want to post publically. 

[alan802]

Ok, I'm sure most of you have been on pins and needles awaiting my review of this emulsion, so hear it is.

It's good.

[Prosperi-Tees]

Texsource has the orange on sale super cheap but the sale is only valid if you attend their open house.

[islandtees]

Ok, I'm sure most of you have been on pins and needles awaiting my review of this emulsion, so hear it is.

It's good.

On another thread I spoke of positives sticking to emulsion. Did you need the baby powder on this emulsion?

[alan802]

Seriously, I burned 6 screens with it today, using the same coating method we always do, and I tried many different exposure times and it exposed very quickly.  I burned a white 110 coated 2/2 with 4 light units, and there were zero sings of under exposure.  4LU's is about 40 seconds, give or take.  It sprayed out nicely, but it was a thinner stencil than what I get with the phw red and the same coating procedure.   If you can work out a deal with your supplier and get this emulsion for around $50/gal or less then it's a sure winner.  And one of the best parts was I didn't need to do the baby powder step.  I'll have to burn a few thicker stencils to make sure we don't have any real film-sticking issues, but so far so good with the 30 micron eom stencils.

I don't think it's solids content and viscosity are high enough to build a thick stencil with a 2/2 technique, I'll coat a few lower mesh counts with a 3/3 or more,which is what I'm after, but I'm going to finish this gallon and put it through the paces and see what it's capable of.  I'll burn some finer mesh counts with it tomorrow and some half tones then look at them through my loupe to see what we're dealing with.

I'll have more to say on this emulsion by tomorrow afternoon if anyone cares enough to read it.  I'm gonna coat some higher mesh tomorrow and see how this stuff performs.  I don't do anything halfassed and I've got samples of different emulsions coming from all over and hopefully in a few weeks I'll have the perfect emulsion or emulsions for our needs.

[islandtees]

Seriously, I burned 6 screens with it today, using the same coating method we always do, and I tried many different exposure times and it exposed very quickly.  I burned a white 110 coated 2/2 with 4 light units, and there were zero sings of under exposure.  4LU's is about 40 seconds, give or take.  It sprayed out nicely, but it was a thinner stencil than what I get with the phw red and the same coating procedure.   If you can work out a deal with your supplier and get this emulsion for around $50/gal or less then it's a sure winner.  And one of the best parts was I didn't need to do the baby powder step.  I'll have to burn a few thicker stencils to make sure we don't have any real film-sticking issues, but so far so good with the 30 micron eom stencils.

I don't think it's solids content and viscosity are high enough to build a thick stencil with a 2/2 technique, I'll coat a few lower mesh counts with a 3/3 or more,which is what I'm after, but I'm going to finish this gallon and put it through the paces and see what it's capable of.  I'll burn some finer mesh counts with it tomorrow and some half tones then look at them through my loupe to see what we're dealing with.

I'll have more to say on this emulsion by tomorrow afternoon if anyone cares enough to read it.  I'm gonna coat some higher mesh tomorrow and see how this stuff performs.  I don't do anything halfassed and I've got samples of different emulsions coming from all over and hopefully in a few weeks I'll have the perfect emulsion or emulsions for our needs.

It sounds good so far. I want to find sometning that exposes fast and doesnt have that film sticking to the screen.

[IntegrityShirts]

It sounds good so far. I want to find sometning that exposes fast and doesnt have that film sticking to the screen.

If those are the most important factors for you, then Aquasol HV meets those specs perfectly.  About $62/gal depending on source, so possibly a little more out the door than this Orange.

Alan, I'd be interested to hear about the detail of halftones you get out of it.  Also if you have a discharge or wb job to run, see how it holds up!

Nazdar is sending me a sample of the Kiwo Discharge and I'll post some feedback on it with a wb job some time soon.

[Binkspot]

I just finished off my first 5 gallon bucket of the Orange this morning and will be ordering more. After reading what has been posted here I changed my coating again to 2/2 fat side and even the 280's look great. Yesterday I coated 10 manual screens diffrent ways, burned and washed out this morning and the 2/2 made the best stencil for me.

I burned some 230's yesterday with some fine detail and half tones and it worked fine. I was going to snap some pictures of it today but my new help did what I asked and reclaimed everything I took off the press.

[alan802]

Well, I spent a little time after everyone went home and tried to coat some low mesh screens with thick stencils and I did have a little issue that doesn't happen with the phw red.  I coated an 83 with a 3/3 (overkill, but im trying to push the limits) method and even with scraping the corners and edges I had some serious drippage.  Not just at the edges either, in the middle of the screen as well.  That is a little disappointing considering that this emulsion has passed the other tests with flying colors.  As I suspected,the viscosity and solids content isn't high enough to build really thick stencils (200 micron eom) with simple wet on wet coating methods.  I'm not ready to give up on the emulsion because of this, it's really good stuff and I need to see if there is a way to .get those extreme stencils with the orange before I pull the plug on it.  I may back off a few microns on our thickest stencils and see how our prints are.  Maybe I could keep a gallon of the phw on hand for those few times a month I'm going for a one hit print or something out of the ordinary.

My visit with the kiwo rep today was excellent and I learned a lot.  He was very knowledgeable on the Ulano products since they own them and he gave me plenty of things to look for when comparing the orange to any other emulsion.  I got some kiwo diazo water resistant emulsion to try on our next discharge job. I also have reworked our darkroom a bit andi think I might show some pics of that tomorrow when I'm done with it. It's a lot br igniter now and easier to deal with.  Turns out we had our dark room too UV blocked where it was overkill and the room was so dark you couldn't work in it and there was no need for it.  We had 2 amber UV blocking sleeves over each flouro bulbs and also a red tinted UV blocking tint over the light diffuser when just one of the amber sleeves would have been fine.  A rep from a supplier set up our darkroom many years ago and it was before I ever thought about working for the family business. I guess the guy really wanted to make sure our screens were safe. 

[mk162]

we have used uncovered fluo tubes with no problem.  we don leave the screens out for a long time, but a few minutes won't hurt them.  we now use yellow sleeves on the tubes, works great and it's pretty easy to see

[Binkspot]

I know every one is going to jump all over me but I didn't even put a dark room in our new shop. I built a 4' deep x 16' long closet with sliding doors to keep our screens. Has a heater, dehumidfyer and two circulating fans. I coat and burn out in the ambiant light with no trouble.

[mooseman]

i have said this several times we do all of our coating in open light and  about 15 feet from a 5 x 8 foot window in our shop. The walk from our exposure unit to washout booth is anout 20 feet and passes right by an uncovered window where the sun (when it is out in NY ) shines directly in.

Currently we use Ulano QTX which is reported to have very fast expose characteristics
We just don't seem to have any problems
mooseman

[alan802]

Our dark room is only used to store coated screens, nothing more, nothing less.  We coat outside in the shop, store the coated screens horizontally in the dark room till they dry, then they are put along the wall based on mesh count.  Our exposure unit is outside, next to the dark room and the screens are out in the natural light of the shop for about 10 seconds before they are on the exposure unit.  We've used mostly SBQ PP's that expose quickly and sometimes I'll let a screen sit outside for a minute while taping up film and ganging up images and I've never had an issue.  I know these screens are light sensitive but you can do a lot with one without it pre-exposing.  I might do some testing one day when I have time, but I think you can walk a screen around our shop for a good 5 minutes and not have a problem.

[Binkspot]

I would also like to point out the sample quart of the Orange we tried was a lot thinner then the 5 gallons we purchased. I dont know if it was just a fluke the sample came out of an un mixed bucket or something but the viscosity was much thicker out of the 5.