"He who marches out of step hears another drum." ~ Ken Kesey
I think that would be a waste of money on your part in my opinion. Higher tension screens are more delicate. Now you want to take a weeks time and make a delicate screen that will bust like a tight Newman? The money would be better spent on a Newman frame that you can have in production the next day after tearing it. No glue to sand off. No holding up the table waiting for the mesh to relax. No having to mix up adhesive and hope that it holds during a production run. Your weakest point is going to be that adhesive being able to hold the tension for any decent amount of time.
I have some 86/100 I'm doing very long term testing on, but it'll be another year or two before I can report anything. I've mentioned this before, but I've stage tensioned Saati Hitech 125/70 mesh up to 40+ newtons onto statics--the glue doesn't come delaminated, but the frame bows, the mesh elongates, and the tension is down just over thirty within the first couple cycles, and seems to stabilize in the 25 range. IMHO It makes for a superior static, but it's still pretty crappy compared to the easy 25-35 newtons I maintain for many cycles on an MZX roller, as well as being able to tweak it up a hair when it drops--not to mention being able to match any set of screens to the same tension for easy multicolor reg. If you need to remove burrs from the channels, you just found out why those rollers were such a hassle--they're being mishandled. If you hit a roller hard enough to put a burr in the channel, the mesh has no possibility of surviving that. Also, if they are messy and it takes forever to clean the rollers and channels when it comes time to restretch, the reclaim personnel are not likely rinsing the chemicals, inks, and emulsion fully from the frame. All of that stuff will get stuck under the mesh, and make the rollers bumpy, leading to more premature mesh failure. I do agree there's a lot of time/cost that gets glossed over with rollers, but at the same time I agree with Zoo on this: how much fun is pulling mesh, blasting/sanding, and dealing with glue? Not picking sides, I do both--but I see the economy to either side...
Quote from: JBLUE on September 29, 2012, 04:34:24 PMI think that would be a waste of money on your part in my opinion. Higher tension screens are more delicate. Now you want to take a weeks time and make a delicate screen that will bust like a tight Newman? The money would be better spent on a Newman frame that you can have in production the next day after tearing it. No glue to sand off. No holding up the table waiting for the mesh to relax. No having to mix up adhesive and hope that it holds during a production run. Your weakest point is going to be that adhesive being able to hold the tension for any decent amount of time....how is this any more cost effective? Now I have a $90 frame that wont stay in production....if a screen fails only once a week here anyway, where is the time loss? All i do is take a few seconds or so each day to add a bit more tension with the air regulators...now as for the mesh glue, yeah I agree that may be an issue. I just dont know if the glues have ever been tested in this way.
I've been on the fence for a while regarding roller frames. But there is a local supply shop that has a trade in program. They bring the frames to me and I give them the "cores" back. No waiting on re-meshing.It's just me so the big sell is NO reclaiming. I do keep the chemicals ready in case of a rare exposure mishap.I don't tape the ink side of the screens anymore.I was efficient in reclaiming but who enjoys it? After doing the math for the number of screens I process it's worth the cost for my sanity and frees up 1 day a week for me to do anything else. I can double the cost of the screens and I'm still less on setup costs compared to some of the other shops in town.Again, no reclaim, fresh mesh for each job, less chemicals, less tape. I would check and see if your local supply place does trade-ins.