Water spots.

[Chadwick]

I don't use ( have ) soft water at my disposal during reclaim.
The water around here changes with the seasons and we don't process it in-house at all.
At certain times of the year, we get..'water spots' in our screens, no matter how careful one is.
It's calcium or some such sh*t that doesn't evaporate, even under temp or forced air.
Exposing spot color stuff, it doesn't matter, but it causes issues with tones, and no one wants extra issues to deal with.
Would water 'conditioning' help this?
What do you use?

[Artelf2xs]

Wick,

 A lot of the places I have worked for have used the air compressor with a spray nozzle to blow the water out of the screens an off the frames.

Mainly used to speed up the dring process... But it might help you with calcium as well.

[Northland]

We've got really hard water and use a whole house style filter cartridge, with a 5 micron filter.
Most of our neighbors have softners.. we don't bother.
I haven't noticed any screen problems.

You could go the softner route for under $500

[JBLUE]

I have really hard water in my shop too. I dry my screens vertically instead of flat and i dont ever have an issue. If I dry them flat then I will get some spots.

[jsheridan]

Wick,

 A lot of the places I have worked for have used the air compressor with a spray nozzle to blow the water out of the screens an off the frames.

Mainly used to speed up the dring process... But it might help you with calcium as well.

Unless your compressor setup reflects that of scuba tank refilling.. you're blowing more contaminants onto your clean screen from that nasty oily compressed air than you care to think of.

As for the hard water, you could use some filters to help trap some minerals but other than that, not much you can do w/out a full conditioning system and who wants to spend that on reclaim screen water.

[Homer]

we do the air compressor too but like John said -watch out for the oil in the air. we use an air filter system from the compressor to the hoses. take a piece of paper and spray it with your air nozzle. if junk shows up, you need a filter.

you could try the vacuum method, get a shop vac and a wide attachment. we have an inline water filter on our power washer, it's around 20.00 at home depot. works pretty good as long as you change the filter. . .which we always forget to do. ..damn thing is poop brown. .

[Artelf2xs]

yeah we run both a massive Chiller and filtration system

[squeegee]

We vacuum our screens and dry them flat in carts under fast moving dehumidified air in a drying room, occasionally a spot on a screen now and then but mostly not.  I have no idea if our water is hard but it's city supplied.

[supergabe]

Howdy when i noticed water spot in the screens i used to blow the water out then look up for a sunny day with little or no  wind voila never had a headache after that

[screenxpress]

I have an oil-less compressor.  It just sprays water that collects in the line.

[RICK STEFANICK]

either way you go will work. the air works great.. if your worried about oil or other contaminants( after 30 years i have never had a issue with that) you can pick up a little construction compressor and use that..a screen vac will solve all your problems though.and as another stated greatly increase your dry time..

[mjrprint]

If the "water spots" have a sheen to them in the image area it could be scumming from under exposure.