Screen Tensions....???

[DannyGruninger]

Alan, is that a 60 dur double bevel "pointy" squeegee. That's about the only way we've been able to do this 1 hit stuff. However with small halftones we get too much gain filling in the dots. What's your thoughts on this? In our shop a job like roc posted would go 2 screens, 1 with text only and 1 on high mesh with text and halftones.

Roc I'm up on the south side of Denver your more then welcome to come up one night and I will get you sent with a nice tensioned roller frame as well as help with any auto printing stuff. I can run this art through our process and maybe the way we do it will lend some insight. Let me know


Danny

[Printficient]

Alan, is that a 60 dur double bevel "pointy" squeegee. That's about the only way we've been able to do this 1 hit stuff. However with small halftones we get too much gain filling in the dots. What's your thoughts on this? In our shop a job like roc posted would go 2 screens, 1 with text only and 1 on high mesh with text and halftones.

Danny,
I believe that this is a Plieger 70 duro double bevel.

[inkman996]

One thing people should really note in alans video is that there is no deflectin in that squeegee. A great sign he has everything optimal and not forcing the squeegee to mash the ink on the shirt, the times I get really good hits of white I always noticed the squeegee is not struggling at all.

[Rocfrog]

Interesting little video....

Ours is almost similar speed as yours, I would assume ink choice has a lot to do with this as well. We use One Stroke's Hybrid white ink. I also know our "ink gasket" is probably not correct...we dry them with the shirt side up because that's how our dark room is designed.....

Nick

[inkman996]

Interesting little video....

Ours is almost similar speed as yours, I would assume ink choice has a lot to do with this as well. We use One Stroke's Hybrid white ink. I also know our "ink gasket" is probably not correct...we dry them with the shirt side up because that's how our dark room is designed.....

Nick

Huh?  Screens need to be dried ink side up, man your screens really must be terrible wow. Assuming you did not just make a typo change the way you dry them first off right away.

[StuJohnston]

Interesting little video....

Ours is almost similar speed as yours, I would assume ink choice has a lot to do with this as well. We use One Stroke's Hybrid white ink. I also know our "ink gasket" is probably not correct...we dry them with the shirt side up because that's how our dark room is designed.....

Nick

This is just bizarro, what makes the design of your darkroom such that you cannot have the print side down?

[Printficient]

Interesting little video....

Ours is almost similar speed as yours, I would assume ink choice has a lot to do with this as well. We use One Stroke's Hybrid white ink. I also know our "ink gasket" is probably not correct...we dry them with the shirt side up because that's how our dark room is designed.....

Nick

This is just bizarro, what makes the design of your darkroom such that you cannot have the print side down?

I have seen racks in rooms before that ran horizontal across the wall.  This would dictate mesh side up drying.

[Dottonedan]

This thread is both extremely educational, sad and hilarious at the same time.  When I scrolled down to that print with the smashed up halftones I busted out. Too many flash backs. No pun intended. It's like a great novel. High points, low points, drama. Missing some explosions and a love story tho.


This reminds me of trying to get Russell Athletics to convert. Twas a saga of it's own. I said this before, but my first week at Russell, I watched the manual printers in awe. It was baffling. I watched every manual pressman hitting the prints 6 times each.  Yes, print, print, print, flash, print, flash, print, print. send thru the dryer. Oh, and never tell a screen room employee jokingly, that the screen room mgr doesn't know what he's doing.     Doesn't go over well. People can't take a joke. Sheeesh.


This young Rockfrog reminds me of myself. An artist, interested in the process, see's obvious errors and tries to make improvements but has to go up against a company that (is in business for years and years before you came along). Thats the way many see it. We were here doing this ok before your new ideas. It's been fine and we are making a profit or we wouldn't be here, why change it? Thats what you are up against.

Fun stuff if you can stomach it. You have to be able to let people wanting to stab you in the back and sabotage your efforts roll off your back so to speak.

I had some exciting and fact proving light bulb moments for the managers at Disney and Russell when they finally realized they were indeed doing it poorly. Rewarding in the end, but it can be along, tough and lonely road.

The biggest thing about going into an existing shop for a new guy that knows "something" about making improvements (and your the new guy) is getting the current management to get on board.

At both places, I had to pad the changes by making them convinced they are the ones making the changes. You can't walk into the production managers office and tell him you are making changes. You need to understand and be ok with needing to make someone else look good...and your life will be easier. It sucks to not get the recognition but in the end, at a place like that, you won't anyways. That place need a whole new paradigm. You can do this battle, but it could be easier to walk.

If you want to stay at this place and try to make improvements, build relationships. Don't make out to be an obvious butt kisser, but find positive things to mention at important moments. Talk them up during meetings about positive things they are doing or did.

When you have something you want to look into but it's in another persons department, Come up with a presentation of sorts (to that person) that makes it look like you two are going to work on this "project" together but you take on most of the responsibilities. You do the research, you do the test and that person does the positive presentation to management. Works every time. They look good, you make a friend and things get changed. Suck to have to do it this way, but thats politics. Never take it upon yourself to move into someone's territory and make changes without them being notified and a invited to be part of it. Chances are, they will let you go about your business that way, so they don't have to invest time into your "little projects".


In retrospect, today, I would go full tilt, throw caisson to the wind and be bold enough to just tell everyone together at once at the same time with management included, here is your list of what is needed to be changed. Here are the cost involved. If it's not done, here is the amount of wasted money per year per department and here is my facts to support that.


My biggest obstacle was the micro meetings that happened after our group meetings. To people in general, telling someone they need to make improvements in a department they control is like telling them they are not doing a good job.


Have fun.  Good times. Dealing with this stuff is an experience indeed.


By the way,  I have to do this again myself at a multi million dollar Co already in place doing good business (as a creative service) but had for the last 5 years been producing their own printing as well. I am going in with the idea that I am going to tell them what they need to hear. Not what others in print management want them to hear.  I will not make friends in production and I'm ok with that. Like in that last post CommandZ made to me. "There will be blood". Figuratively speaking.

[alan802]

Alan,
Are you using Miami Screen Supply white? Which version if you are? Did you reduce it? You mentioned special squeege, whats special about it?

I use the smooth from Miami this time of year, I was using the superior in the summer.  The squeegee blade is a new blade that isn't for sale yet.  I probably shouldn't mention it until he figures out what he's going to do with it.  It's a fantastic blade for lower mesh counts and using low pressure but it's still up in the air as to whether or not he's going to put it out to the public.  Too many shops just throw blades in a screen without proper thought on whether or not it will work and this blade is very picky about it's mesh counts and ink consistency so you have to know when to use it and when to move to another blade.  Unfortunately some printers will put that blade in the wrong mesh count and then claim it's a piece of crap.  His other products are more versatile and work in a wide range of applications but that blade I'm using in the vid needs an open mesh count, thin threads.  I'm also using a Dr J fill blade instead of a standard aluminum floodbar.

[alan802]

Alan, is that a 60 dur double bevel "pointy" squeegee. That's about the only way we've been able to do this 1 hit stuff. However with small halftones we get too much gain filling in the dots. What's your thoughts on this? In our shop a job like roc posted would go 2 screens, 1 with text only and 1 on high mesh with text and halftones.

Roc I'm up on the south side of Denver your more then welcome to come up one night and I will get you sent with a nice tensioned roller frame as well as help with any auto printing stuff. I can run this art through our process and maybe the way we do it will lend some insight. Let me know


Danny

That blade I'm using is much like the smiling jack but different.  I've used the double beveled blades in the past, the 70 duro and 80 duro.  I've got great results with the double beveled blades and I'll do some head to head comparisons between this new blade and the double bevels soon.

[Rocfrog]

Huh?  Screens need to be dried ink side up, man your screens really must be terrible wow. Assuming you did not just make a typo change the way you dry them first off right away.

I have seen racks in rooms before that ran horizontal across the wall.  This would dictate mesh side up drying.

Here are a few shots of our dark room......




I have thought about redoing it so the frames are flipped over but once again it is something that is met with resistance....

Dottonedan
I never intended this thread to go this way I was just merely trying to educate my self and it has gone into everything else...But I'm glad you see the humor in my current situation. I agree 100% with what you are saying and on a small scale is exactly how I treat problems in this company when I see them, like I said this is a small company on the screen print side there is us two in the shop, 4 sales people and the two owners and that's it. I make side suggestions do some research and put an information packet together for the owners to review. The problem with that is that most of the time they are not over here and don't see the problem and or are only worried about it while they are over here after that it's like they completely forget our conversation. I never try to be the "know it all" in these situation and I always bring it up in a positive to the company and back it with other shops facts/experiences, mainly because before here I have never even set foot in a screen print shop so it is all new to me but for some odd reason I'm the type of person that see's stuff and thinks "there has to be a better, easier, faster way to do that!?"......

Nick

[Rocfrog]

Roc I'm up on the south side of Denver your more then welcome to come up one night and I will get you sent with a nice tensioned roller frame as well as help with any auto printing stuff. I can run this art through our process and maybe the way we do it will lend some insight. Let me know


Danny

I would LOVE to check out another shop!!!! As you can probably tell from this thread I want to learn the proper way to do this, not just get by and I am a VERY hands on kind of guy. Even in this thread with all the numbers and such I have gotten kind of lost a time or two and have to go back and reread several times....

Nick

[Dottonedan]

That fact that you see better ways and notice there needs to be improvement when others don't makes you the "know it all", like it or not.


"The one eyed man is king in the land of the blind".

[inkman996]

Nick fix that screen rack ASAP. If you cannot convince your owners of something that fundamental then you are going to be working with miserable screen forever! That rack should not take someone with basic carpentry skills a couple hours to redo. Yet the owners are willing to allow jobs take twice as long to run. Screens being dried like that will have near zero EOM, your gasket is non existent thats why you have to print multiple times to get opacity, but almost as important without a decent gasket things like half tones will blow right out with the worse gain ever. As your previous picture proves already.

[ScreenFoo]

If you have 2+ frame widths on those shelves, all you do is take some trashed frames and put them mesh down where the drying ones are now, and stack the one you want to dry on top with the mesh down.  Even some bottle caps or broken down yardsticks or something could 'fix' that rack for long enough to show them why they should pay you to do it right and be happy about it. 

I'd say screen tension could improve your situation, just like any other printing variable improved.  but if your drying rack is any indication of the SOP of the shop, you could probably do a few other things to improve your pre-press without massive investment...