Squeegee?

[3Deep]

Does leaving ink on your squeegees cause them to get soft over time, I'm bad about leaving ink on mine if I'm not finished with a job for the next day or I just scrape the ink off and not really clean them good.

Darryl

[ScreenFoo]

Cheap ones, especially will.  If you clean them and let them 'rest' it's supposed to be easier on them, although from what I hear, with new high quality blades it's not as necessary.

I just ran a process job on the manual, and the process inks were swelling the rubber to the point you could see it in the reflection.  The base for tru-tone inks seems a little harder on rubber than most.

[3Deep]

Yeah, I know process inks will eat them up quick, had it happen once

Darryl

[ZooCity]

Yes, conventional wisdom says they should be cleaned and rested.  I would agree it's probably less of a big deal with modern blade material but we do it every time anyway.

[Screened Gear]

I have blades that have never been without ink on them, I am sure I am the only one. I don't have time to clean ink off blades all day. My whites, reds, and blacks are always covered in ink many others are color changed for the next job. (process inks get cleaned right after the job just because they will not be used again for a while)

I don't see the concern. I have some 4 year old blades that are still sharp and have no noticeable strength (duro)  or print ability loss. I have new ones to compare them to.

You don't make any money cleaning ink off squeegees. Print more clean less. 

[ScreenPrinter123]

I have blades that have never been without ink on them, I am sure I am the only one. I don't have time to clean ink off blades all day. My whites, reds, and blacks are always covered in ink many others are color changed for the next job. (process inks get cleaned right after the job just because they will not be used again for a while)

I don't see the concern. I have some 4 year old blades that are still sharp and have no noticeable strength (duro)  or print ability loss. I have new ones to compare them to.

You don't make any money cleaning ink off squeegees. Print more clean less.

Same here, have noticed no difference for standard plastisol.  We clean discharge/WB but plastisol is only cleaned if a different color is being printed.

[alan802]

Our smiling jack with black ink hasn't been cleaned in over a year and this discussion made me go out and clean it and compare it to other SJ's that are cleaned after almost every job and there is no noticeable difference that you can tell by eye.  I also have a durometer tester and they all read the same and look identical under a loupe.  Our blades for white are rarely cleaned either and I analyzed them as best I could and saw no adverse reactions to the ink.  I don't doubt that this still happens from time to time, but I feel certain that it hasn't happened here at our shop with our blades.

[ZooCity]

Our smiling jack with black ink hasn't been cleaned in over a year and this discussion made me go out and clean it and compare it to other SJ's that are cleaned after almost every job and there is no noticeable difference that you can tell by eye.  I also have a durometer tester and they all read the same and look identical under a loupe.  Our blades for white are rarely cleaned either and I analyzed them as best I could and saw no adverse reactions to the ink.  I don't doubt that this still happens from time to time, but I feel certain that it hasn't happened here at our shop with our blades.

Well that's good to know!  I might go ahead and have a dedicated white and black and maybe a few spot colors for plasti blades then.  I agree with Jon, less cleanup time is definitely better than more.

[Admiral]

We leave 7-10 squeegees on top of the diamondback for the most used colors.  2 regular white, 1 poly white, scarlet, black...etc

[inkman996]

Same here we have dedicated colors that rarely get cleaned. But process ink gets cleaned off right away. Mostly for the fact if it sits on them for to long the ink bites into the rubber and becomes harder to clean off.

[3Deep]

Thanks, I know I leave my white and black squeegees unclean, cause like everyone else those get used just about 98% of the time.... I had one manual squeegee to just get hard and brittle, don't know why it did that, might have been just cheap rubber, that was my base for asking the question.

Darryl