I'm a rookie and I made a rookie mistake hahaha

[Mark @ Hurricane Printing]

melted the rubber topping on my platen hahah. Did a small run of 24 shirts this morning, 2 colors with a flash..knocked it out quickly and I was so happy i had zero problems and didnt not ruin any shirts...I come into my kitchen to sort and QC..about 20 minutes in i smell buring rubber and my house alarms start going off..I haul butt to the garage and it was full of smoke...i literally DIVE over the exposure unit and turn off the breaker to the flash..i turned my conveyor off when the job was done but not my flash!!!!..now my entire house smells like burnt rubber...and i have to now replace the rubber top of the pallet. Luckily I was home...what if i left to run an errend or something???!!!! or deliver the shirts maybe?...I was counting my blessings let me tell ya! So now all the windows are open...fans running in all room.....and i am looking at the silver lining that now at least i get to learn how to replace the rubber top. I needed to learn how to do it and now there is no putting it off.

Other than almost burning my house down, the job went off without a hitch hahahaha

[Nick Bane]

once it cools, make sure the aluminum is still level as well, or you may be better off just replacing the entire platen. 

[Dottonedan]

WOW.  Nothing new to these guys.  I'm sure I may end up doing something like that one day I'm sure.


I came in this afternoon to the shop and noticed that I found my coffee pot still on. Was pretty full so it wasn't that bad. Still black stinky coffee. Hope that it never a flash unit. Sheesh.

[Gilligan]

I'm lucky, mine has air... So we hear the fan running when we leave it on.  Plus it is an auto swing away and doesn't rest over a platen.

[Frog]

As many know, I burned my entire shop (on my residential property) down a few years back with your flash dryer's second cousin!
I was no rookie at the time.

My new shop's much nicer, but there are far less drastic ways to start a renovation.

[Mark @ Hurricane Printing]

As many know, I burned my entire shop (on my residential property) down a few years back with your flash dryer's second cousin!
I was no rookie at the time.

My new shop's much nicer, but there are far less drastic ways to start a renovation.

No kidding?? No one was hurt i hope. Was it due to the same thing i did: forget the flash was on and over a platen.

[TCT]

A few years ago, someone left the flash on over night for our manual. Someone had to of bumped the boards just right, because only like 2" was under the flash. No fire, but no printing on that board anymore either! I am with ya on the smell, I swear sometimes I still smell it!

[mooseman]

We are a one man shop and I do everything including working with customers.
My shop has two doors that open directly to the street, small town everybody stops to say hello so many distractions
I have SMOKED a platen about 6 or 8 times  .
Decided I needed to solve this problem..... asked a guy to build me a metal bracket so I could mount a SMOKE DECTOR directly on my flash unit.
I never got the bracket but I think it is time to get back on this mission, I am going to have a detector that lives directly off my flash, off to one side to catch that nice smoke wall  that rolls off the sides of my flash while I am looking the other way
mooseman

[GraphicDisorder]

As many know, I burned my entire shop (on my residential property) down a few years back with your flash dryer's second cousin!
I was no rookie at the time.

My new shop's much nicer, but there are far less drastic ways to start a renovation.

Well you clearly need a better user name.  Here is some ideas.

Inferno
FireStarter
BackDraft
FireHouse
DiscoInferno

Proceed. 

[Gabe]

Burn baby burn

[Frog]

Bottom line is that conventional flash dryers can be quite dangerous. Whether one leaves a board under too long due to a distraction, or the carousel gets turned inadvertently.

In my case, I was called by my wife for a mini-emergency, and apparently knocked a shirt under the panel as I rushed past, (Or more accurately, the panel over the board on my one station Hopkins)
Had I returned in just a minute or two, I would have merely suffered the scorched board and accompanying stench so common in shirt shops. I, however got even more distracted, and came back five or more minutes later to a blaze!
The building's interior was unfinished, no sheet rock, dry, and eager to burn. My "library" of wooden frames joined in happily.
The rest is history.

Ironically, one of the firefighters had a similar business at his home!

[mk162]

I have a friend that left one on overnight, luckily, it burned the platen and nothing else.  It was a smoldering mess when he went into the basement the next morning.  He is lucky he didn't burn the house down.

[3Deep]

here is an idea I've thought about since I've burned a few platens myself, is putting a automatic timer on my flash, so after a hour or what I have it set for it will go off.  I saw some timers that you can just plug in at Home Depot...my flash is a 110 so it might work, any thoughts on this?

Darryl

[Gilligan]

Check the wattage... most aren't meant to be that "heavy duty" and are meant for a lamp or something simple.  But they do make bigger/better ones.

I think this isn't a bad idea... only issue is that they are cyclical... so say you did this on a Friday for a one hour job.  Forget it on .  Saturday and Sunday come it will come on for that hour while you are gone.

[AdvancedArtist]

melted the rubber topping on my platen hahah. Did a small run of 24 shirts this morning, 2 colors with a flash..knocked it out quickly and I was so happy i had zero problems and didnt not ruin any shirts...I come into my kitchen to sort and QC..about 20 minutes in i smell buring rubber and my house alarms start going off..I haul butt to the garage and it was full of smoke...i literally DIVE over the exposure unit and turn off the breaker to the flash..i turned my conveyor off when the job was done but not my flash!!!!..now my entire house smells like burnt rubber...and i have to now replace the rubber top of the pallet. Luckily I was home...what if i left to run an errend or something???!!!! or deliver the shirts maybe?...I was counting my blessings let me tell ya! So now all the windows are open...fans running in all room.....and i am looking at the silver lining that now at least i get to learn how to replace the rubber top. I needed to learn how to do it and now there is no putting it off.

Other than almost burning my house down, the job went off without a hitch hahahaha

Count those blessings big time... A shop down the street from the last shop I worked in burned to ground one day right into a pile of ashes. I heard several stories of what happened one was that a shirt got stuck in dryer. Not really sure what happened but the before and after was quite a sight.