HEAT WAVE DRYER OWNERS TUNE IN!! Big thanks to John Sheridan for calling me to give me dryer cleaning instructions. He had a post a few years ago that I had remembered on the M&R forum about a Heatwave Dryer choking out, not running, curing right with some pics. Ours has been acting up on start up and not maintaining it's temp once the belt was slowed down to cure water based inks. Everything pointed to how we had the exhaust vented. We added a booster blower down the line and really didn't seem to make much difference. I started to remember John's post about the exhaust blower being jacked up with lint. I found the thread, shot him a message and he immediately got on the phone to tell me how to take it apart and get to the culprit. Man, I know now, we will more than likely make this an every 2-3 month maintenance policy depending on how much w/b printing we do in that time frame. Also us being in Central Fl, it's really humid, so even for plastisol printing, we are always curing shirts that have a ton of moisture in it. If you own a Heatwave and haven't done this yet, I really, really suggest you find time on a slow day, early morning or over the weekend to take the exhaust panel off and clean that squirrel cage and the obvious sensor that is right in the middle. After we cleaned it all up, using compressed air, and a shop vac, making sure to block off the open area that goes into the dryer, we put the panel, cage and exhaust line back on, fired it up, it went right to temp, no alarm no stop like it had been doing at least 6 times before getting to temp, and then slowed the belt to 1 and ran for 30 mins to make sure it held temp and sure did. That little blower needs to be perfectly clean. So if you are running into any of this, you should look into it. Turn your power off to be safe, and if you aren't sure, call M&R service for directions. Thanks again John, the only reason I messaged him is because I knew he had done this before with success. Bad boy runs like charm now!!!! below are a couple pics of how nasty it can get in there.
