flatstock tabs

[ericheartsu]

to those who print flatstock, what do you use to register your prints?

right now we are using vinyl, that is stacked 4 pieces high. looking to see if there is anything better!

[ZooCity]

About the same here but we use old school dymo labels, stacked up.  What I'd like is a few feet of a couple different adhesive backed plastics at different thicknesses.

[ebscreen]

Vinyl stacked and cut.

I've seen bad ass adhesive tab type things, no idea where one obtains such a thing though.

[GaryG]

We used to use these, most accurate, but they have to be well beyond your stroke.

http://www.anthemprintingsf.com/Screen-Printing-Registration-Tabs-and-Pins-s/128.htm

[ericheartsu]

We used to use these, most accurate, but they have to be well beyond your stroke.

http://www.anthemprintingsf.com/Screen-Printing-Registration-Tabs-and-Pins-s/128.htm

i've seen these, but always been really scared of them popping a screen. On our table, they will most certainly do that.

[Inkworks]

We use a wide variety of things, from die-cut bits of lexan with 3M adhesive on the back to styrene to plexi or lamicoid. It all depends on how thick of material we're printing on, the jigs should be the same thickness or close to it, certainly no thicker. Jigs should go with 2 on the long edge of the sheet stock, about 1/2" in from the corners, then the third on an adjacent corner about 1/2 up. Mark the jig points on a sheet or two of the flat stock and make sure you use the exact same spot for subsequent colours.

Flat edge jigs can work, but for the best registration rounded, single points of contact are best. When we were doing nameplate and membrane switch work our regular tolerances were +/- 0.010" and often +/- 0.005" for military or automotive products. That isn't too hard for a colour or two, but add in circuit layers, die-cut adhesive and spacers layers, first and second surface graphics and sometimes even electroluminescent light layers, and a thousandth of an inch here and there add up and you get a stack-up of tolerances between layers which can put the finished assembly out of tolerance, so you'd sometimes need to be virtually perfect with graphic registration.

Here is the shape we'd use, about 1" x 1.5" Full double sided adhesive backs. Make up 3 of each in a variety of thickness and you're set. Double sided masking tape is the bomb for good adhesion and removability with no gummy residue.

The above is probably overkill for most of what we do now, but really isn't any extra work and makes finishing easy when everything is bang on to the jig points through the whole process.

[StuJohnston]

Tried the metal tabs, decided against using them since I sometimes print close to the edge and stacked vinyl works for everything. Though I think that I like inkworks' idea better. I am thinking that I would like to make the tabs out of something sturdier than vinyl as well. I have a corner rounder, but I think that I might check out the craft store to see if I can't find a punch with that sort of shape.

This isn't really an option in an immediate sense, but disappearing pins are pretty nice as well, though only my larger press has them and the are a bit too far out to use most of the time so I use the pins in the front and a tab on the side.

[ericheartsu]

were you die cutting these tabs out?

We print primarily vinyl stickers, but have been doing more and more transfer sheets and flatstock prints. so i'm interested in changing it up a bit

[Inkworks]

Yes, we die cut them in various thickness's .005" .010" and .030" Lexan for the most part. That was a bit of overkill,  but we had an in-house die making shop and the die cutter ran all day every day, so in the end it wasn't a big deal. The adhesive was 3M 467 (or 7952 in sheet form) which is .002" thick, it is a little gummy and can take a bit of cleaning after removing the jigs.

In my shop now we use the double sided masking tape, which is a must-have in any shop i.m.o. It holds down all the little jig bits we use in pad printing and parts screenprinting, as well as holding the plates in the pad printing ink-well. and removes cleanly from almost all surfaces. For thin sheet stock it's important to have adhesive right to the end of the rounded jig point so the stock doesn't slide underneath. Just be sure the adhesive isn't thicker than the stock or you can end up jigging to the soft adhesive and eventually undercutting the jig. It's also important to have a non-beveled cut on the rounded end of the jig, and for sensitive jobs the guys would actually sand the tip a bit perpendicularly with some 400 grit as the die-cut left a bit of a bevel. Using inside bevel die blade rather than center bevel helped a lot with this too.

One thing I just remembered we also did was to have the jig points printed on the first colour film so they were printed right on the sheets, that way there could be no mistakenly jigging to the wrong side for subsequent processes. Just little printed arrows that everyone would jig right to. We were full-on ISO9001 so everything had to be idiot proof documented processes.

[StuJohnston]

How do you trim the double sided tape? Do you put a square on the tab, place the tab and then pull up the excess?

[Inkworks]

Put the tape on before cutting the tab.

[ZooCity]

So inkworks, are you down to sell baggies of these suckers to those of us without the die cutting setup?  Seriously, I'd buy a sackeroo from ya and there is probably a nice little market for them with flatstock printers generally. 

[ericheartsu]

heck we have a die cutter, and i'd probably buy some

[Inkworks]

The die-cutter was two shops and over a decade ago. I'll check with my buddy who still does the nameplate gig and see what he has.

[mimosatexas]

I would buy a could sets of these at different thicknesses in a heartbeat.  We use whatever stock we are printing folded in a z and taped when using standard stock.  For thin stuff we use a thicker packing tape we got off uline cut into little squares, sometimes stacked twice.  It really depends right now and isn't always consistent (which sucks).  Having something purpose made that won't damage the screen like the metal tabs would rule.