Attention TSB Friends -
I have exciting news to report. The Roller Squeegee was used last week to print on zipper hoodies. The results are promising. We have not dialed in all of the variables, but the medium soft rubber on the roller squeegee did print and fill in all of the crevices of the zipper hem assembly.
The test was not a perfect success. It did however prove our theory that the RS design has advantages when printing over zipper hem assemblies. This is mainly that the transition over the zipper cover flaps is more evenly printed. The main failure was in the amount of ink deposited. That is - as suspected it may be - it was too thick. My advice was to increase the mesh count - maybe double and also lay down a thinner flood deposit. It does seem that the thickness of the flood deposit would play a more critical role when using the roller squeegee.
We believe that there is a set of variables that have to be determined before we can say with certainty that the roller squeegees are the perfect squeegee for printing on Zipper Hoodies. The company that is doing the testing was found here on TSB. They have our zipper hoodie pallets and have used them every week for a long time. They are going to be experimenting more this week and we will look forward to discussing their results of their tests.
I would very much welcome suggestions from everyone on how to proceed. Would you agree that the mesh count and flood deposit play a critical role when rolling a squeegee instead of shearing with a blade?
Erik Naftal
Action Engineering, Inc.
P.S. - We have received tremendous feedback from everyone who has used the roller squeegee for smoothing. Thank you for taking the time to provide your comments.
