Squeegee Sharpening - How Often?

[tancehughes]

How often should we sharpen our squeegees/get new rubber? I feel like we need to do this to ours, but am not sure exactly how long we should wait before doing it.

[Mark @ Hurricane Printing]

i actually need some sharpened...can i do this with a belt sander?

[Parker 1]

Tance, run your thumb over the edge of the squeegee and if you can feel the ridges of your thumb print your good.  If not you may want to see about replacing or sharpening.

Mark, I would not use a belt sander. 

[sben763]

Manual printing not often.  The softer blades need more often.  And actually a very large belt sander is what most the older squeegee sharpeners are.  I have a 36" and its a belt sander on a stand turned sideways with a table on it.

[beanie357]

We got a shortcut in yesterday.
Let our cleanup guy read the manual.
Looked at the condition of our squeegees.
Figured my guys like stone knives and bearskins.
He did a bunch.
Printers went "oooooo". Nice!
Will have him dress the edges once a week. Takes little time versus having to re sharpen a fully dull or angled edge from strong side arm pressure or chopper pressure. Can bevel auto corners as well.
Some gadgets actually work.

[sben763]

I should have mention bevel in the corners.  On mine if you done take the corners off on manual or auto the squeegee cuts the screen.

[abchung]

I do the thumb test before every run. If it is not sharp enough, I set it aside for sharpening.

[Croft]

We got a shortcut in yesterday.
Let our cleanup guy read the manual.
Looked at the condition of our squeegees.
Figured my guys like stone knives and bearskins.
He did a bunch.
Printers went "oooooo". Nice!
Will have him dress the edges once a week. Takes little time versus having to re sharpen a fully dull or angled edge from strong side arm pressure or chopper pressure. Can bevel auto corners as well.
Some gadgets actually work.

Funny did the same thing here with our new Diamond chase sharpener , the screen clean guy did an awesome job and the printers loved them.

[tonypep]

I am in the "never" camp. New blade. Apparently a minority here.

[Orion]

Joe Clarke did an article last year, titled Myth Busters. On the subject of sharpening he said "Generally speaking, blades shouldn’t be sharpened for use on mesh counts lower than 100. Sharpen as needed on 100 to 200 meshes, and keep the blades factory-sharp for use on 230 and higher." We sharpen ours. Read the full article here. The last paragraph there is the best advice on advice...

[Inkworks]

I've said it before, but at least half of the benefit of sharpening is the truing of the squeegee edge to perfectly flat so you don't have to overcome irregularities with higher pressure. Take a straight edge to you un-sharpened squeegee and see for yourself.

[DannyGruninger]

I am in the "never" camp. New blade. Apparently a minority here.

I'm in that club as well.....Thanks to the qwik clamp from M&R..... 

[Printficient]

I am in the "never" camp. New blade. Apparently a minority here.

I'm in that club as well.....Thanks to the qwik clamp from M&R..... 

On that note then single durometer for $.75 per inch.  Triple durometer $1.35 per inch and of course Double Bevels are $1.77 per inch.  Pleiger material.

[tonypep]

And there you go. $12. for a single durometer blade vs cost of sharpener and labor to sharpen plus compromising the extruded seal.

[Admiral]

Our sharpener was used 36" Maxi Cut or whatever - $600.  Labor to sharpen 20 squeegees is about $15...if that, do this 4x a year to keep them printing well and I think it's obvious this saves money vs buying new.  Sure it will take a few years to recover the cost of the sharpener but that machine will last us a long time.  The new edge is better and lasts longer but we are still using blades from 4-5 years ago just fine.  They can still be sharpened 3-4 more times until we will toss those ones too.