Cleaning of my press...

[Gilligan]

Man my guy (who yesterday decided that he didn't want to be called my maid any longer) is awesome!

I told him to clean the press, gave him a bunch of chems and let him go.  He's not done but so far he's kicking some a$$!

Here are some pics... I wish I would have taken before pics... but I'm sure you can imagine on some of these!  One shot is of the inside of the platen arms... if it's that dirty inside imagine what the outside WAS like!  One shot shows some sleeve platens next to the cleaned up leg platen which looked like the sleeve platen before.

Man those platen arms look pretty!  Got the bearings out and soaking in kerosene right now.

The press itself is gonna be cleaned tomorrow!

[Gilligan]

Here are the "afters" so far.

You can imagine based off those springs and top plates above how dirty these platen arms were.  Acetone worked wonders on them.

[Evo]

That must have been quite a bit of acetone...


This is the best press cleaner I've ever used:
http://www.realmilkpaint.com/citrus.html

Smells like oranges, doesn't fry your brain cells so quickly.


Nice press btw!

[Denis Kolar]

Furry it is, but not as bad as I thought.

I see it is a never press that mine is, you have new style brackets and "quick" release lock-down plates (If you can call them that). Do you know the year of mfg?

[rmonks]

That citrus stuff works great for cleaning spray adhesive, and shirt fur. But Man! the stuff is expensive.

[alan802]

Nice Gilligan, when that thing is finished you'll probably have one of the best buys of the year.  Were you able to get inside the central hub and check on it's condition?

[mk162]

you will love how much easier it is to print on that then the press you had

[Gilligan]

DK, I don't know the age yet... Serial is 1520 so I don't know if that helps any.

Alan, No... I didn't get into the central hub... it all felt good (physically) and you gave me the confidence to move forward.  I did give the guy one more chance to come clean by mentioning that his panel on the flash looked almost new.  He mentioned that he changed it in 08 but didn't mention changing the auto-base out.

He had said he was going to throw in a few screens with it since he couldn't use the larger screens any longer... then he loaded me up with 12 busted screens.  I asked about some good mesh at a high count since I don't have any and he gave up four 200 count screens in decent shape.

Granted... over all I got the press, four sets of platens (reg, youth, sleeve and leg), Antec Stage IV flash, and six 14" squeegees and seven 8" squeegees of various durometers and some are triples (but I have no clue what each of them are).  All that for $1500... not too bad eh?

[Gilligan]

you will love how much easier it is to print on that then the press you had

Haters... all of ya!

The old press wasn't bad at all for single color, dark on light jobs.  PFP sucked and I never tried multi color but I'm sure this will be faster.

Then the conveyor adds another level of ease that I didn't have before but quickly realized how much I wanted it!

[Evo]

That citrus stuff works great for cleaning spray adhesive, and shirt fur. But Man! the stuff is expensive.

The stuff I posted above is pure limonene, very strong stuff. A little goes a long way. I have a 1/4 gallon left from a bottle I bought years ago, and I cleaned almost an entire shops worth of used gear with it.

[Shawn (EIP)]

Dont you just love deals like that?

[alan802]

I certainly think buying manual presses used is the way to go...autos, not so much.  $1500 for what Gil got is not very common.  Even if the press was under water for a period of time, I still think it's the best manual press on the market.  I don't regret buying the Vastex V2K instead of the Antec, mainly because of all the accessories that Vastex has, but I still think that the Legend is the better manual.

Going from a DIY table topper to the Antec is one hell of a step up.  That's like going from an 85' Arrow Multiprinter to a Challenger III.