design of flood bar/flood technique and their effect on different inks

[jvanick]

Joe Clarke's comments over on Alan's video regarding ink flood characteristics (sheer thickening vs sheer thinning, etc) really made me do some thinking this morning...

When we complain of inks tendencies to climb the flood bar, or flood/print poorly, could this be due to either the design of the flood bars on our particular press or how we're flooding?

Take for example Action Engineering's winged flood bars vs a 'standard' M&R flood bar... the action one is more sheet metal, vs the rounded aluminum edge on the M&R ones.

Or the fact that I prefer to 'hard' flood our screens to load the mesh...

would a different 'profile' on the flood bar help in certain cases like this?

[AntonySharples]

In short, flood speed not flood bar should be the deciding factor in regards to flooding by keeping the ink moving and the hydrology correct.  However, when attempting say a one hit white or an absolutely perfect white print, the pre-filling of the mesh with the flood bar is crucial.  This can be obtained with a hard flood or perhaps a modified flood system tuned to the mesh.  We, along with a few others are attempting to perfect this and hopefully a repeatable result will be available soon.

[bimmridder]

There is definitely something like this in the works.

[tonypep]

Which is one reason we love waterbased technology. I have enough on my plate without having to over think all of that. Kudos to those that do however we prefer to come in each morning and print the crap out of whats in front of us. Perhaps oversimplifying but its just one different viewpoint.

[mimosatexas]

not to derail, but waterbased opens up it's own rabbit hole of issues that absolutely never crop up with plastisol as well.  I know you have TONS of experience with it and have already done the troubleshooting related to that ink type, but as a shop that uses both ink types on a regular basis, there are pros and cons to both for every job.

[Joe Clarke]

Joe Clarke's comments over on Alan's video regarding ink flood characteristics (sheer thickening vs sheer thinning, etc) really made me do some thinking this morning...

When we complain of inks tendencies to climb the flood bar, or flood/print poorly, could this be due to either the design of the flood bars on our particular press or how we're flooding?

Take for example Action Engineering's winged flood bars vs a 'standard' M&R flood bar... the action one is more sheet metal, vs the rounded aluminum edge on the M&R ones.

Or the fact that I prefer to 'hard' flood our screens to load the mesh...

would a different 'profile' on the flood bar help in certain cases like this?

Your reputation precedes you Jason...the word is out, you ALWAYS strive to be better! We can talk more over a bit of poly end of this week but for now:

Consider sim-process on a tri-blend, UB, flash, color, wow color...At this point (third color) we are simultaneously printing on; poly, cotton, rayon, dry trap, wet trap and airspace! This "multi-substrate" stunt we take for granted could make virtually and flood, fill or skip stroke look good or bad, solely based upon the artwork.

Whether the ink is silver-conductive, solvent based, plastisol, adhesive, "water-based" lacquer, acrylated PUR, silicone, urethane, epoxy, CNT or enamel, the goal is to adequately fill the mesh to allow the ink to preform the image, to wet the substrate(s) and then to release the mesh.

I never met a flood-bar I liked until recently. Pierre got a chance to experience one which helped him coast at 800-IPH with a great looking white. (He and Zac assure me it is just as easy at 1100-IPH). Sonny is pressing to help us because he gets it, Dave has seen and approved of the results, Antony ran a one hit white poly at about 32"/sec stroke, Alan has a couple years worth and Ross helped us get the flood-fill stroke dialed in.

From what I have seen so far, it is really easy to make an improvement in the original design but a bit more difficult to accommodate all meshes, all ink systems and even tri-blends!

There are countless killer looking shirts done by printers who don't care too much about the flood. I submit precise control over the flood will make most of these print more predictable, more consistent, higher quality and do it faster.

I hope you are willing to help us break new ground.

JC

[ScreenFoo]

White never climbs a vector flood bar. 

They should have put wings on them though... 

[Screened Gear]

If you need more work out of the flood bar then returning the ink to the squeegee your doing something wrong. I know some guys out there are running everything on the cliffs edge to either up production or quality. You guys are working too hard and risking too much on every print in my opinion. If your not running at 900 plus an hour and printing the finest of fine prints then you don't need all these performance enhancers. (see how I didn't say band-aids} I am printing with Joes ink and I am fighting with dialing back this beast. I am getting too much coverage, even running at a zero squeegee angle.