"He who marches out of step hears another drum." ~ Ken Kesey
I got my EZGrip Squeegee Handle over the weekend and starting fresh on a Monday at work I tried it out. This will be a very early-stage part I review of just some first impressions and notes... -First I cut a new 13" squeegee blade, and tested inserting the blade into the EZGrip, finding the right way to angle it in and be sure it is centered, not that hard and much more simple than using one or possibly two screw drivers / ratchets etc and awkward ways of changing other types of blades in comparison. You just learn quickly how to angle and bend the squeegee depending on thickness into the EZGrip so it is centered, and you can feel and push when it is snug. -- On first impression the EZGrip seems too lightweight and flimsy, and when you insert the squeegee you can tell that the squeegee rubber bends/deflects a bit more than other squeegee holders, another note relates to this when printing... Squeegee Holding/Changing/Cleaning Method Benefits: Tool-less, simple to learn, Ink does not get up into the holding mechanism when printing, and the blade can be cleaned while still in the squeegee-holder, without getting ink all over the squeegee-holder itself, this is actually a great benefit in many ways, as well as a minimal amount of marking and no real marking of the blade near the other print-edges being held... before or after cleaning it can rest upside down without the blade touching anything, the handle really acts like a squeegee-blade/handle holder in a way, maybe a rack is unnecessary to hold multiple EZGrip handles as they act like a rack when laying down because of the spikes/knobs. These don't get ink on them, and if ink gets on the EZGrip it seems easy to clean or wipe off as well. Squeegee Holding Method Drawbacks: When using a double-durometer blade. You cannot just turn the squeegee around as you would with a typical squeegee handle to use the other side of the blade. You must choose which side of the blade you want to print with and insert the blade according to this, as you cannot print the EZGrip in reverse direction or it was not intended to work other than holding it one way, it is not reversible. Switching the blade around on the same screen for one print different from another, like for a print-flash-print, with a double-durometer, might be very rare and not even necessary so this is not really a big issue at all for me.... I just do that sometimes, mostly with left-chests that have some detail to them, etc... but it is more like if you have double-durometer in the EZGrip already, you can't just grab it and use the side you want, you would have to switch the blade around so you're printing with the edge you want. If that is the only drawback to the squeegee-holding mechanism, then no complaints really. -- On first impression it seemed that it would get messier or be hard to clean compared to other squeegee holders/handles.... but that is just going in with assumptions and I am giving this a proper trial... I won't really consider all of this post to be conclusive, but more like beginner's notes until printing for a full week and then give a comprehensive review on some of these things mentioned.The first job I had was just a few shirts we regularly do for a contract client that get left chest logo, right chest names, and a full back. I tested with a 13" squeegee on the full back, with navy ink (very low viscosity) through a 110 mesh over safety orange. Loaded the ink, tested a flood and honestly although I was walking into this with some previous reviews about the one-handed flood being an issue... as others have mentioned I only see this being an issue when you need perfect halftone flooding consistency, but I tested various techniques and modifying to a hips-holding-the-frame two-handed flood is not difficult, but for other reasons I would possibly have to really test using the EZGrip with halftones for flood-consistency and speed/efficiency tests about one-handed flooding vs. other methods if I had to switch for doing halftone repeatability flooding etc... With the few shirts done with that ink I was able to test some of the flood techniques, and it was really just easy as Ron already has shown it appears to one-handed flood holding the grip (I'm right-handed so I hold the frame with my left hand and flood holding the right-hand grip of the EZGRip, and just put a little angular pressure to make it consistent rather than fill-flooding the right side and top-coating the left side of the design... but this was easier with the low-viscosity navy ink than with white discussed later...) The printing worked well, normally with this design I like to be sure the navy really penetrates and gets coverage especially over the safety orange and for the hoodies, there are large areas of just navy ink in the logo so I immediately found the EZGrip to give me two added benefits similar to a push-stroke, but while pulling and having other benefits of a pull-stroke... I ended up then changing to a Full-Front/Full-Back print on 50/50 with a wilflex epic performance white poly ink to start, on red shirts, which changed to union maxopake orange on navy shirts, and then navy again on regular orange shirts. It was about 30 or so shirts for the red, 10 for the navy and 10 for the orange. I started out going slow and just getting into how it was working but I quickly said ok time to put this thing through its paces and ramped up my speed and really put it through some variations in pressure and angles and tried a few push-strokes as well (but there are reasons I can't really use push-strokes at the shop I'm working, until finding some political way of negotiating more EOM because I can just tell all the screens have the thinnest possible coating and that is really why I have to use pull-stroke top-coating methods to achieve ink-coverage etc.. this must be some old-school thing you can guys can clue me into... I'm all about the art and finesse but you know its science just like a lot of ahem other things, but I can see now that I have to do a lot of printing "tricks" to achieve variation in coverage with one screen that has no eom basically, and why push-strokes and lower-tensions would cause problems... I prefer a push stroke and also the EZ Grip seems great at it, but I will have to defer to continue pulling 9 to 5 for reasons to do with lack of other variable control outside my position.).... so I can't say for sure about the push-strokes until other variables are considered... but for pulling, and trying to ignore it was a new feel and awkward at first and jump into high-speed power-print-flash-printing etc with it... I think it scores 110% and I honestly really find it fun to print with. I must elaborate however, and give some drawbacks along with the benefits, and reiterate this is just a way for me to take some notes after the first day of some printing with it, and will wait until the end of the week after really putting it through lots of jobs that it can be used for. Oh I had to change the squeegee for the back design to 14" - and that is when I decided I wanted the double-durometer using the softer side to print,and the harder edge to give some more stability to the blade-deflection during printing with pressure, ... I noticed trying to print the back design which was about 13" wide, it is not easy to see where your blade edges are printing, hands/arms are a little more in the way of looking at the edge, and the blade seems to deflect a bit more at the edges so it causes with the off-contact a test-print to just fill out and too much ink pushed through, that can happen with any squeegee if you try to print the same size as the design and pull a few times on one side and the other of the design... off-contact will allow ink to pour through the design edges where the blade isnt there, so this wasn't the EZGrip handles fault. I changed to a 14" wide blade and all was well, the back design called for it really, and I was glad the EZGrip worked great with the 14" side - sticking out about 1/2" on each side of the blade-holder part. There were some benefits and drawbacks to the printing with the EZGrip, I will mention below... Printing Benefits: More Pressure can be achieved, during the print... with more consistency but also speed variation, all with less effort. I could raise or lower the angle and actually this was much easier on my hands and wrists - and especially fingers and fingertips, than traditional style pull-stroke printing with a traditional squeegee-handle... trying various angles and pressures but also doing what I would while printing that type of job, it worked amazingly well for these reasons.. I could clear the screen easier and print either slow or high-speed while also having higher or lower pressure but seemingly more control, even though it seemed like less at first this was just me getting familiar with using the EZGrip itself. There were some things which I think it was just being afraid to control it... However it could be one of two ways... It seemed like the handles could twist a bit and the blade-deflection was more, and I could see much more a right-handed effect vs. less-strong left-hand (similar to printing normal when you have to adjust...)... but compared to normal pull printing, this was perhaps 10 times easier to accomodate and then realize it was just more control I had... I could increase the pressure differential of my left hand and also just realize i had lateral twist-control of the blade compared to a normal handle, so to just keep consistent placement of my angles for my hands and the pressures... But this is like really a force-multiplier as well as a parameter-control increase in many ways. All with less effort because normally I would have to use a lot more strain to produce those results or even test those variations. The increased pressure with also speed is a major benefit for me because this is actually not that easy to do normally, you have to compensate more pressure or speed and fight those normally, but with the EZGrip it almost felt like my arms connected to the grips and squeegee were operating like an automatic press. There are definitely some other muscle groups being used, and nothing on my hands/fingertips, but still a bit in the wrists and more into the forearms... however the back and shoulders are used more... One more thing to add to this is just how fast I could still do flooding one-handed and the speed at which I could rely on setting the squeegee down and picking it back up, surprised at how little ink was getting anywhere near the back of the screen--- adding that this is great and keeps a cleaner screen - however it is sort of similar to a push-stroke with the pull-flood, but the EZGrip always sets back so that you can basically have a larger area without any ink getting in the screen, the handles and tips/spikes stay clean, you would not want to set them in the ink you would get ink on your hands that way.... the ink does not roll up into the blade-holder, stays just away from it even with a lot of ink loaded... but anyway, printing a lot and having it be easier and perhaps faster with less effort, more control, and keeping things cleaner.... all great benefits and added power/versatility in the arsenal. It doesn't mean you throw away all the other squeegee holders, I have yet to use it for left-chest and we print larger designs at times that call for 16, 17, 18" or more squeegees, it would be great with a, b, c features added but this is about reviewing the current EZGrip handle and I will keep ideas about what it should or shouldn't have to a different discussion or outside the review for now. Printing Drawbacks: I noticed after printing with it for a bit that I had a pain in my back right shoulder-blade area, and realized this was directly related to using the EZGrip -- however it is just what happens when you start working new muscle groups in a certain way, and could have slept on it wrong or just be something that was only slightly perturbed by doing the EZGrip method of printing, but I definitely could tell the printing was using that muscle/tendon group much more than the other method of pull-stroke printing.... which I can tell uses more of my upper-abs and the arms/wrists etc... I'm sure there are weight or other machines that specifically have these variations and work those different groups... so whether this is a drawback or it will just be something that I get used to and is only a little new-movement-adjustment then I will have to see. So far I really enjoyed printing with the EZGrip and this was my only concern apart from a few other things I have to see more over this week of printing with it... I'll sleep on it and do some stretches and things, probably the slight pain in my shoulder-blade area that came about will just be a little hiccup and I'm sure could just be unrelated like it didn't cause it maybe, but I didn't feel it before and it slowly cropped up while printing and doing other movements, then I felt while printing and could push on the area while doing the movement and tell it works those tendons/muscles as opposed to other ones, but I think this is the point really. Another thing to mention, it is really a benefit, because I could tell I am no longer putting any strain on my fingertips and hands/fingers, since I am also into music and play guitar, piano, and writing and art/painting, computer programming, etc... I really value my hands/fingers/fingertips and their sensitivity and dexterity and I did not like how I was losing those a bit from screenprinting, causing calluses to form a bit more than I wanted and numbness in some fingers.... this will all go away with the EZGrip I can tell, and just perhaps work my wrist/forearms and upper arms/chest/back more. Again, all of this is preliminary and notes I'm taking so I don't forget my first-impressions after the first day of printing some jobs with the EZGrip Squeegee Handle, and at the end of the week I will conclude the review with final thoughts and see how it goes. I'm definitely going to put this thing through its paces, it might be my new favorite squeegee, the push-stroke seems nice too, I will have to test quality and there is a halftone job tomorrow with tight registration of underbase and top-color dots. At the end of the week I might be ready to buy more of these for my own use or for at work, but either way I am really happy to have the free one and will give it a fair chance and full review that is more conclusive after more usage. Thanks again Ron for including me in the trial group, and for sharing your developments with us fellow printers, what works for you just might really work great for a lot of us too.
The one handle idea is a good idea....... Why don't you just buy one and make 2 cuts on it and have TWO one handle EZGrips. Problem solved!
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Topic: EZGrip Squeegee Handle (Read 52035 times)
