HSA/DC inks, are you single stroking, or double stroking?

[ericheartsu]

It seems we cannot get away from double stroking on these inks. Is anyone here single stroking on these inks?

If so, what is your coating technique, and EOM?

[tonypep]

The double bladed squeegee from Action was designed for this purpose

[ZooCity]

Double, always.  (well, 99% of the time)

High eom and HSA aren't pals, ink sticks to the inside walls of the stencil gasket so we use lower eom such as you would do with wb/dc.

We tried an action double years ago, no way in hell I want my staff cleaning that thing of HSA ink after a mid or longer sized run.   Also the angle is hard to nail down between the two blades.  Cool idea though.

[DannyGruninger]

For HSA we are double stroking 90% of the time..... The only time we aren't is if we are running 3 bases, doing sim process, or a dark ink on light garment like a tonal color. But for us here and most all the big shops I talk to running HSA are double stroke on everything. This is a reason we had to switch a lot of production back to plastisol as the speeds, downtime, cleanup, and cost of inks were frickin killing us here, like super killing us LOL

[tonypep]

Yes the double blade has issues.

[ZooCity]

For HSA we are double stroking 90% of the time..... The only time we aren't is if we are running 3 bases, doing sim process, or a dark ink on light garment like a tonal color. But for us here and most all the big shops I talk to running HSA are double stroke on everything. This is a reason we had to switch a lot of production back to plastisol as the speeds, downtime, cleanup, and cost of inks were frickin killing us here, like super killing us LOL

Very true!

We simply speed up the flood and stroke, HSA typically deposits nicely at fast carriage speeds, so that helps.   I think the M&R series III presses have the high speed 2x stroke game cornered, haven't seen any other machine 2x stroke faster than those, it's impressive.

Another option- we recently did a 10k ish run of DC ink using a squeegee in the flood position and double stroking using each stroke direction with the head down but that's not appropriate for all art as it can ghost a bit in either direction.  Very nice option though.  Stroke-flood-stroke in head down is another approach to up the run speed.

Run speed has never been super high in our shop so I haven't stressed that too much.  Setup with HSA is what can kill us more with our dry environment.  Ironically my crew tends to run HSA way faster than plastisol for this reason, fear of dry in can motivate.  We also get superior whites to plastisol, every time.  You can train most anyone to get a great HSA white print whereas plastisol white printing, which I have never found difficult myself, is a big hurdle for many.

[ericheartsu]

For HSA we are double stroking 90% of the time..... The only time we aren't is if we are running 3 bases, doing sim process, or a dark ink on light garment like a tonal color. But for us here and most all the big shops I talk to running HSA are double stroke on everything. This is a reason we had to switch a lot of production back to plastisol as the speeds, downtime, cleanup, and cost of inks were frickin killing us here, like super killing us LOL

Very true!

We simply speed up the flood and stroke, HSA typically deposits nicely at fast carriage speeds, so that helps.   I think the M&R series III presses have the high speed 2x stroke game cornered, haven't seen any other machine 2x stroke faster than those, it's impressive.

Another option- we recently did a 10k ish run of DC ink using a squeegee in the flood position and double stroking using each stroke direction with the head down but that's not appropriate for all art as it can ghost a bit in either direction.  Very nice option though.  Stroke-flood-stroke in head down is another approach to up the run speed.

Run speed has never been super high in our shop so I haven't stressed that too much.  Setup with HSA is what can kill us more with our dry environment.  Ironically my crew tends to run HSA way faster than plastisol for this reason, fear of dry in can motivate.  We also get superior whites to plastisol, every time.  You can train most anyone to get a great HSA white print whereas plastisol white printing, which I have never found difficult myself, is a big hurdle for many.

Same for us. We've always excelled at WB printing over plastisol, in speed and execution.

[tonypep]

Going to try the M&R two direction "towel mode" soon as we have a huge program for custom made sweaters. And yes, for many, WB printing can be faster/more efficient. Sadly, we print a ton of pig dyed comfort colors so not always an option

[ZooCity]

Going to try the M&R two direction "towel mode" soon as we have a huge program for custom made sweaters. And yes, for many, WB printing can be faster/more efficient. Sadly, we print a ton of pig dyed comfort colors so not always an option

Let us know how it works out! 

I saw a lot of videos of folks overseas printing with 2x blades but don't see that as much in the u.s.