Using both Ends of a screen...

[tonypep]

Pallet tape works also
tp

[Sbrem]

we use packing tape on the inside. To keep the squeegee from lifting the tape, lay the down so the the direction of your squeegee stroke makes it fall off one layer of tape onto the next. Like shingles on a roof; so if you push your squeegee, start at the far end of the screen and work your way toward yourself (it's on press) and if you pull your squeegee (no jokes ) you start to layl the tape down close to you and toward the back of the screen. After the first end of the screen is used, we do tape that off on the bottom (print side), rotate the screen, pull the tape off the inside, and print, provided it's the same ink color of course.


Steve

[jasonl]

thanks for everyones advice, but i am only talking auto here, i would quit before i started up my manual.  its just in my shop for looks

[alan802]

What Steve said.

Ganging images on screens saves us about 2-3 hours of labor time per week, so it's non negotiable at our shop.  The only times I don't gang them is if one of the images is too long or we simply don't have enough film ready for exposure.  I think I would do it if we were a smaller shop too, nothing bad has ever come to us by ganging.  Every time you do it, it's one less screen you have to clean, coat, expose and tape.

[Prosperi-Tees]

Good point Alan, do you gang screens using the same ink color? I gang screens out of lack of screens but only with the same ink colors. I think the cleanout would take to long if we did different colors on the same screen.

[alan802]

Yeah Gerry, they are the same color a lot of the time, or close to it.  I might put a navy blue and royal blue on the same screen.  But, there are times when the images are short, we can have white ink on one end and black on the other end and we don't clean out the ink and the two never get close to each other.  You can put left chests of different jobs on the same screen and never have to worry about the colors being the same or close, unless you are a messy printer and don't keep ink confined fairly close to the image areas.

[jasonl]

What Steve said.

Ganging images on screens saves us about 2-3 hours of labor time per week, so it's non negotiable at our shop.  The only times I don't gang them is if one of the images is too long or we simply don't have enough film ready for exposure.  I think I would do it if we were a smaller shop too, nothing bad has ever come to us by ganging.  Every time you do it, it's one less screen you have to clean, coat, expose and tape.

Agreed, I have been doing it this way for years.

[Inkworks]

Cleaning ink off a screen to use the 2nd end with a different color is much quicker than a full reclaim, recoat, reshoot, re-blockout/tape up.

[royster13]

There should be a time & materials calculation to see if it is worth it.....

[Evo]

All scraps from the inkjet go into a "masking pile" near the press. On the unfortunate times where I needed to gang stuff up (or it was easy-peasy one color stuff) I used the scrap inkjet film.

Cut a piece of film to completely cover the image area and tape it down with blue painter's tape on the SQUEEGEE side. Never put tape across the image area, you're only asking for trouble. Make sure the ends of the tape go all the way to the corners of the frame, this makes it so if a squeegee or flood bar drags across the masked area, the tape is less likely to catch at an end and pull up.

Make sure the receptive (inkjet print) side of the film is down on the image, away from the ink to avoid a cloudy mess.

Overlapping the corners makes tape/film removal easy. Grab the lowest corner and pull up the whole thing.

[Nation03]

Been doing the same process as steve for 5+ years. We use old catalogs to cover the other image, then tape them over in the right direction for the ink flow. Works like a charm.

[bimmridder]

OK, I'm going to sound like a jerk here. Here's how it's done in my shop. One image per screen. I don't even allow color changes on press. If we have to change a color, we have a new screen. I know that seems very wasteful, but I don't want to stop my presses any longer than absolutely necessary. If it takes five minutes to clean a screen and change an ink color, versus 2 minutes to slap a new screen in, I'm going with the new screen. We're are all auto here, and Tri-Loc. I need to keep my presses turning, not having my printers become screen cleaners. Like I said, this is how we do it in MY shop.

[mk162]

and dave, that works for you, nothing wrong with that.  but in smaller shops, where a press operator can also be the screen guy, it's less time to clean a screen than it is to cut a new one and so on.

Your staff is setup this way and that works.  We don't have enough people here to run it that way.

[bimmridder]

And that's why I usually start by saying, "in my shop, what works for me...." I know every shop is different.

[mjrprint]

We use palette tape to cover the one side.