what exposure unit are you using?

[3Deep]

Atlas 5-way 1000 watt point and the old stand by Prolight 1

Darryl

[Orion]

We have a trilight 6k the same as inkbrigade. Still have the 3140 for back-up.

Years ago, different shop, I used a Solarbeam such as Alan's. They are the cat's meow. I was burning 305x with a pure photopolymer coated 2/2 at 25 units cell speed 2. Very fast!

[ericheartsu]

We have a trilight 6k the same as inkbrigade. Still have the 3140 for back-up.

Years ago, different shop, I used a Solarbeam such as Alan's. They are the cat's meow. I was burning 305x with a pure photopolymer coated 2/2 at 25 units cell speed 2. Very fast!

i'm pretty sure i'm gonna get a 6k trilight if i can't find a solarbeam. Either going to go cheap or go for the whole she-bang.

[Inkworks]

Alan, the utmost awesomest would have to be a carbon arc lamp. Unfortunately, it puts off poison gas, but it was the way to go 35 - 40 years ago. It was like a little sun in a box... I don't know how many of us here used them, maybe Frog, but they were the berries.

Yup  Old Nuarc carbon arc, kicking the thing to get the arc going when the rods weren't straight. Instant sun!

I use a Olec AL-83  8K tri-power with an old Olec 970 25 memory integrator with a 6' x 4' wall frame. Also a Nuarc 3K flip top with the platemaker blanket replaced with neoprene so I can do 20x24" or smaller screens in there for the manual, bottle printer and small clamshell, also use it for pad printing plates. The 3K instant-on in the Nuarc @18" away is faster than the 8K @48" away.

[Denis Kolar]

Nuarc 40-1K.
Got on eBay for $400 delivered. Got it day before I was gonna start building my own

No problems so far. Takes me a bit more than a minute per screen.

[Gilligan]

... The 3K instant-on in the Nuarc @18" away is faster than the 8K @48" away.

Inverse square law is a b!tch ain't it.

[Nick Bane]

msp-3140 here too.

[ZooCity]

Olec AL-53 and AI 970 Integrator  5k
Millington 48"x60" vac frame.  1/4" tempered glass.
Generic bulbs, Caprock L-1250 knockoffs I believe.

At 64" from our vac frame glass to the lamp safety glass the exposures are x6 from running enclosed in my DIY vac unit w 3/8" float glass. 
So yes, whatever Gilligan is talking about is a b, but I do notice we can resolve .25 pt lines on a 180 now so better to suck it up and do it right. 

I want what Alan has.  I wish the vac frame was wall mount.

But no complaints- our whole setup, including another complete AL-53 backup, cost about $1k.

[brandhouseink]

MSP 3140 here...

[cvreeland]

Richmond Solarbeam 10K metal halide, awesomest of them all.

I'll second this. The resolution these things give is amazing. I found out one time I had accidentally bumped up my highlights to 1% where it should have been 0 because even though I couldn't see the things with the naked eye, they rinsed out on the screen just fine, & I had a big pink square on my first sample print. 85 line, on a 355 mesh.

The integration is nice, too. I like that the whole thing shuts off when it his the set exposure, and that the vacuum is what turns the light on when it gets tight enough. They're very well thought out in that respect.

The small 7k units are a tad slow, but still give great detail. The 10k ones are really fast. And reliable. I've had 3 Richmonds, over 18 years now, and other than broken glass and torn blankets, only been down for a whole day just once.

[Gilligan]

Inverse Square Law

The light hitting your screen is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the light source.



Sound waves work essentially the same way, they are just effected a little differently by media around it as the frequencies are MUCH lower than that of light.  20hz to 20k vs quadrillion hz

[tonypep]

Richmond 10K and Amergraph. We can burn 4 auto screens at the same time. Processing 60 to 80 screens a day on average.

[Sbrem]

Inverse Square Law

The light hitting your screen is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the light source.



Sound waves work essentially the same way, they are just effected a little differently by media around it as the frequencies are MUCH lower than that of light.  20hz to 20k vs quadrillion hz

Beautifully stated Gilligan. I've seen some folks have their light on a track, if they expose one frame, they can get closer for a faster exposure, if they want to expose more than one frame, they have to be further back, so they move it to a pre-determined spot and shoot away. You can double your distance and shoot 4 screens at once, depending on the size of your vacuum frame of course...

Steve

[mooseman]

we have an old tracking device from a surplus radio telescope that we  mounted on my neighbors house. It has a computer program that tracks the sun here in NY and shoots it at the reflector unit from an old solar cooking oven I bought off ebay.

We concentrate the beam using a 340 pound hand blown lens from an old lighthouse, the focal distance is about 20 miles so I have to bring my screens over to the next county.
For vaccuum unit I have my neighbor come with me when I take the screens on the road trip, he is an extreme left wing loon that seems to create the perfect vaccuum where ever he goes.
 It works pretty good except we only have 37 days of sunlight here in beautiful New York so sometimes the exposure time is weeks depending on weather pattern.

When I upgrade I am going to use Sam, he is always telling folks how to suck it up, he is totally focused and he is really really bright, and i hear he is also pretty fast or at least half-fast. A I & O

 

[Gilligan]

Thanks Steve... I had a decent stint/career in the sound/lighting world for a while and being a "nerd" I soaked up this sort of information.