Vastex entering world of LED exposure units

[GraphicDisorder]

I`m wondering if M&R will ever enter the market of LED exposure units.

yes we are. Our units are done and waiting on patents.

Let me know when they are live, I might be in. 

[screenprintguy]

I'd be interested to see how these LED units do with no glass for CTS shops like us, and using a slower exposing emulsion, like a diazo emulsion. If PPP emulsions are zapping fully at 30 seconds with glass, figure the math it should be about the same with slower emulsions and no glass huh? Interesting. Especially to have a unit that new will be under 6,000 bucks and be able to shoot 2 23x31's at a time and not $300 bulb to replace all the time.  Will be cool if M&R has theirs up and showing at the SGIA in Orlando come October!!!! wink wink wink 

[244]

I`m wondering if M&R will ever enter the market of LED exposure units.

yes we are. Our units are done and waiting on patents.

Let me know when they are live, I might be in.

We have them running here in Chicago now.

[GraphicDisorder]

I`m wondering if M&R will ever enter the market of LED exposure units.

yes we are. Our units are done and waiting on patents.

Let me know when they are live, I might be in.

We have them running here in Chicago now.

When are they available?  Costs?  (email me if you like). 
brandt@graphicdisorder.com

[Rockers]

I`m wondering if M&R will ever enter the market of LED exposure units.

yes we are. Our units are done and waiting on patents.

Let me know when they are live, I might be in.

We have them running here in Chicago now.

Photos, info, prices it`s all welcome. We are looking to replace our unit next year. Cost of electricity in this part of the world is outrages. Just gone up again. Just glad we got a gas dryer last year to replace our electric one. Will change all our lights on the print floor as well to LED soon.

[Prosperi-Tees]

And whoever is replacing their MH unit let me know. I really should upgrade my 240 watt flouro unit.

[Mr Tees!!]

..I second that. We are very eager to pull the trigger on one of these VERY soon, It fits our needs perfectly (plus my old one is an ancient fluo POS).

...Rich, can you at least give us an idea on release date, if nothing else?

[alan802]

I helped uncrate a part of this unit today but I didn't get to play with it.  Hopefully tomorrow I will get to do some exposure testing to match it up against a metal halide that is probably in the 6-8K watt range in power.  I did exposure testing with HVP and our Richmond unit last week and got the proper exposure down to the seconds as well as light units.  Assuming my bulb hasn't lost a lot of power over this past week it should be a very fair comparison and we can get more feedback on the LED questions that I know are still out there.

[screenprintguy]

Alan, it would be awesome to see how the led does on 2 over 2 diazo screens,  and how those hold up in production.

[alan802]

I hadn't planned on testing it on a dual cure because I don't have any coated and ready to go.  If I got some mixed up (highly doubt it) I'll coat a few and do them as well.  But then testing them will be harder because we don't have anything too big coming up to see how durable they are.  I would mix in some diazo to my hvp but I don't think I've got any.

I guess more of you guys would prefer to see dual cure testing over pure photopolymer? 

[alan802]

Ok, I got 30 minutes on one today and I don't have all the info you guys are wanting yet but I do have solid expo times that I can examine when I have more time to look at the screens through my loupe.  I'm not ready to say it's the next best thing or it's meh yet but I'll go ahead and say that I wouldn't trade our unit in on one and I don't think any additional testing (coming next week to get real detailed info now that I have proper exposure times) will change my mind.  But with that said, our unit is one of the best made and double the price of this unit so pound for pound the LED unit is a very strong tool.  From the small sample size I can say that an 83/71 with a very thick stencil didn't expose at 60 seconds and needed more time.  The 305 at 60 seconds was way overcooked.  The 180/48 at 25 seconds was the best screen of the bunch and I got a lot of detail on that screen.  The 230 held some very fine halftones, 65 line 97% held every single dot but the 3% side didn't turn out well. The unit shows lots of promise.  My first opinion is that I think it's going to be better than a metal halide under 5K power but our Richmond outperformed this unit by a decent margin, especially on thick stencils.  I think exposure times are fairly similar but our unit seems to penetrate to the squeegee side better.  The LED unit showed signs of underexposure on the squeegee side yet gave signs of overexposure on the shirt side on the 83, 110 and 180.  The only true dissapointment was vacuum time, 90 seconds with every screen so we need to find out if we had something obstructing the seal or if that's what people can expect (I hope not, defeats the purpose of fast exposures).

I'll elaborate more when I have more time but I gotta get out of here and call it a week, it's been a rough one to say the least.  Hopefully next week will be better.

[Doug S]

 The only true dissapointment was vacuum time, 90 seconds with every screen so we need to find out if we had something obstructing the seal or if that's what people can expect (I hope not, defeats the purpose of fast exposures).

Alan,

The lawson led5000 I have vacuums 10 seconds so it does sound like something is obstructed.  I found that this unit actually has a tighter draw on the vacuum without using a rope over the screens.

[abchung]

Thanks for the review.

[alan802]

I spent a little time at the shop this morning looking at the stencils at 60X magnification and I am going to burn a few of the same mesh counts with our Richmond unit on Monday to compare side by side.  The chromaline expo calculator has several different areas like most calcs do and since I was really only concerned with finding correct expo times I didn't get to test the unit like most of you are wanting to see.  But I've got solid times to go on now so maybe early this next week I can go back and test the 65, 85 and 105 lpi halftones.  The highest mesh I have to test is 305/34 and all my 330/30's have been blown up for quite a while so I won't be able to do much with the 85 and 105 lpi part of the calc.  Because I doubled my expected expo time the finer detailed text didn't come out on any of the screens except the 180s.  One thing I can say though is if we would have exposed the same screens for the same time, essentially overexposing with our Richmond, the finer text and halftones would have sprayed out much easier.  I guess I'm saying that I think the metal halide has a broader exposure latitude.  I've developed screens at 3 light units that showed no physical signs of underexposure and then burn the same screen at 15 light units and the image comes out the same as the 3 light unit exposure screens.  I didn't get those kind of results on the LED unit but that will be something that I look at in more detail when I go back and test again.

As far as a dual cure emulsion and testing for long term durability with DC inks...I don't know when our next long DC run is going to be, there is nothing in line currently.  With our Richmond, we had screens breaking down prematurely due to underexposure even though there were no physical signs of underexposure with any of the screens.  We doubled expo time and then had screens that were durable but seeing how easy it was to overexpose with the LED I'm wondering how hard it will be to fine tune your DC screens.  Since the expo time needed on our Richmond for DC screens is so much longer than plastisol screens need, the LED will need to be able to penetrate the entire film layer quickly yet not overexpose which is what I was seeing that the LED kind of struggled with. 

I hope nobody reads this and thinks the LED isn't up to the hype it's gotten because the sample size is so small, only 5 screens total and that's nothing.  I am very confident that we did everything right and there were no pre-exposed screens or anything that could have given the LED an unlevel playing field but I think the real test is yet to come. When I go back we will be able to get more info and more definitive results.  Even after looking at some great results today under the loupe, I still think our Richmond metal halide, 10K bulb outperformed the LED unit by a good margin, but I was surprised by how good the stencils looked under magnification.  I know nobody needed my review to prove the LED is solid technology but it really does work and next week we'll be able to say just how close it compares to a strong metal halide unit.  It should be pretty equal to the lower powered metal halides but I can't really say what wattage the LED will be equavalent to in a metal halide but I think it's going to be around 3-4K as a wild guess.  Stay tuned screen printing nerds, more to come.

[Doug S]

Alan, I think that it would be a downgrade for some one like you with a 10K metal halide.  I had a 1K nuarc and so far, I've noticed faster exposure times using the ulano step wedge.  I've just received the Chromaline Calculator and am going to test some screens with the CCI wr25 probably towards the end of next week but I'm like you, I have no long runs coming soon to test for durability.  Although I don't print discharge often
"maybe once a month"  I was exposing 420 lt units with the nuarc and still after roughly 500 prints the screens would break down even with a hardener.  I'm pretty anxious to try the led out on the wr25.