Robert Barnes from Spider Machines - Modern Technology -vs- Old Conventional Designs

Printwizard · September 17th, 2012, 12:57 AM

The norm down under is to flash every colour..... Very little is wet on wet apart from the odd simulated process which isnt that big in the work we do. Grrrrr.

srimonogramming · September 17th, 2012, 11:34 AM

Eetherman, wouldn't it be much faster to put the flash on the second print head and operate it like a normal flash and do two revolutions? The flashback I saw took forever and our press would run circles around that production even if we sent the job around for two revolutions and one screen.

Printwizard, we did a 7 color job the other day with an underbase, flash then 6 colors wet on wet after that. I know not every job will permit that many wow screens on top of one another but we try to do as much wow as we can get away with. We have two flash units and use them both often, but using a revolver type system is rarely done. We will do white, flash, white jobs in two revolutions when the run is small so we don't have to set up two screens quite often but I despise having to use a revolver type mode unless it's like an 8-9 color job on the 10 color auto. I've successfully printed a 9 color job on darks with a 10 color auto, one revolution. I keep a sample around and show it off whenever I can.

Gilligan · September 17th, 2012, 12:15 PM

Mike, I thought you printed manually? You flash EVERY color? Holy crap that must be slow as hell!

Printwizard · September 17th, 2012, 12:18 PM

We do a fair amount of CMYK where we put down a Lycra base, two whites and then CMYK on 355-380 mesh counts with an 85 to 95 line dot. A lot of our corporates are so fussy that we just don't seem to get away WOW. Not many people do this, and generally might slip the odd one in, but still end up going two or three revolutions. I will eventually post Alan some samples of some of our jobs weve run. We mostly do "punch and crunch" type work, but I always offer the client better job quality for twice the price, and many will pay the money.

To a degree I would admit because we haven't really pushed wet on wet so much hence we haven't learned so much either so am a bit ignorant.......

Printwizard · September 17th, 2012, 12:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gilligan

Mike, I thought you printed manually? You flash EVERY color? Holy crap that must be slow as hell!

Can only think of one job we ran wet on wet, was a sleeve print, we were running late and due to the art and design and not fussy customer it actually worked alright-ish. But yes, spin and flash.... Everyone down here does it.

Printwizard · September 17th, 2012, 12:25 PM

I run 6 col four stations. The math is a minute to load, a minute to unload and stack, then a minute per colour per set of four. I price at $1 a minute (plus $.20/A5; $.40/A4; $.80/A3 to cov inks and consumables) and that's how I normally work my quotes out and manage times. Obviously some jobs go faster, some not so fast....

squeegee · September 17th, 2012, 01:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by eetherman

I personally feel the Flashback is a great option. We use ours for many jobs 12-48 pieces. Set up is fast and printing is much faster than printing manually and the shirts are completed in one rotation. We hardly ever print manually and we can pretty much accomplish everything with 1 white screen and 1 flash, it works great for us. If we had to burn an additional white screen, not only would we burn through 20-30 more screens a week we would also have to run a second flash it all adds up.

When we had flashbacks we never used them in this regard because they are too slow to set them up to keep the ink from curing in the screen (pfpf on one head) and then go back to standalone, then back to pfpf on single head etc. Also painfully slow in pfpf mode. At least for us.

We always used as stand alone flashes and a double revolution for small jobs when necessary (hardly ever though). Looking back it would have been faster and easier to purchase full coverage quartz flashes, they would have paid for themselves in time savings within months, I think even on purely small jobs, but then again we rarely ever needed a double revolution or pfpf white base, maybe changing up your mesh counts would reduce this need?

eetherman · September 17th, 2012, 08:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by srimonogramming

Eetherman, wouldn't it be much faster to put the flash on the second print head and operate it like a normal flash and do two revolutions? The flashback I saw took forever and our press would run circles around that production even if we sent the job around for two revolutions and one screen.

Printwizard, we did a 7 color job the other day with an underbase, flash then 6 colors wet on wet after that. I know not every job will permit that many wow screens on top of one another but we try to do as much wow as we can get away with. We have two flash units and use them both often, but using a revolver type system is rarely done. We will do white, flash, white jobs in two revolutions when the run is small so we don't have to set up two screens quite often but I despise having to use a revolver type mode unless it's like an 8-9 color job on the 10 color auto. I've successfully printed a 9 color job on darks with a 10 color auto, one revolution. I keep a sample around and show it off whenever I can.

Honestly that would maybe save a few minutes per run but then we are relying on the operator to turn off and on print heads. Our flashback takes about 6 seconds per stroke of white with an image size around 11-14 inches. So to answer your question, yes much slower than say the 3 to 4 seconds we flash with the RPM. The biggest downfall would be the speed of the print on the Javelin, we can print 2 strokes of white in the amount of time it takes to print 1 on the Jav. As far as ink drying in the screens maybe twice in 5 years and only because the fans got a little clogged. Fresh bulbs and good reflectors and the Javelin can flash pretty fast.

eetherman · September 17th, 2012, 11:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by srimonogramming

Eetherman, wouldn't it be much faster to put the flash on the second print head and operate it like a normal flash and do two revolutions? The flashback I saw took forever and our press would run circles around that production even if we sent the job around for two revolutions and one screen.

Printwizard, we did a 7 color job the other day with an underbase, flash then 6 colors wet on wet after that. I know not every job will permit that many wow screens on top of one another but we try to do as much wow as we can get away with. We have two flash units and use them both often, but using a revolver type system is rarely done. We will do white, flash, white jobs in two revolutions when the run is small so we don't have to set up two screens quite often but I despise having to use a revolver type mode unless it's like an 8-9 color job on the 10 color auto. I've successfully printed a 9 color job on darks with a 10 color auto, one revolution. I keep a sample around and show it off whenever I can.

Sri, just read the second part of you post, I am a huge fan of WOW printing. We also ran an 8 and 7 color on dark's this month with only 1 flash. 200's and 305's only. Are you running anything higher than a 305? We were thinking about going higher but wasn't sure if it would work or not.

srimonogramming · September 18th, 2012, 09:26 AM

I had 4 330/30's from murakami but they all busted within a year. I did use them occasionally with decent success. The 330 is virtually the same as a 305/34 in % open area and theoretical ink volume so I've got about 10 305's in production and that's our highest mesh count. Years ago we had some 355's and even a few 420's, but plastisol ink would not pass through them without serious pressure and multiple strokes so I got rid of them. Sure you can hold some pretty fine detail, but you lose that detail when you have to double and triple stroke.