Back to the Future – Part 2

Why Back to the Future?   Returning to the beginning of procedures is the most basic part of quality control. As we previously blogged, a growing and thriving business continues to monitor procedures and views training as an on-going and continual activity.  This is true for screen printing companies and especially in the screen room.  When procedures are standardized results are predictable job after job.  Pin holes are not random occurrences, but simply eliminated when procedures are followed and periodically monitored.  It seems the area where personnel changes are the greatest is in the screen room, and this is the area with most variables of procedures.

These are a couple of very simply reminders, and often over-looked that will reduce screen problems.

1. Do you regularly clean the glass on your exposure unit?  Is there even glass cleaner near your exposure unit?  If the answer is no, you probably have additional touch-up to block pinholes that dust specks on the glass, will cause.  If you have a separate frame from your light source clean both sides.
2. Have you tested your light intensity lately?  This simple exposure test will tell you how much (not if, but how much) intensity your light source has lost.  For beginning screen printers:  just because your light source emits light does not mean it has the same strength as when it was a new bulb.  The UV content of the light is the part of the light that exposes the emulsion and it gradually loses UV intensity.  Testing once a month will allow you to increase the time to insure the best exposure of your emulsion.
3. If you change emulsion or use two or three different emulsions in your shop you will need to have an exposure test for each type emulsion so that proper times on each type is used for each type of emulsion.

These basic reminders are forgotten by experienced printers and are sometimes simply not known by beginning printers.  Either way, tune-up monitoring and on-going training procedures and you will have fewer rejected prints, faster screen processing and redue labor and screen chemical costs.

Filed under: Easiway Systems News by easiway