Darkroom.........................

We have a 15x15 office converted into a dark room. We have sheets of rubylith covering the light as well as HVAC and dehumidifers.

No dark room here, I have a 24 screen and 10 screen drying cabinets we use. (Vastex brands). Love them. Speeds up the process of drying/coating/drying screens a lot. We use it for storage when not drying them.

Ted ... I would suggest that you do something where you end up with chambers ... the room that the screens are coated should be far removed from any of the water processes (spray out / wash out / reclaim / etc.)

The emulsions are light sensitive therefore ALL coating, drying, shelving, and exposing should be done in rooms that are yellow light ... drying cabinets are good if maintained properly (clean them often including the fans -and- heating elements) ... think of this as a laboratory environment ... ALL dust particles should be cleaned from the walls, ceiling, floors, doors, etc. ... moisture is your enemy as it inhibits the cross linking of the emulsion ... as discussed keep the emulsion itself contaminate free as well ... don't use your finger to paddle the emulsion back into the bucket <--- the salts, oils, etc. = contamination

Fans in a screen room are your enemy ... they are dust Slingers -and- the static they produce make it even worse ... remember it is called SCREEN printing because it starts with the SCREEN ... Look you have one of the nicest textile screen printing machines in the world and your Mustang deserves to be fed a healthy diet of fantastic SCREENs :-o

Note: a good clean water dip tank with agitator for post exposure would go a long way as well ... once water is reintroduced to the screen it will quickly block the post exposure issues -and- soften the emulsion for a later rinse out <--- but keep this far away from your screen storage as to not reintroduce moisture in your process

Warning YOU are in Louisiana where the humidity levels are ridiculous ... so ... You need to pay particular attention as to exterior walls, windows, doors, etc. otherwise you are fighting an up hill battle for no reason !!!

BTW ... a common misnomer is that people are always adding more heat and raising the temperature of the coated screen ... where they really should be more focussed on getting the moisture levels down

Hope this helps :-p

Just to clarify on something Robert posted, you don't have to coat your screens under a safe light, but everything else is correct. You can coat all your screens wherever you want but they need to be in a safe light environment fairly quickly after you coat them.

We coat all the time in open light, just move em fairly quick to a dark area..... doesn't effect anything.

If my post confused them then they don't have much hope in this industry, or life in general. I told them to put the screen in safe light quickly after coating, so what's the problem with my statement?

Then if people do it all the time day in day out, Brandt for example. They do it successfully yet according to you they do not know what they are doing.

We are not morons but unlike you we do this for a living we understand today's materials better than the machine guy that visits many completely different shops and has a totally different point of view than the day to day screen printer.

Laughable (your choice of word) is a self proclaimed guru that tells people either what they are doing is wrong or they do not understand what they are doing, YET THEY STILL DO IT SUCCESFULLY!

BTW Alan's post made perfect and underst and able sense. What Any intelligent person will get from his statement is that today's emulsions are forgiving when wet they are at their least sensitivity but once dried they are at the peak of sensitivity, BUT even when dry they are still forgiving long to work with if you choose to work in typical shop lights.

I figure if it takes 6 minutes for a screen to get exposed being blasted with UV blacklight the 20 seconds I have it exposed to weak ambient light would not present a problem.

yawn....

Brian, what do we all know, we ACTUALLY print, right? LOL

Barnes, when was the last time you made a set of screens and printed? You realize we are talking about t-shirts here right? We are not going for 85 line halftone fine art prints.

I'd also argue that your "1 to 2 light units" are highly exaggerated in typical shop lights.

People have left a quarter on their screen sitting under clear uv tube protected bulbs for hours and it washed out. Under yellow tubes it went days. under standard unsleeved tubes I'm sure are a FRACTION of a light unit when exposed for the time.

You can talk about the good ol days but hey, "the good ol days weren't all that much better" - Extreme... besides... back in the day you had to crank start your car... do you still think we should stay in the habit of cranking our car because that is the way it was done back then?

Times change... keep up.

I'd agree with that... but if you get someone that doesn't know what they are doing that will be more confusing.

They will be trying so hard to not expose their screen to ANY light that they will make things way more difficult on themselves than they should.

I'm probably guilty of that. I probably take WAY too many steps to protect my screens from any smidgen of light. That equals wasted time, which equals wasted money.

Why do it half azz ... I can't wait to show of the FPU (film positioning unit) for the Mustang -and- when you girls see the screen jig mount on the press you'll scream with excitment like school girls in a high school lunch room :-)

I had to come lol about this thread again. LOL

One of the things I thought about while driving ... if you have older technology and believe in older technology -then- why try to improve ... just stick with the older technology that you are comfortable with -and- the old school thinking of that's the way we have always done it -and- it works for us ;-) LOL

Now we know why Bill Hood never gets along on these forums :-o

There is another aspect to look at.

Now I admit I am by far not a chemist or some kind of screen guru.

Anyways lets say you have a screen momentary exposed to your shop lights, lets say .01% thickness has been exposed and cross linked. OK now you have a minute layer of pre exposed emulsion, now lets say down the road you re-pulll that screen out for some reason for the same amount of time, does the screen re-expose another .01%, no absolutely not because the light first has to penetrate the fist .01% before it starts exposing the next layer. We all know post exposing is much much longer than exposing, it takes light a long time to penetrate already exposed emulsion. That is why we post expose using sun light it is the fastest way and practical, it is not practical to post expose using your light source because of time energy and bulb life.

Anyways what I am saying is hitting a screen with shop lights here and there does not really accumulate not in any reasonable amount of time anyways.

But what do I know.

Nothing wrong with being technical until you understand what is actually possible/practical which you will ONLY get from doing.

I know a lot of "book smart" people that push carts at walmart or run a teller window at a bank for 30k a year. Nothing wrong with that if that's what they want to do, but guys like many of us are far beyond that **** because we put the BOOK DOWN and DID WORK SON. LOL.

There is "Technical"

And there is "Practical"

Enough said.

A smart industry guy once told me that technical knowledge is great, but if you don't have the practical experience to go along with it, you'll do more harm than good. The first year med student thinks they know it all until they have a few people die under their care, then they start to understand how practical experience matters in any field.

Its like Professional Golf Trainers.

They have all the technical knowledge in the world but their bodies do not allow them to use the knowledge well enough to become pro golfers them selves.

I have a large warehouse room with yellow bulbs, and a bunch of fans. thats right, fans. NEVER have problems, and I have been doing it this way for almost 14 years. we are in georgia, it could be different in other areas of the country.