Bypassing the Vacuum on/off on American Tempo?

[Andymac]

hey, don't get me wrong, you should be able to figure it out and get it to print.

tunnelling happens with too much squeegee pressure on an auto. if you don't bring the blade down evenly from a 'no pressure' position, sometimes on side isn't printing, and you over compensate, and then it loosl ike the other side isn;t printing so you crank it more. next thing the blade is bowing and not making contact. Further pressure just bows it more.

How much is the correct pressure? just enough.

Have you got some S0-34 cleaner? (TW) I mix 20% in with water and use this for startup lube, and for cleaning during the run if stuff dries in. use a spritzer and a soft sponge.

Really wet the screen at the start, and print fast as you adjust the pressure.

[{LG}]

That's funny, I have a bottle of S-034 labeled 80/20 on press right now. I don't actually measure it though, just eyeball and use just as you described above.

No tunneling here, I know what you guys are talking about now.

I dunno, I think it really needs that flood to be happening at rest. And the up at rest position just clusterfucks you with heavily water thinned inks to boot. I'm sure others have done it with this type of press and TW though, I'll think about and try it again when I work up the cajones and will print on it with plastisol for transfers in the meantime to get more intimate with the machine. Happily printing away with my hands currently.

Andy I followed your equipment link and saw some nice gear there. Parallel lift sounds dandy to me. Did you design some of it?

[ittybittypress]

If the most important thing to you is having a flooded image between prints, it *can* be done. It's a shitty fix, but you can adjust where the "stop" position is.

There's a timing wheel under the hood on the left side of the press. Turn it so that the press stops after the image is flooded. The major drawback is that your screen will be mostly lowered by the time the image is flooded, so there won't be a lot of clearance to place your sheet on the table.

You can compensate for that a little bit by moving your image toward the back of the screen (assuming you're not taking up the entire depth of the screen), and then the screen won't have to be so far down by the time the image is flooded. I don't do this myself though, because I run a lot of split fountains. I actually off-center my image toward the front of the press to maximize run-on during the flood to get good blends. But if you don't run a lot of splits and can deal with the low clearance, adjusting the stop position could work for you.

[{LG}]

Thx itterbitter. You are very correct, there will be no room under there if I set it to stop at full flood. To boot, the vac will be on even if I don't bypass it to always on at that point. I could get some wiggle room to move the art front/back if, and only if the image was no taller than oh, say 20". At 23" and with the max screen size image placement needs to be perfect and I still have to set the flood at a wonky angle.

So your speedball keeps it's cool on the tempo?

[ittybittypress]

Speedball will still dry in if I don't maintain good humidity and work quickly. It helps to keep mixing fresh ink onto the screen.

I also pre-lube with 409, keep a mister and plenty of scrap sheets handy. I usually don't have to clean and print off unless something distracts me for more than a minute, though.