Adding forced air to a cheap flash dryer.

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Hello and welcome.
In this video I will demonstrate how I added forced air to my cheap chinese flash unit. This unit cost me $429 CDN as of the time of publishing this video, the cheapest generic forced air unit I could find online was $1600. I'm just getting started in screen printing and intend to print only water based inks, and they need some air flow to evaporate the moisture in them and speed up curing between hits. As always, be careful with AC electricity, it can easily kill you.
Thanks for watching.
Link for the 90mm fan holder model: www.thingiverse.com/thing:502...
If you would like to buy some of the things I make check out the links below.
My shop: www.RichardThompson.ca
Things I make on my etsy page: Etsy.com/shop/RichardThompsonCA
My commercial illustration site: www.rtillustration.com
Follow me on Instagram: / learn.imagine.create
Follow me on Facebook: / richardthompsonillustr...
This video is for entertainment purposes only, I make no warranties about the completeness, reliability and accuracy of the information contained therein. Any action you take upon the information in this video is strictly at your own risk, and I am not liable for any losses or injuries incurred as a result.
#screenprinting
#homemanufacturing
#handmade

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Опубликовано:

1 авг 2024

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Комментарии : 18

@spookiedukie3768 Год назад

Sweet Man! It’s nice to know there’s always an easier and sometimes cheaper way to do things. Thank you Sir.

@RichardThompsonCA Год назад

Glad to help

@Brennys 9 месяцев назад

LOVE THIS! I have one of these cheap flashes. Going to try this for sure!

@chrisalton1 2 года назад

a lot of work but awesome project. good documentation of your process as always. cheers

@RichardThompsonCA 2 года назад

Thanks 👍

@noahyen 2 года назад

This is incredible i have a question how hot does the shirt get when you turn it on to dry it. And would you be willing to make another?

@RichardThompsonCA 2 года назад

It's more of a matter of time than of temp. The heating elements can get hotter than my thermometer can test (>600 degrees), so given enough time under it I would imagine a shirt could get close to that, but that would catch the shirt on fire ;-) With the pallets hot, it takes about 10 seconds to cure a layer of water based ink enough so you can do another coat. I haven't tried plastisol yet.

@urjnlegend Год назад

So how much more fan do you need to properly evaporate a water based ink so it properly cures? What do you recommend? Does hiis work. ?

@RichardThompsonCA Год назад

The water based ink won't start to heat set until after all the water has been removed. Trying to evaporate it with heat alone is a long and tedious process. Put 3 patches of acrylic ink on 3 separate pieces of non absorbent substrate, like a ceramic plate. Put a light bulb close above one as a heat source, put a warm hair dryer on the second, and do nothing to the third. The one with both heat and air (hair dryer) will dry the fastest. Heat alone (bulb) will be second, and the one left to sit will be slowest. After this video I did double up on the fans, so there are two of them stacked on top of each other. I don't use this flash dryer to cure, I have a conveyor dryer for that and it has air circulating fans inside of it. This is just to print/flash/print between colors. Even with two fans it's still about 20-30 seconds to dry the ink enough for another hit, but it was a lot longer than that without the fans. The problem is as you add more airflow you are cooling down the heating elements. This unit is only a 110v, I regret not getting a 240v but didn't think of it at the time. Basically, the more heat and air you can muster, the faster water based ink will dry, but it's going to heat up your shop a lot.

@urjnlegend Год назад

@RichardThompsonCA makes sense thanks for the explanation. Any idea alot of people recommend infrared flashes for water based ink?

@RichardThompsonCA Год назад

@@urjnlegend I think IR is more desirable for any type of ink because it's a more even heat as opposed to the coil in this unit, which definitely has hot spots. When I print with discharge you can definitely see the effects of those hot spots on the shirt. My conveyor has 3 IR heating elements in it. I think IR is also supposed to put more heat into the shirt and less into the air, but I'm no expert. I would have preferred a forced air quartz unit, but just couldn't afford it. They are triggered by sensing the rotating platen, they heat very quickly and shut off after a set amount of seconds, so they don't waste electricity heating the whole shop up.

@hoagieman37 2 года назад

How well does this work in application? Have you modified it since? Very cool video, definitely going to attempt this.

@RichardThompsonCA 2 года назад

I haven't modified it since but I've thought of stacking a second fan on it, for increased air flow. I'm just learning screen printing so I've only been creating test/practice shirts. But of the prints I've done it's working well. I'm only using water based ink so I needed the airflow. I would have really liked one of those instant quartz ones, but they run about $2000 here and I can't afford it at the moment, but it's on the list of upgrades.

@hoagieman37 2 года назад

@@RichardThompsonCA Awesome, thanks for the reply. Would love to see the modification at some point! I've started shopping around for used infrared ones to attempt to modify.

@Tristano.t Год назад

So does it suck or blow the air?

@benpokol Год назад

@@Tristano.t blows the air from the top through the heating element onto the garment. this helps displace steam that is caused by waterbased ink curing.