Never seen a mitre shear mentioned anywhere before for squeegee blades. I've been in the industry since 2012..... but I am self taught. Just added one of those puppies into my Amazon basket! Thanks for sharing - much appreciated. I just got myself a 3D printer and am looking forward to being able to make all kinds of useful stuff for the shop to increase efficiency. Richie
Yes for sure. There’s a community fabrication lab near our shop with 3D printers, laser cutters and more. It’s one of those tools I don’t think about enough. I bet there’s tons of problems you could solve with a custom part. Dang I’m already thinking of a tape dispenser...
Thanks for tuning in, glad to help. I'm still getting a lot of conflicting info on squeegees. Some reps even say you should never sharpen and just replace it! Of course though, they make a living selling this stuff. It seems to be agreed that no matter how a squeegee is installed it will always benefit from a quick slap on the sharpener to get it flat, even, and sharp.
Hey Corey! Durometer is the method used to calculate a squeegees stiffness, Shore is the resulting number from using the durometer method of stiffness measurment! That's why on some squeegees you'll see shA next to the number on it.
@@CoryFloodwayPrintCo yes in a sense your tension meter is your "durometer". Durometer is comprised of 2 words "duro" - durability and "meter"- measurement.
Makes me wonder how suppliers started calling it by ‘duro’. Seems like a North American think. Never heard anyone call it a ‘triple shore’ but that’s a way more accurate name.
Evan Williams haha I can see how it gets tricky. I’ve seen three-layer blades with three different hardnesses pretty sure. Quick buddy, pass me the two-shore triple-layer polymer blade!
@@CoryFloodwayPrintCo I think it'd be handy for cutting plastic beading for signage and stuff that I would be using a knife for normally. Seems a lot more controlled
Hey Cory, I'm curious about your comment regarding keeping squeegees clean of ink between uses. We scrape excess ink off but do not clean squeegees for multiple ink colors. Some have been in service for a few years (and thousands of print strokes) without any issues. Do you have first hand experience with problems caused by leaving ink on squeegees? Also, cool idea with the Kitchenaid Mixer. Funny, I thought about doing that today. Maybe it entered my subconscious after viewing this video last night!
Check out my other comment on here about the kitchenaid mixer! It works, but isn't super ideal and we don't use it daily anymore. As for the squeegee situation, I don't have any first hand experience except seeing 'old' squeegees from other shops be cracked. Excellent point there. Kinda like taping the screens it's just a superstition that I need to rethink! I got the tip mostly from a graphics shop I worked at and it's probably one of those industry standards. I think for me though it mostly comes from a waterbased workflow. I have always wanted to do more waterbased so I have some processes here that are catered to a waterbased setup even though we print mostly plastisol. I want to have good habits when we do more waterbased. I do like the idea of cleaning them to check sharpness too. We do 'save' our white squeegees too and whatever else we can save if we see the same colour coming up in the schedule. But not for thousands of print strokes. I would say we only clean our white tools off when it's crept far enough up the tools!
White ink!!! More on that soon once we get it dialled in. Works great though, been running it a couple months and wouldn’t print without it now. Just need to get a smoother process for ink from the gallon, to the mixer, and then go a quart for the press.
@@cheddarcheese it differs by about 100x in price haha that’s the big one. The stand mixer is great BUT. I got the kitchen aid after burning out a crappier mixer I got to ‘test’ the theory. The problem is the kitchen aid mixer doesnt allow the top to come off, just tilt. My crappy mixer had a removable top and I thought that was kinda standard. So the kitchenaid mixer works great for mixing ink but the actual process of using it is really bad. Gotta scoop ink in and out and it’s awkward. I’m going to sell it and find a mixer with better workflow.
Yes, I have one and tried it. Our manual press doesn't get much attention these days, but even if it did I don't think I'm sold on them quite yet. It's worth the couple bucks to try one but I wouldn't jump into a full set if it was me. My wrists are destroyed from BMX riding, but still didn't have any struggles or pain with a regular squeegee handle, and wrist fatigue is a huge reason people get excited about it. So if your wrists are hurting it might be perfect for you.
Biggest squeegee breakthrough for me was the Ergoforce aluminium squeegees handles. Stiffened the blade right up and my quality on a push stroke rose considerably. Plus you can get little metal rods to insert so when it falls over, it saves itself from the ink. I'm just not sold on the EZ myself..... Not that you shouldn't try it. Hope it works for you.
