Tips for equipment maintenance for printing

Through many years of hard work and perseverance we have developed into a leader among St. Louis screen printing companies. This didn’t happen by accident nor did it happen overnight. There’s an old saying that says if it was easy, everybody would be doing it. We have access to the very latest equipment that our industry currently has to offer. Because technology is changing so rapidly, what was considered to be state of the art 12 months ago is now on the verge of becoming obsolete. Let’s take digital T-shirt printing as an example. This type of application wasn’t even possible 12 years ago and just like everything else that comes on the scene, the first generation has a lot of flaws and bugs that need to be worked out. Every generation of inkjet machines seems to make radical changes in order to improve the application with better quality and lend itself to a much quicker production output.

Custom embroidery has also come a long way. Some of these embroidery machines are capable of putting out over 600 stitches per minute and have up to 16 needles which provides instant color changes. They also come equipped with automatic trimmers where you don’t have to trim all of the apparel coming off of the press by hand. This significantly impacts the efficiency as well as the quality of the custom T-shirt or hat. Some of the old equipment hasn’t changed much over the years such as the heat transfer machine. This machine is found in almost every St. Louis screen printing company. It’s a pretty simple piece of equipment, but it still requires a certain amount of maintenance in order to keep it running at maximum efficiency.

There are really only two main components to applying transfers and that is heat and pressure. Here are a few things to check out in order to make sure your transfer machine is working at peak performance.  Look at the pad on the bottom of the platens. Make sure it is cleaned and that it is also in good shape. If any of these are prevalent or in question, then you should probably make the investment of purchasing a new one. These pads are easy to install and well worth the minimal investment. If this piece is compromised in any way, then it is probably going to have an effect on not being able to apply even pressure.

The next most important piece of this machine is the electrical connections starting with the wall outlet and going up to the control panel. Most electrical codes demand that these machines have a proper ground. Sometimes these machines will also develop cold spots in the heating element and they should be checked out thoroughly as well. We hope these tips are helpful.

We want to be your St. Louis embroidery company as well as cater to all your digital T-shirt printing requirements.

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