You think that you have the flu’ so you go see a doctor. But he can’t tell if your lungs are clear because he doesn’t own a stethoscope.
Trying not to look too surprised, you ask, “But don’t all doctors have stethoscopes? Isn’t that the first item that they buy at medical school? Isn’t it so necessary for their jobs that they all have it hanging around their necks all the time?”
The doctor looks a bit irritated. “Well maybe… but do you know that those things cost a couple of hundred bucks? So, I’ll just stick my ear on your chest and listen to your lungs. Most of the time I can hear enough to guess whether or not the lungs are clear.”
That is not what you want to hear from a professional. “You’ll take risks with my health for the sake of a couple of hundred bucks? Thanks, but I’m out of here. I’m going to find a doctor that at least has the basic tools to do the job properly!”
If that were a true story, it would cause a scandal in the medical profession. But the equivalent thing happens every day in textile screenprinting and very little attention is paid to the problem. We are talking about the lack of proper checking of conveyor dryer temperatures. We are talking about under-cured prints.
Most of the time printers do not have the proper tool for testing dryer temperatures. A textile screen printer without a digital Thermoprobe is like a doctor without a stethoscope. Some printers use temperature guns and others use temperature strips. Both are about as adequate as the doctor’s ear on your chest… it will work somewhat some of the time but it is hardly adequate enough and it will cost you sooner or later.
The problem with the temperature gun, even if it is properly aimed, is that it will only tell you the surface temperature of the ink at that instant. Often it is not properly aimed and will tell you the temperature of the shirt or the belt, which is not what you need to know. The problem with temperature strips is that they will tell you approximately what temperature was reached but cannot tell you for how long it was maintained or whether or not you have cool spots in your dryer that need to be fixed.
The professional textile printer’s “stethoscope” is a digital Thermoprobe. It continuously displays the changing ink surface temperature as it moves through the dryer. It is the only way to know exactly when the ink reaches curing temperature and for how long that temperature is maintained. It also enables you to identify any cool spots, cooler sides in the dryer, under-heating and over-heating. Improperly cured ink is in our experience the number one technical problem for textile screen printers. It can be very costly when your customer’s prints start cracking, washing off, fading and becoming patchy.
We have seen this problem so frequently lately that we have decided to something special about it. We want to encourage every professional textile screen printer to use a Thermoprobe to check their dryer(s) every day.
Get the “cure”, get a Thermoprobe.