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Print / Production Environments - How Strict Are You?

Tattoosleeve

New Member
Curious what measures everybody takes to maintain a clean print/production environment? What tools, equipment and procedures to you follow to try and prevent contaminates ending up in a print/sign?

We're moving to a new shop in roughly 6 weeks and one of the things I want to do is control contaminates in our print/production environment more. In our current shop the production and print area is right in the middle of the shop. Bay is at the back, washroom is at the back, sales and design area in the front. Lots gets tracked through the room because there is simply no way around it. The new shop is set up with sales/design area in the center with the print and production room to one side of the building and the bays are on the opposite side of the building so that will already make a big difference.

The new print/production room is 38'x45' and will include solvent printer S60600, flatbed printer(FB550) and finishing table (Esko X24), graphtec FC8000, Summa D Series, Edge FX, Envision cutter, 64" laminator (x2) one for laminating one for mounting. The Esko table will be curtained off from the rest of the room with clear industrial curtains. They will be 8' tall but the ceiling goes to 16' so the top 8' above the table is exposed to the rest of the room. We will be installing (x2) air filtration units that will cycle the air in the room every 23minutes on the low setting. One will be directly above the Esko and the 2nd will be in the corner over by the printers to try and pull as much out of those areas as possible.

The plan to maintain a clean work area is to sweep and/or vacuum daily, particularly around the printers, clean laminator as needed (rollers, surfaces). Wipe down equipment once a week to keep free of dust build up. Use tack cloths and those gummy rollers when laminating/mounting.

The idea was thrown out to have an "inside shoe only" policy in the production room. Is that overkill?

Thanks in advance for any feedback
 

Bly

New Member
That mesh on the back gates keeps the leaves and larger stuff out. :)
There are three roll fed printers behind where I took the pic.
We vacuum once a week and use the leaf blower out the back door at the start of the day.
Surprisingly we have no real issues with dust affecting our work.

52024039_2108649665869953_28178795097751552_o.jpg
 

Bly

New Member
Zund G3 and we do a bit of routing yeah.
The vacuum pickup gets most of the dust - it doesn't seem to spread too far if you get it quickly.
Most of the dust on the flatbed comes from paper based sheets, not the environment.
 

Evan Gillette

New Member
If you still have issues after implementing your new setup I would add those tacky floormats at the entrance (you can get them from any cleanroom supply company. Honestly with that setup you are going to be miles ahead of most shops.
 

Solventinkjet

DIY Printer Fixing Guide
As a tech I have seen my fair share of shops. The cleanest shop I ever saw was In Las Vegas and the guy was extremely proud of the way he set the shop up. He could tell me how the air in the room was refreshed completely every 15 minutes, the exact rating of filters he used etc. That place was spotless and his printers ran for over 10 years before he upgraded. It helped that he was just as much of a perfectionist with the printer maintenance though. Half the time when I go on a service call it's in a dingy garage or basement and my call involves a shop vac to blow out the cat hair and dust! Definitely a spectrum out there.
 

ColorCrest

All around shop helper.
We will be installing (x2) air filtration units that will cycle the air in the room every 23minutes on the low setting. One will be directly above the Esko and the 2nd will be in the corner over by the printers to try and pull as much out of those areas as possible.

I recommend you try to push to the floor. If you're looking for flawless acrylic face mounts, carpet (indoor/outdoor is fine) the mount/lam area which will trap particles that you can vacuum. Contaminates are heavier than air including printer fumes. You're looking for positive air pressure, not negative. Typical HVAC provides positive pressure.
 
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