If you're a regular reader of this column, you'know where I stand on the issue of understencil cleaning. For those new to this space, let me give you the two-second brief: Understencil cleaning is a necessary evil, a process fix that should not be required if all printing inputs are spot-on. Pausing every 10 (or fewer) prints to clean the stencil is a huge overhead in time and consumables costs. (You have to feed your cleaner a lot of fabric and solvents or it isn't happy.) Sadly, most printing inputs are not perfect, and just about everyone cleans. Given this unfortunate reality, we must make the best of the understencil cleaning process. I've previ-ously discussed the use of high-quality chemistries and fabrics in combination with ultra-fast understen-cil cleaning systems to remedy some of the defects and throughput overhead cleaning can induce.
展开▼
