Hey there, I am very new to Newman frames, I just got some in the mail today. I'm trying to remove the mesh from one, and the locking strips seem to be overly difficult to remove. I manage to pull one strip out with a pair of needle-nosed pliers, but the other three won't budge. Is there a trick to doing this? Should they be this difficult? The frame looks like it hasn't had the mesh changed for quite a while. Thanks!
I was wondering that myself. Also, mine are used and have ink dried in the strips which makes it very difficult to remove the strips. Any tricks to unlock the dried ink and strips?
Geez. Seems like there shouldn't be ink in there either... When you guys get these things re-meshed and re-stretched, take better care of them than the previous owner...
This has never happened to us, ink in the strips, because the area where the strips are is away from the print area (so I guess I wonder how ink got in them in the first place). If you get ink in yours by chance, use your screen tape and tape over them first to avoid this in the future... If you get ink in them, just make sure to clean them real well once you are done with them if they are archived, or if you reclaim them, do it them.
I would set the screen down flat and pour or spray some ink cleaner, whatever kind you use, in the grooves and let it sit for a while, just let that ink get saturated and loosen up a bit. If you've released the tension on the screen, they should come out pretty easily, especially if that ink is saturated or broken down a little with a solvent...
I managed to get mine out pretty easily after I figured out what I was doing. I had the rollers loose enough to roll them by hand, but they were still kind of tight, and I found that I could release the bolts a little more, and pop the rollers out so they would freely, and that made it easier. Also, for some reason, tearing off as much of the mesh and I could made the strips slide out better. Thanks for the help!
Welcome to the club. Nearly all of the newmans I've purchased
used had previous owners that loved to use that white Polyken
tape that's worse than duct tape. A couple points to note:
1. Do like Dan said and soak the channels in some sort of ink
remover or if they've got tape residue, lacquer thinner.
2. Make sure that any remaining mesh isn't stuck to the roller
bar, you might have to pull it up and down.
3. Sometimes a piece of mesh will get wedged in the channel,
making removal of the locking strip nearly impossible. Get the
mesh out first.
4. Watch those needle-nose. Probably best not to use them,
as it's easy to damage the locking strip and/or channel.
The art of removing stuck newman strips is something that comes
over time, but gets easier. Trust me.
Removing Newman Locking Strips 
