[gmtully42]

Here is a topic to share, you're worst experience screen printing apparel. I hear some people telling stories and giving up but if you truly love screen printing these experiences only make you stronger. I'll start the show...
So I am doing a 3 color water-based job on royal blue tees. Up until the laying of the ink everything went really well. It got very tough lining up registration because I only placed a middle line of marks, my mistake. The ink, especially the opaque white base was drying in the screens faster than the normal plastisol. I was laying too thick a pass of ink which didn't properly cure and the ink would transfer to the next screen, which I was cleaning off with a rag. So, overall it was a stressfull job to complete but here is the kicker....
After we finished the back font print I went to take off the tape and vinyl I used to tape off the front logo on the same screen. As I pulled I realized I put this on the print side of my screen which then tore off the wet emulsion! - Idiot! Huge letdown to see the emulsion pull away but even worse as we try to salvage the screen my father, who was helping out, hands me Spray Mist not the Spray Cleaner to clean out the screen! I foolishly spray it on and realize there is now NO WAY of saving this screen! I wanted to scream but knew there was no use since I made so many mistakes. I then proceeded to speedily make a new screen in 5 & 1/2 hours and get the product out the door.
This was the best learning experience I could have had and am now laughing at it and cannot wait for the next WB job to use this as a lesson.

 

[JeridHill]

I don't know if I have a worst story other than screen's popping in the middle of large jobs, etc. Or letting the flash unit hover over a nylon jacket for a few too seconds and ruining the jackets etc.

All that being said, if you are using water based inks, I'm not sure if you are doing this or not, but you need to use an emulsion designated for water based inks so it doesn't breakdown from the water. ***Disclaimer*** This side note is not meant to deter from your thread.

 

[ScreenFoo]

It's secondhand--the worst story I've ever heard was about a spring on a manual breaking, and the end hitting a fluorescent tube and breaking it--that's not amazingly rare (it's happened here before,) the kicker is that this tube happened to be over an auto that was running at the time...
That's gotta hurt.

 

[nypdofficer1]

Great attitude Greg. It shows that you love what you do and nothing will deter you. Anything worth doing will never be easy, if it were easy then it wouldn't be worth it. Keep it up and thanks for sharing your story.

 

[Smalzstein]

I've heard about a guy who didn't attached properly a pallet on an servo index auto. It slingshot directly to another auto almost breaking it in half

 

[gmtully42]

Ya, Jerid I knew I was risking it but since the order was only for 15 tees I could get away with it. Its more expensive to do the right thing short term but in the long run it will pay off to use the proper materials.

 

[ironhog]

I was doing a job late one night. Simple three color front, two color back. It was about 1 am and I was wearing an apron in an attempt to keep clean. One pocket had a utility knife, another the block out pen. The center, my cell phone. I had gotten some ink on it when setting up the back screens and decided to run it through the dryer. Got everything out except the phone. Heard a thunk when it hit the box at the end of the dryer and thought what was that....Note to self, do not put new phone in apron...

 

[Zenergy]

I normally print on dark shirts, and I cure with a flash dryer. I just did a 90 shirt job on light colored shirts, and I thought everything was going great. Since we print in my garage, the door is usually open, and we had a bug light on to keep from getting swarmed.

Valuable lesson time: scorching is almost impossible to spot under a bug light. Since 95% of our orders are on dark shirts, it's not something I usually watch out for, and everything was looking fine under the light. Ruined 40 shirts out of 90, including a bunch of 3x and 5x shirts. That gets really expensive really quick. I'd say I lost money on the job, but I prefer to think of it as an investment in my screen printing education; it's less painful that way.

 

[nypdofficer1]

Ouch Zenergy, that is an expensive lesson. Lol. I have a question for you though. If you were already printing why were you still using your yellow bug lights. Those lights are only for when your exposing your screen.
Glad you have a good attitude about the whole thing. Good luck to you!

 

[Flagrant-T]

My worst experience in screen printing happened about a year ago. One of my good friends is in a band. He had a couple dozen black shirts that he wanted their logo on, and he wanted to learn about screen printing. I told him to bring over some beer and we’d burn a screen and I’d show him how to print them. He brought over warm Busch Light. Worst screen printing experience ever.

 

[JeridHill]

I was talking to someone over the weekend and remembered one horror story.....

It was very late at night and I was printing a good sized job for someone (on these forums ). He called me and I talked to him on the phone for a few minutes. I was sitting at my desk and after I hung up got distracted, (most likely from these forums). After a short while, I smelled something hot and looked out of my office. From the back room, I could see billows of black smoke rolling through my double doors. I went into my print room and I forgot to rotate the flash off of my platen. I was running an auto with a large platen with rubber as my base, but wood underneath. There were flames shooting straight up to the ceiling, engulfing my BBC flash unit. I put it out with an extinguisher. Thankfully I had 1 hour rating ceiling tile. I had a large bay door I opened and for hours pointed fans out of the door trying to get rid of the smoke. I was able to use an ionizer and got the smell out, but it was a mess.

That happened one time and never again! Funny thing is, the BBC flash unit, still worked to the day I sold all of my equipment!