Long Drying Time (was Re: Course Printers)
Timothy Allen
> The BAOC is investigating the purchase of a course printer. We have
> communicated with Ed Scott of DVOA who is very enthusiastic about their five
> Mulle 3 printers from Ingemansson in Sweden. Unfortunately they cost about
> $750 plus shipping. We are interested in learning about what types of
> course printers other clubs use. We have been using a "sticky board" printer
> with a water based ink. The major problem we have is the extraordinarily
> long drying time (up to 24 hours) because many of our maps have large amounts
> of yellow and green on them, which makes adherence of the ink difficult. As
> a consequence, to print up a set of maps requires a warehouse to spread them
> out to dry them.
Long time ago when I was doing silk screening in a small office space, we
used to place our wet stock into large Kodak film boxes. The boxes, as I
recall, were probably at least 18"x24"x0.75", heavy cardboard
construction, and would stack quite high if you turned each lid upside
down and rotated it slightly when stacking it on top of its box bottom.
Each box bottom and lid would provide space to lay in the wet stock to
dry, and there would be plenty of open space for ventilation. Given
enough boxes, we could easily set out 200-400 8.5"x11" sheets on a 4'x8'
table. In between printing runs, the boxes were reassembled and stacked
on the table.
Should you decide to use this method, your problem, of course, will be to
get enough old empty film boxes for free.
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Disclaimer: these words are not an official position of my employer.