Silk Screening Platen

[jim_vv]

Greetings from Central Kentucky

A sign maker that I cut for brought me a platen from his silk screening turntable. It measures 16” x 19” and appears to be made from ¾” MDF with a Melamine type laminate on it. He would like me to make some replacement platens from a better material. Aluminum would be nice, but would be pricey. Do you think ¾” MDO would be a good solution? I have not touched MDO before so I do not know if it is smooth enough. The material needs to be smooth, flat, and hold screws well. It also has to be able to handle heat from his flash drier. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Kind regards,

JIM

[khaos]

AL would be pretty nice. I believe that your material has to be tolerant of a good heat value too...

[chiloquinruss]

Joe is right about the heat part. Most screen printers use a 'flash' unit that is used to heat the material to help fuse the ink. The substrate must be able to take that heat/cool cycle over and over and not warp. On our plattens we used a material that was laminated fiberglass panels with the melamine top surface. The hold downs were studs embedded within the platten. I never made one, I just ordered extras from the manufacturer. :) Russ

[signsbyjay]

I don't think Aluminum would be that good of material for this application.
Spot dryers get very warm, the aluminum would retain that heat causing the shirts to singe or the fingers burned as they move the platen from one position to the next. The original material is used by the printer manufacturers to solve these problems. The same material is available at the big box stores as shelving and is probably your best bet.

Jay

[michael_schwartz]

If you end up going with aluminum and you haven't already I would go to a metal supplier, and look for an off cut.

The prices you see online are sometimes 4-5 times higher. Sometimes even more.

I built a small project from steel tubing. The prices I got online would have been about $200.00 + shipping. I ended up getting the material for about $40.00. The place probably totaled 100k square feet, full of enough metal to build absolutely anything. There were gantry cranes everywhere.