National Clothesline

I have discussed in the past what I consider to be “illegal” touch-up. Illegal touch-ups are those that are caused either by a defect in the equipment or by an improperly trained (or defiant) employee.

Legal touch-ups are those

pressing defects that, due to the size or cut of the shirt, can not be properly pressed on the particular shirt unit.

Your quality control people still need to do the “illegal” touch-ups because you can not, of course, expect your customers to pay the price for the defects in your equipment or for your pressers ’ deficient skill set. But the two types of touch-ups absolutely need to be distinguished because the “legal” touch-ups are part of the business and there is nothing you can do about them with your current equipment. And different equipment (no matter what anyone tells you) will have a different group of “legal” shirt defects.

The “illegal” touch-ups must be remedied along with a remedy for the real problem — the reason for the pressing defect. For the next few months, we will look at cause and affect.

This is a particularly difficult column to write, which is a bit ironic because in person, it is very easy for me to identify defects and what causes them. In newsprint, cause and affect is more challenging because each type of equipment differs.

Defects that you get on a Sankosha, for example, won’t occur on an Ajax and vice versa.

The shirts pictured here this month were pressed on a Unipress VASY. That’s their “all-in-one” unit. I started this series with this unit because there are a great number of units like this out there. Not necessarily VASY ’s but similar units like the Unipress rotary CRD.

Also, Unipress bucks and heads have been identical among different models for many years. So if you don ’t have a VASY, fear not.

Much of the information here is applicable to many other units. I’ll try to cover other units in upcoming columns.

Problem 1: An impression over an area that has a seam or a fabric fold behind it and/or a “starburst” around a button.

Possible cause 1: Low air pressure.

Low air pressure is often the cause of numerous types of pressing defects. In fact, insufficient air pressure can simulate spent pads, spent steel mesh, defective, worn or broken mechanical components or operator errors. It is the most common cause of poor quality.

The good news is that this is the easiest of all problems to fix. In the photo here, notice the vertical imprint along the left side of the button. If air pressure is low, the steam chest does not apply enough squeeze pressure to press the shirt flat and smooth. The same goes for the area around the button.

Possible cause 2: The steel mesh needs to be replaced because it has become hard and flat and is no longer able to “give.”

Unfortunately, steel mesh doesn’t last as long as you wish it did. Although it is hard to give the exact lifespan of steel mesh, if it has been on your machine for a couple of years, it is causing you problems.

Possible cause 3: Your pads and covers need replacing.

The indicator that your pads are past their useful life is not holes in the bags or covers worn to shreds.

Quality is the only indicator. In fact, the bags and covers should still be seemingly (but not technically) useable when you need to discard them. When the pads no longer have any sponge to them you will get inferior quality. Replacing the pads is far cheaper than using more touch-up hours.

Problem 2: That ugly collar roll.

Possible cause 1: Improper use of a collar cone.

A collar cone is not a hanger dispenser, a cup holder or a place to pile on a bunch of shirts until you feel like buttoning and hanging shirts. Consider it to be a press station. The collar needs to be standing up properly and placed on a heated collar cone and allowed to cure for at least 30 seconds. If the collar does not touch the cone all the way around, it is just like not having one.

Possible cause 2: Collars are not being dried on the collar and cuff press for a long enough period of time.

The old triple heads used to dry collars quite a bit better than the new ones do. That is probably due to the size of the steam chests.

I believe that you need to dry collars and cuffs for 25 to 30 seconds and then cure them for another 30 seconds on a collar cone. These two procedures, used in tandem, will enhance your finished product more than any type of packaging.

Possible cause 3: Moisture retention is too high.

In other words, your shirts are too wet and, even if you squeeze the collars for 30 seconds and use a collar cone properly, all of the moisture has still not escaped. The dry part of the shirt will act as a wick, sucking the moisture from inside the shirt resulting in a moist collar. In the end, the collar will droop.

Problem 3: Rough dry areas on the sides of the shirts.

Assuming that the shirt is not wider than the buck, if the sides of the shirts are scrunched and unpressed, the problem can be a number of things. Some machines allow you to time the closing of the heads or vary the speed at which they close. In both cases we are talking about fractions of a second.

In the photo here, the heads have closed on the shirt before the bags could inflate. This is a delicate adjustment. If the bags fully inflated too early, the bags will distort the placement of the shirt on the buck, resulting in very poor quality.

The sequence on most machines is this: the head closes and just begins to touch the shirt, holding it in place; the bags inflate pulling the sides taut; and, finally the head squeezes.

All of this happens in about 1⁄100 of the time it takes to read that sentence. It is also possible that the bags are not inflating at all and this could be caused by a dozen different things, not the least of which is split bags.

On Ajax units, regulating the speed of the heads closing is simple. There is a red-handled valve behind the front steam chest on the operator side.

Adjust it so that the head closes smoothly and quietly and allows just enough time for the bags to inflate and thereby pull the sides of the shirt taunt but not so much that the bags distort the body of the shirt. It isn ’t difficult.

And speaking of speed adjustments, everything on your shirt unit should be adjusted to run smoothly and quietly. No banging allowed!

If anything bangs on your equipment, fixing it will prevent very hard to diagnose quality issues in the future. Banging equipment is a slow death. Every time there is a bang when the heads open (for instance), expensive, hard to replace chassis parts are wearing out, microscopic bit by microscopic bit. Sooner or later, quality will be adversely affected. Then the fixes will be far more complex than turning a valve.

Let’s play this game again next month.

“If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you always got.”