Leister Hemtek ST Updates

[brycesteiner]

In the chit chat forum there was is a thread about the Leister Hemtek ST, but there isn't much going on there and so I'm asking for an update here.

The Leister Hemtek ST is a banner welder that was introduced earlier this year and I was wondering, since several of you have had for a few months, what your thoughts are on it.

So what's the results? Are the welds holding? How difficult is it to put together 2- 4' banners to make one 8' banner?

I'm looking at getting one of these as I'm tired of all the tape and time that it takes to do these. We've been doing so many lately and I know it's going to continue and this seems to be a viable options with less waste.
thanks!

 

[Brandon708]

I've had one for a few weeks and look forward to using it every time. It works great and produces nice welds. It gets some getting use to though. The longest banner I've done with it is a 3'x32' banner. It even welds mesh banners very nicely. Just have to dial down the heat, speed and fan from the usual setting I have for 13 oz banner material. Id recommend the welder.

I am selling my Royal Sovereign RBW-1500s banner welder that is only a year old. Works great too. PM me if your interested.

 

[brycesteiner]

I've had one for a few weeks and look forward to using it every time. It works great and produces nice welds. It gets some getting use to though. The longest banner I've done with it is a 3'x32' banner. It even welds mesh banners very nicely. Just have to dial down the heat, speed and fan from the usual setting I have for 13 oz banner material. Id recommend the welder.

I am selling my Royal Sovereign RBW-1500s banner welder that is only a year old. Works great too. PM me if your interested.

That's great to hear. Is there a way to do a 2 side banner (ours are 2 banners put together front and back).

 

[Haw]

Greetings!

Any tips when and why you need to adjust (higher or lower) the speed, temp, and fan?

 

[TomNJ]

I've had one for a few weeks and look forward to using it every time. It works great and produces nice welds. It gets some getting use to though. The longest banner I've done with it is a 3'x32' banner. It even welds mesh banners very nicely. Just have to dial down the heat, speed and fan from the usual setting I have for 13 oz banner material. Id recommend the welder.

I am selling my Royal Sovereign RBW-1500s banner welder that is only a year old. Works great too. PM me if your interested.

How is it going with your Hemtek ST? Considering purchasing one. Miller T2 is too expensive for basically the same machine. Eliminated the RS RBW-1500S.

 

[Christian @ 2CT Media]

We are selling ours, we are having too many issues with having to realign it every time we use it... we are also having issues with the heat setting being wrong. of course there is no techs that can come adjust it in the shop so we gave up.

 

[TomNJ]

That sucks. Not the feedback I was hoping for. What are you going to try next?

 

[Christian @ 2CT Media]

We are going back to sewing.

 

[brycesteiner]

Update:
We did end up getting the Hemtek ST, and We love it. It has made finishing banners so much faster. A set of banners that would normally have taken a day and a half to finish, can now be completed in 2 hours.
The heat, speed, and fan settings can be a bit tricky, but if you just fiddle around with it and go through some scrap you'll find a setting that works.
The guide and the welding nozzle can be a turd to get aligned, but if you follow Leister's youtube tutorials, it is fairly simple. Though, if you have some banners that tug or pull as you are welding, it can cause them to come out of alignment. We also had to modify our work table to optimize how it operates, but that was fairly simple.
All in all, it was definitely worth it and has been a great improvement to our shop.

 

[Christian @ 2CT Media]

Update:
We did end up getting the Hemtek ST, and We love it. It has made finishing banners so much faster. A set of banners that would normally have taken a day and a half to finish, can now be completed in 2 hours.
The heat, speed, and fan settings can be a bit tricky, but if you just fiddle around with it and go through some scrap you'll find a setting that works.
The guide and the welding nozzle can be a turd to get aligned, but if you follow Leister's youtube tutorials, it is fairly simple. Though, if you have some banners that tug or pull as you are welding, it can cause them to come out of alignment. We also had to modify our work table to optimize how it operates, but that was fairly simple.
All in all, it was definitely worth it and has been a great improvement to our shop.

Can you share what you did to get it to work. We have been trying for a year now to get consistency.

 

[TomNJ]

I'm glad to hear a positive experience. The Leister rep is coming to my shop on Monday for a demo. I hope it goes well. I was looking forward to purchasing the machine.

 

[brycesteiner]

Can you share what you did to get it to work. We have been trying for a year now to get consistency.

There is no doubt the settings can be tricky.

Questions:
1. Are you having problems with the welds holding?
2. Are the banners getting "waves" next to the welds?
3. Do the welds look good and consistent or are they starting and/or ending badly?
4. Is your table big enough? If it's not big enough or if you don't have a place for the material to drop it is much hard to get gravity to work with you. We have our Leister at the end of the table with a half cut banner shipping tube at the end so it will roll off (and back up if up pull it) without catching or scratching.
5. Is the banner catching as it's going through the guide? That's an angle adjustment. If you get it adjusted, is it moving as your doing it? If you're not welding at the end of the table, this could cause that because your banner is not moving out as fast as it's going in. It could also be you're not tightening it enough. Our we really had to tork down to make it stay. Before you do that just make sure you are aligned. Do you have a square to make sure you're at a perfect 90? Don't just view it.

Google this: "setting up leister hemtek banner welder" and you will find youtube videos that are very helpful.

We modified our table and also put a set of rollers at the end so we can just place a roll of banner after it's printed and it will unroll as we weld.
We have a take up person catching the welded banner as it comes out. This is where our biggest issue lies (but can be overcome). The ink on the banner (eco-solvent) melts as it goes through the welder and will get offset if it's rolled back up before it has set again. The person will hold on to the welded banner as it comes out and about 6-8 feet away will start rolling it back up just to give it time to set again. It still can cause problems but I want it rolled back up so we can run the whole amount back in again to get the other side.
Smaller banners such as 6-8' in length are really not an issue. It's only when they are in long lengths (sometimes 10 banners all at once).

There are times that we still tape manually (double sided) but I try and stay away from them. The Hemtek has made finishing a banner to just a couple minutes vs 1/2 hour with banner tape.

 

[brycesteiner]

I have been running different tests on the machine. There really is no one setting. I found that by adjusting the settings we can turn it up to full speed. Before we were doing about half speed and having the fans higher. The problem with that was we would get a some wave around the seam from some distortion. Going faster (10) and turning down the fan (2.5 max) (heat 9) has nearly eliminated the wave distortion that we were seeing before.

You may not be able to go full speed because it really is fast, but it is an option. If go slower turn the heat down. I would still keep the fan down too. The fan turned up you may want to wear gloves as the heat can come back and burn you. If the fans are on low I don't even hardly notice the heat.

 

[TomNJ]

We wound purchasing the Leister Hemtek ST and couldn't be happier. It does have a learning curve and you absolutely need to get the alignment gauge. Practice, practice, practice and you'll get great hems.

 

[brycesteiner]

We wound purchasing the Leister Hemtek ST and couldn't be happier. It does have a learning curve and you absolutely need to get the alignment gauge. Practice, practice, practice and you'll get great hems.

That's great to hear!
We have built several things to help make these work very well, such as a double roller system and moved it closer so the distance isn't so long to the welder. We've been tempted to put some kind of air in the table (like a air hockey table) to reduce friction but some of these things we have done have already helped.
If the end of the banner likes to have the weld tail off I have found that holding down the banner to the table right at the and and letting the wheel turn the banner will stop it from tailing off.

 

[Gregory GME/W2T]

In the chit chat forum there was is a thread about the Leister Hemtek ST, but there isn't much going on there and so I'm asking for an update here.

The Leister Hemtek ST is a banner welder that was introduced earlier this year and I was wondering, since several of you have had for a few months, what your thoughts are on it.

So what's the results? Are the welds holding? How difficult is it to put together 2- 4' banners to make one 8' banner?

I'm looking at getting one of these as I'm tired of all the tape and time that it takes to do these. We've been doing so many lately and I know it's going to continue and this seems to be a viable options with less waste.
thanks!

We bought one after SGIA to handle the over flow from our 2 miller 25' welders (also have 3 sewing machines for the old school customers) Took some getting use to in banner finishing and use it on our smaller banners under 10' well worth the money for us just for the peace of mind that we can put more hours in if needed to meet our customers dead lines.

 

[kalvix]

I'm curious as to the table you are using for the welder. We just bought one and have attached it to the sewing table temporarily until we build one. We were thinking of a 10'x3' with a glass top or laminate top to help slide. The glas wpuld be good also for someof pur fabric hot knife.

Bryce, what type of table do you guys use?

 

[brycesteiner]

I'm curious as to the table you are using for the welder. We just bought one and have attached it to the sewing table temporarily until we build one. We were thinking of a 10'x3' with a glass top or laminate top to help slide. The glas wpuld be good also for someof pur fabric hot knife.

Bryce, what type of table do you guys use?

We built our own table 5x9' and then put a self healing mat on top. We made a portable roller system that sits about 2 feet from the welder on the table that then lets rolled up banner easily unroll and feed into the welder. We then cut up a tube that housed the banner material for shipping and put it at the end of the table next to the welder so that it could roll off the table nicely or be pulled back up without it scratching the banner.
It works great but it can become a hassle on the 25' banners having to roll it back up after it unrolled but I think it still works better and faster than trying to drag it across the table - too much friction to keep the wide banners slowing smoothly.
I can post a picture if I can remember when I get back to the shop.

 

[VISCOM]

We built our own table 5x9' and then put a self healing mat on top. We made a portable roller system that sits about 2 feet from the welder on the table that then lets rolled up banner easily unroll and feed into the welder. We then cut up a tube that housed the banner material for shipping and put it at the end of the table next to the welder so that it could roll off the table nicely or be pulled back up without it scratching the banner.
It works great but it can become a hassle on the 25' banners having to roll it back up after it unrolled but I think it still works better and faster than trying to drag it across the table - too much friction to keep the wide banners slowing smoothly.
I can post a picture if I can remember when I get back to the shop.

Please Post pictures of your table I would like to see your setup thanks

 

[brycesteiner]

The roller system is sitting on the table in this picture, but it is stored under the table when we are doing smaller banners or using the table for other sign work. The welder we just leave permanently attached to the side of the table. When we built the table, we made sure that it was the same height as our laminator so we can easily pull prints off after laminating, or easily run acm, alumalite, or any other signs right from the table.