Lint-free rags?

So I was cleaning my rollers today with “lint-free” cotton rags, and noticed bits of cotton all over the rollers when I was done. Does anyone know where I can get a big roll of those lint-free rags they make?

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Good luck finding lint free rags! After 35 years in the trade, I have never found any. Several people will direct you to another product but, they don’t exist, unless they say saran wrap on the box. The best fix I know of is to, wet the rags you have with more of an excess of the wash to keep the lint off the rollers. Using the wash sparingly sometimes generates lint. Good luck.

In our shop we use a shoptowel called Nubtex which is sort of a heavy duty industrially made shop cloth.
I find them to be quite durable for alot of roller wiping and i dont see much lint at all. But i can’t call them completely lint free.
I agree that being genourous with your roller wash helps keep the wiping smooth, and the drag (which typically causes lint) to a minimum.
They may cost more than what your using, but they work pretty well.
Good luck.

Is this the shop cloth you were talking about? I need to see about some better rags too.

I use the white boxed rags from Home Deopt. Yes they have lint but once your rollers are clean take a new rag from the box and saturate it with your roller wash or Keroscene and quickly wipe the rollers down. You will get a ton less particles transfered to your rollers.

I always have problems like this when the rags is getting dry. They transfer the particles because they are dragging on the rollers.

I have lint free rags I use to wipe down the glass on our vacuum frame at the shop. They came from Modern Solutions. They’re meant for glass, not press washing inked rollers so I don’t know how they’d hold up to that.

I just use the red cloth shop rags our services brings. I really didn’t notice any lint left behind. I know the letterpress guys have a bunch of pieces of old sheets laying around they use. I think that’s for wiping the galley off though.

Updated. A trick many flexographic printers use in cleaning their soft photopolymer flexo plates, is to put the rag in an old piece of pantyhose. It keeps the lint in, but the liquid can still be absorbed by the rag. I have never tried this on letterpress rollers, and because of this I would watch to make sure that the pantyhose doesn’t scratch or otherwise harm the rollers. Letterpress rollers are softer (i.e. lower durometer) than flexo plates. But, hey, if it works, it’s an easy solution.

I went to Home Depot and bought a box of rags that are in the paint department, they were tshirt quality and seem to work fine, very little lint at all.

I buy surgical toweling and surgical sheeting rags from a rag supplier. The sheeting is a tight weave and useful for wiping printing surfaces with type or plate wash. The toweling is used for press cleaning (with mineral spirits or a commercial press wash). I buy them in different colors, white for the toweling. Helps me keep track of the solvent content.

If you use a water-miscible press solvent to clean your rollers (which is recommended by roller rewinders) you can add water to it which will help reduce the lint factor.

Gerald