ink issues

[Leadfoot]

Interesting,
I have a single 43T screen and waterbased ink.
Should I have started with plastisol please?

Everything Jonathan is saying is right on...here is what I did and am currently doing. First of all, I screen print at home in our spare bedroom with a table top 4 color/1 station unit. I started out with waterbased inks and a heat gun...worked great for a while but what I found was I wanted to do much more, turn it into a business, so I wanted more stock ink colors and not having to use a bunch of additives as you do for some waterbased inks. So I made the switch to plastisol inks. But with that I needed either a flash dryer or conveyor dryer to cure the ink...I did not have enough room for a conveyor so I got a good flash dryer...it is not ideal to use a flash dryer to fully cure shirts but to get started until I can have proper space it definitely does the job! I will use my heat gun to "flash" cure if I am doing multiple colors since my flash dryer is away from the press to cure the shirts. I am just making due with what I have until I can have enough money built up to either rent a small space or build something in the back yard.

Regarding waterbased vs plastisol, it really comes down to what you can do curing wise and personal preference. If you can get something for proper curing I say go for plastisol...waterbased is nice because it cleans up easy but it does tend to dry fast. However, I had great success with Ryonet's Enviroline which are Matsui waterbased inks...they did not dry super fast when sitting for a while...still will dry just not really quick as others do and they always gave a beautiful print. I cannot say anything bad about them just decided that plastisol was the way I needed to go.

Hope this helps.

[ndree]

Thanks Jonathan for the explanation,
Wasn't too happy about working with water based inks, clogging every single time since our weather is tropic, can't believe super fast dry and clog the mesh instantly. But since the flash cure unit is a bit expensive, will try to experiment with the water based ink, hopefully to find more solution from this forum about my printing issues.

And, am really happy about your explanation about dehazing.

do you have any tips on removing plastic -tape?
i was using the light brown tape to cover the rest of the un-coated stencil and it stick just there in the mesh.
the adhesive stays in the mesh and can't be removed while i'm trying to reclaim the screen.

Thank you.

[ApeShirt]

ndree,

It's best to use block out tape. It has low residue so it peels cleanly off the screen. It's tacky enough but not too tacky. Plus the adhesive holds up to screen printing solvents pretty well.

[ppdlao]

Jon thnks for everything you´ve been doing about the printing job teaching, I was able to learn this job 50% because of your videos, you´re the best, I just joined your forum at www.catspit... cause I had a problem yesterday printin 18 t shirts of the Flash Gordon Heroe logo in the chest of a red colored t shirt, It took me 25mins to print each one, and I got tired and almost crazy, I print and flash cure with a heat gun, and my wood palet wasgetting folded it´s shape cause of the heat! so it took me alot of time with a fan to get it cooled =( I just started printing 3 months ago, I feel ready now to get into discharge paints with pigments like white or yellow which I think would helped me out with this job, besides I aplied 3 printed of each paint (white and yellow) and at the end
the tshirt had like a thick surface of white paint in its interior, you know what i mean? and I got really sad because I proposed a quality job for this persons, Im affraid what are they gonna tellme today that I´m delivering this job =(
I´m from Villahermosa, a state in the South of Mexico, I used a 90 mesh for the yellow, a 90 for the black and a 64 for the white, 65-70 squeeges, this white it´s named "Flash White" here, It seems to be just for printing white background and then print other colors, but the seller told me i coul use flash and cure to obtein a really "clean" white over a dark colored t shirt too, so I applied 3 times this white, with pre heating each time with 30secs, 44secs and 57 secs respectively, i do it carefully but still having that thick surface of ink in the inside of the t shirt.

I printed with the same flash white big white letters over a black t shirt and got excellent job, but printing 2 or 3 colors among this ink gives me problems.


p.d. I know soon I will master my technique, I´m anxious to see you loading a video whre yo print a 3 or 4 color logo on a dark color t shirt, or a C,M,Y,K printing on a dark t shirt too! my best wishes for you, by the way a week ago just printed 120 t shirts with your pulling stroke technique and felt so good! nothing hurted the day after, please its there a way you could explain more detalied the printing angle for the squeege!? more grafic? maybe with ilustrations? would be very helpful

[Catspit Productions]

Thanks, I’m happy to be of assistance to you. Thanks for your support. I appreciate your joining the forum and posting questions here.

First off I would suggest using at least a flash cure unit to work on press that will speed your printing time up a lot even if you only have a single station press. A heat gun is slow and inconsistent. Discharge might take you linger with a heat gun. Having the right tools for the job will not only speed things up but it will make it easier to print better prints easier.

Overheating the pallets will not only warp them but it can cause ink to begin to clog the screen if they get too hot. I would recommend replacing your pallet if it is not flat and parallel to the screens.

Here is a video with 3 colors printed on a white under base:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cbd5xtLUqZY

I’m not sure if I will do a CMYK video on a manual press but I will be doing some halftone videos eventually.

I’m happy you like my flood and stroke method. The angle of the squeegee is pretty simple. The harsher the angel the less ink will be printed. As you move the squeegee in a more 80 degree angle to the screen more ink will be printed. That’s with the method I use in this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U03j0R-jEvs

It would be the opposite if you push flood and pull stroke for the squeegee angle, follow? Maybe we’ll have to do a video on that in the future.

Good luck, I hope the job worked out for you well.

[ppdlao]

you´re right, discharge inks are water base inks and here we have temperatures like 33°C-43°C like 90% of the year, plus an humidity in the weather of 90% or more, so I quited aplying water based inks like on May of this year because I only achieved to print just the firt t shirt before the mesh got clogged, now I know for sure a heat gun will not work well jejeje

I´ve already seen the video you just posted me and another one (now I listened to it very carefully) when you explain printing with flash hit flash one color will work but with 2 or 3 colors you recomended a white under base, there is my problem, I need something like that, cause you did like 2 times the flood and stroke and the white base is fully opaque! thats my problem, my white isn´t opaque enought so I takes me 3 hitting & flashing to obtain that kind of opaque white, at this point it is cool, but adding more colors to that it turns it into a really messy job, I´ll make tomorrow (Monday) a pair of calls to the capital (México, D.F.) to search a really good white underbase, I really need it, and I´m really convinced now about getting a flash cure unit, because I know that kind of work (like the flash gordon printing job) shouldn´t be a nightmare to me like it was. In fact I ruinned one t shirt of those at the heat press when I took the t shirt out of it, it got stuck and It bounced and the heat print flipped over its self and then you know what happend, you know! well We delivered that job last Friday in the afternoon and the bachelor party (thats what the t shirts were for) was that very night so, I didn´t have a replacement t shirt on that size =(, the client took it so calm and we offered 2 t shirts more with the same logo for the next week in replacement, that brings me a question that I´ll make in the next post, cause this already look like a whole newpaper right now! jajaja

I took a look at my pallet a minutes ago, and looks better, like it recovered it´s original flat shape, but took a 40 cms squeegee and put it cross on it and realize it´s not flat at all, I´ll take care of that soon too.

About the C, M, Y, K printing I´m confused, like if you want to print a colored photo you make on Corel draw (for ex) a color separation of the color channels and print 4 positives (C, M, Y, K) ?? right? could you print that job on a manual press? or you also recomend that for only mechanical press? I´m just a rookie, I like this a lot, and I´m just getting over a bussines bankrupty (I´ll tell you eventually more a bout this later) and got very enthusiastic about textile printing, so far I´ve been doing it well economically talking and I don´t feel it like a Job cause I really enjoy it so much, but pinting colored things is like a dream to me, simple because how to center the colors in the press, etc, etc so please tell us about it.

and with the half tones I can´t print them on any print, because for default the places where I got the positives doesn´t print them(halftones) I think is something about the resolution cause the printers are all like brand new models or something, well that´s what I´ve been told about it, I don´t know if maybe there´s a program like a plugin to help with it(pinting the shadows and details like half tones out of any printer)? If so, tell us what programs could they be?
What I do is I come to a place where they especialize in printing films, but don´t do it often cause of the cost, A4= $2 dlls for ex so It turns to be very expensive to achieve a job(talking about 12, 20 or 30 t shirts for ex, when you need 2 or 3 colors)

I´ve tried how to make a photo for example of the Alex Lion of madagascar and tried to turn it into 3 colors in photoshop but I just simply couldn´t, for example another boy is asking me about to printing the bird on fire logo of the "hunger games" movie, I can´t do that, I tried too on Ps to make it only a 3 color image of that and couldn´t neither I tought I could do it with a white base, then yellow then red but I realize I couldn´t(I only have a 3 stations 1 palet table press for now) so I need to get the jobs done in only 3 meshes for now(I´m waiting to save some extra $$ to buy a 4-1 but still being a table press because of the space), one day I think on past May I did something for the SEAT (cars dealers) here, they were only 8 t shirts for the New 2013 SEAT Ibiza car presentation, and I managed to print 7 colors with only 3 meshes!! jajaja I suffered so much that day! It felt like faceing a bull in a "Pamplonada" in spain every time I got to start printing the next t shirt jajaja, obviously all the colors didn´t "touch" or were nearly close to each other how ever it was difficult to me, how can we show you that kind of work, also any suggestions on printed jobs we can show you, could be of great help.

thanks for your advices Jon!

p.d. If there´s an article on you website that explain some or whole of the themes I exposed, please forgive me for not reading it before I started asking and asking jejejeje .... enjoy this newspaper and enjoy the rest of the weekend!

[ppdlao]

Hi Jon! well the question I was telling you is the next:

1)What about printing wet on wet, first discharge white(which is water base) then another ink color (supossing it´s yellow plastisol) then black (plastisol like too) and then take out the t shirt off the palet, then put it into the heat press and trying to cure it(the yellow will be printed over the discharge white area in order to have a full colored yellow over a red fabric) it´s this right or wrong?

2)Another question would be: Because we use a heat press we tend to "rest" all the t shirts on a table with Newspaper sheets among them until we finish all the t shirts and then proceed to cure them, 1.- because of the electrical bill, 2.- because I´ve been taught of the Person who taught me, that it´s fine and 3.- I´ve been told I was able to do this as good as for plastisol as for water base inks. What do you think?

About the first question: Will the "white base discharge" turn the red fabric white like it meant to and still make the yellow printed on it(first white discharge, then I´ll print yellow plastisol like ink) look fine? or after printing the discharge white you will need to flash and cure it and then apply the other colors in order to meake them look colorful? I know there are many discharge pigmented colors but for now I only bought the white discharge (I only can buy the discharge inks only by shipping and handling and takes 2-3 days for delivering plus I have to order like $70 dlls in products to make it the shipping worth it)

Well it´s all for now Jon, I´m very glad I can have this conversations with you I really apreciate them, like you don´t have idea! Thanks as always!

[Catspit Productions]

Yeah, I’d probably do CMYK on an automatic if I could do that. Right now I can because I have a buddy with a small auto shop in town and sometimes we work together. You can do CMYK on a manual but you will have to be very consistent printing each color for each shirt to look the same. Simply printing more yellow in on one shirt makes that shirt more yellow in tone compared to the rest, follow? So it is harder on a manual press to make consistent CMYK prints.

For printing halftones including CMYK serrations, you will need RIP software.

http://www.catspitproductionsllc.com/ou ... gfilm.html

AccuRIP seems to be the most popular but you need to research this to see what is best for your printer and situation.

Also I only print 12 shirts for each color the customer wants to print. A 3 color print job would require a 36 piece minimum. Otherwise the labor is not really worth the money I would make otherwise. You have to remember the more time you spend on labor for making the shirts the less you make per hour.

Learning how to create artwork is a completely different part of the process which requires a lot of work to learn. The way you set up your artwork on press can make or break the print job. Know what I mean? I use Illustrator for creating most all of my art. Then I have a Photoshop add on to do some simple color seps for high resolution JPEGs and TIFFs. But I started printing before I started learning artwork so I am still learning how to create artwork and currently use other artists to create art or even output film when I need it.

Artwork is complicated and complex designs can be difficult to set up for screen printing when you are new to screen printing. The truth is the more you learn about screen printing the more you will understand what you need in your artwork to print a quality job with ease.


“1)What about printing wet on wet, first discharge white(which is water base) then another ink color (supposing it´s yellow plastisol) then black (plastisol like too) and then take out the t shirt off the pallet, then put it into the heat press and trying to cure it(the yellow will be printed over the discharge white area in order to have a full colored yellow over a red fabric) it´s this right or wrong?”

- I have never done what you are proposing here but i can tell you that you need to fully discharge the discharge base before printing anything on top. What happens after you print other inks or prints on top and then heat press is unknown to me. I have never used a heat press to do a final cure but I think I may have to try it and do a video about it so I can answer questions like this definitively.

“2) Another question would be: Because we use a heat press we tend to "rest" all the t shirts on a table with Newspaper sheets among them until we finish all the t shirts and then proceed to cure them, 1.- because of the electrical bill, 2.- because I´ve been taught of the Person who taught me, that it´s fine and 3.- I´ve been told I was able to do this as good as for plastisol as for water base inks. What do you think?”

- As long as the prints are dry to the touch and are not getting ruined then I see no problem there.

You’re welcome my friend and good luck!

[ppdlao]

I got that of the C,M,Y,K printing, it´s about the look quality, I think you´re right about it, I´ll take a look at the AccuRIP, and I think I would like to see videos with heat press curing! It will help us to find out what about a heat press can and can´t do about the screen printing job, because here in México it´s like more common to cure our printing jobs with a heat press I think( because of the belt dryer units cost and space) not everyone can afford a belt dryer, a Video of that will answer those questions for sure. Maybe for 1 or 2 colors is fine, or maybe it doesn´t work for multiple ink prints like when trying to print a white under base and then other colors.

Jajaja maybe I´m crazy for proposing that about the wet on wet discharge and then aplying other color over the discharge ink area and then curing it jajaja but I see you got curious about it too, we need to experiment it!! jajajaja

thnks as always four sharing and answering Jon! Have a nice week!

[Catspit Productions]

Yeah, I’ll probably do a video on using a heat press to cure a 1 color print. I’m not sure if I will have a multi-color job that I can use in a video to test that. And I don’t have the time right now to set up a multi-color on a white under base just to do a video. But when I get a chance in the future I’ll do it. But for now we may only test a 1 color cure with the heat press.

As far as the discharge thing goes you can do that but the discharge has to be cured first otherwise it will affect the color of whatever you print on top when you cure it.

It’s my pleasure to help out, thanks for posting on the forum!