thickness Ink printings

[ppdlao]

Hi Jon, hi everybody, I need some advice about printing 2 colors(white & Orange) over dark garments. Don´t know if someone or somehow this topic is already talked about somewhere in the forum, but this is what´s happening to me, I couldn´t read something specifically about this, so I´ll aprecciate any advice or tip, or any suggestion with this problem. In this week I have a 2 colors printing Job, the designs is about a motorcycle club and it has to do something with the harley davidson logo and it´s colors too, so it´s about white and orange colors printed over black garment.

The thing is that no matter how I´m getting a very thick layer of the white ink over the garment, the inks are plastisols "Routland Maximum White) and Yellow and Scarlett Red (mixed to achieve the orange), the t shirt is 100% cotton and black color, so supposing I´m printing the white first, I´ll do flood & Stroke + Flash (with a heat gun), I´ll do this for 3 times in order to achieve a very white and opaque finish, ok that´s done, but the the problem I´m having is the next color, in this case the orange, because the thickness of the first white ink layer, somehow is causing that the orange could not pass through the mesh as it´s meant to, so the oreange ink it´s not getting deposited over the garment like it should do, I´m getting a very poor deposit of this second ink!.

There´s some points that I think could be causing this trouble:

1.- SQUEEGE: I´m thinking in using 60-70 durometer squeegue instead of a 70-75 durometer I´ve been using for applying the white ink in order to achieve a thinner white ink layer.

2.- My manual press it´s so cheap that it doesn´t offers me any "off contact", so I´m goning to use, literally, coins pasted on the woden frame in order to achieve some kind of "Off contact" between the mesh and the palet.

And 3.- I´m thinking in applying 1 layer of each ink at a time, for ex: 1 white, flash, 1 orange, flash, then the second white layer, flash, and then the second orange layer, flash, etc.

What do you think guys!? I´ll appreciate any comment, see you, greetings from México,

Thanks Jon for this forum, you know we all aprecciate your effort and your teaching! see you buddy


THNKS IN ADVANCE!


P.D. Didn´t know how to upload an image!

[Catspit Productions]

Normally on a job like this we could print it one of 2 ways. The first way would be like you are doing however with a thinner layer of white that still has the opacity you need for the parts of the design where the white is not an under base. That can be difficult and you want this under base layer of white to be smooth as well.

The second way to print something like this would be to separate it into 3 printers. The first would be the white under base which would be a thinner layer and very smooth using say a 125 mesh count. Then we would flash the under base, let it cool and proceed to print the orange. Now with the orange we would use maybe a 110 or higher depending on the thickness and opacity of the ink. If the ink has low opacity the white under base may affect the color. After the orange is printed and flashed we would then print a second white printer which would only over print the white under base in the areas where the white is part of the design. We call that a white highlight printer or a highlight white.

Generally speaking a lower durometer squeegee will deposit more ink. Now if you have no off contact then there is pretty much nowhere for the ink to shear as the squeegee passes and leave a good deposit. The very high buildup of white may be causing you to print less of the orange ink because there is no ink well sort to speak. The off contact combined with a thicker stencil on the substrate side will allow for more ink to be printed with a proper flood and stroke.

Therefore we can speculate this is either a case of low opacity orange ink or perhaps the off contact combined with an improper flood and stroke. You can use less pressure when printing the orange on the print stroke to deposit more ink.

You can upload a picture by using the “attachment” tab under the text box on the posting page when you are typing your post. It’s kind of obscure but you should see it if you look closely.

It’s my pleasure to provide the forum and it makes me very happy to see people using it. So you’re welcome and I appreciate the support

I hope that helps some.

[ppdlao]

thnks for the answer Jon, the highlight white method would not work for me at this time, it´s damn hard to make the screens to match perfectly, my manual press isn´t micro registration and the designs has a lot of detailed contours that would be imposible to achieve a good printing, and I would take cautions over the advices you just wrote to me, we´ll see, by the way, yes the orange is a HO ink, I haven´t print this design yet, but based in my experience with latest jobs is that the problem that I´ve been facing.

I´ll try to make a thinner white ink layer as posible, that Maximum White from Routland is super thick, and I´ll try one & one (one white, flash, one orange, flash, etc) I hope this Job to have a happy ending, I´ll post the final work for sure.

Thnks as always Jon! you´ve answered so fast!!!! thnks buddy!!!

P.D. Gee!!! jajaja I´ve not seen that upload button!!!!!! yeah it´s pretty "hidden", there it goes, the design (in virtual theory)

[Catspit Productions]

No problem my friend. It’s my pleasure to help out. It looks like a nice classic Harley design. I’ve printed the back design myself before. Micro registration would defiantly help out.

You can also choke the under base some which will make the registration easier. You just make it maybe half a line point smaller than the orange.

Let us know how it works out for you and I’d love to see some pictures. Glad you found the upload attachment tab Thanks for posting and good luck!

[ppdlao]

Hi Jon, hi guys, well this whole "Ink thicknes" issue, well it was all about the ink quality, so I managed to change from brand to brand all the way over, and I think this wouldn´t happen again! I´m very happy with the results, since I´m oficcially using plastisol HO inks, I just have to apply only 2 layers of ink! instead of 3 or 4 with the poor quality inks I´ve started printing

So I´m leaving the video of this job! I´ve printed like 20 t shirts, and never lost details, never had any serious "Dot Gain" problems so far, nice and uniform printings, very solid, what can I say i´m very very happy! take a look:

http://youtu.be/MzNAgYfWcu0

I hope you like it!
Thnks Jon, thnks CATSPIT!

[Catspit Productions]

Very nice video Pepe. The print looks good. Yeah sometimes it can be a simple matter of using a good quality ink. I’m glad you got it all sorted out and had a good print run.

Thanks for the update!

[ppdlao]

Very nice video Pepe. The print looks good. Yeah sometimes it can be a simple matter of using a good quality ink. I’m glad you got it all sorted out and had a good print run.

Thanks for the update!

Yeah I'm very very happy with the results, I feel so confident of trying to print challenging designs. Thanks buddy, always my pleasure to collaborate.

[broken580]

must have been a while ago because I don't remember but work has me fried these days. lol Thanks I will definitely get with you when I am ready to get a color mixing system. Just taking baby steps as hard as that can be sometimes!