great technical read by Mark Coudray: "Print Without Additives "

[blue moon]

http://printwearmag.com/article/screen-printing/print-without-additives

pierre

[mimosatexas]

Great article.  I wholly agree with him on both the S mesh and 70/90/70 squeegees.  Those together have made my printing life so much better in the last few months.  The S-mesh really is fantastic...

[tancehughes]

Great article


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[ABuffington]

I've posted this video before, it shows what Mr Coudray is discussing.  Seeing is believing. This is white ink, right out of the can. Could be any white ink.  No turnabout, no heat.  This is a hand print where you can modify your pressure, angle, and speed to what you feel unlike an auto, but an auto would be able to do the same thing with a few start up prints or pallet warm up.  In production settings if temps are above 65 no heating or turnabout needed.  Just slow down the base print head for a round, or better as mentioned elsewhere on the forum, cycle your press with flashes on, no print to warm up the inks.  In Socal in the winter at 50 degrees, this takes about 10-20 minutes.  Once a Ray Gun thermometer reads 160 when aimed at the pallet in the unload position, the inks will be softened up nicely and it will drop through S mesh like butter with the 70/90/70.

150S Mesh from Murakami, 55 lpi, 22.5 degrees (mesh capture should be done via Shurloc panels for Newman, or on a precision stretcher where mesh stays square to frame. If not available draw a pencil line along the thread direction on the first capture side as well as two vertical lines from this line with a pencil.  Once mesh is pulled out of square via poor capture methods, bar stretchers that pull the openings into little parallelograms at the corners you may experience spot moire in lower tonal values.  Also watch Newman Rollers so they turn equally. If one roller turns outward more than another you are curving the threads out of the square orientation. Some tips to push a 55 line onto a 150S mesh screen with 51% open area as opposed to 110T with a 43% open area that can't hold tonal base plates well.  If you really feel gutsy, try 135S with a 50 lpi at 61 degrees.  Great for high solids acrylics or urethanes.

If you hand print you will love this stuff.  Watch the video, I use no pressure, I just touch the pallet.  If you auto print say goodbye to weak white baseplates, this print on a good tight ringspun did not have a highlight white, just the base. 

ISS Show 2011 Murakami Screen 150 S Mesh Screen Printing Video

  (Surf clip at the end btw)

[Underbase37]

Great article. Great video.

Murphy37

[starchild]

I like how you're talking about stretching screens for creating square openings using an elongation technic, a mesh counter is also helpful with this as well.. Tension will not tell you if your mesh is balanced but having the SS curve values of the mesh will aid in figuring out at what tension your mesh opening is balanced. Hope one day you tell us about the SS Curve and why it's important when preparing a screen. Oh and how to acquire a mesh's SS curve if not available from the supplier..

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[tonypep]

Great article for plastisol people

[Sbrem]

Great article for plastisol people

I was waiting for that, LOL.

Steve

[jsheridan]

TL:DR verison..

take ink from bucket, put in screen, print it.

[ABuffington]

SS Curves refers to the measurement of warp and weft threads to accept tension and at what point they stall and reach too much tension and break.  The easiest way to look at this is you have threads running across a bolt (Weft) and threads running the length of the bolt, (Warp).  On a 61" bolt that is a short distance compared to a 33 yard bolt length.  Murakami's Smartmesh uses different threads for each direction with different elongation properties so that when printed they have very similar stress/strarin curves.  This helps compensate for the thread length differences to help tension be balanced on both warp and weft and the ability to withstand print forces. When mesh is subjected to a stress test the elongation and breaking point are measured.  The closer this data matches in the warp and weft directions on a graph the better the mesh accepts forces in both the print direction (warp) and the weft direction on a textile frame during printing.  This quality preserves the square opening during the stretch process and print process since the mesh has been woven with these different threads.  In mesh where the same thread is used for both directions, the stress strain curve of warp and weft does not match well on a graph, and this property can cause moire issues in rectangular openings vs square openings.    The easiest way to see this in action is to use it in sim process where dot on dot register over thousands of prints still yields sharp in register prints.  Whether it is Murakami S mesh, T mesh, M mesh, HD mesh, the print qualities are similar due to balanced stress/strain curves of each mesh count, thread type, and weave pattern.   

[ScreenFoo]

IMHO this is a great article.  It's not really that long, if you haven't read it, don't let John scare you off.   

[starchild]

Sweet.. Meshes with balanced SS curves, built into the mesh, is created with two different threads of varing elasticity values.. I like it.

Are calendared meshes (LX) knuckles, flatten on both sides or only one side?

And if only on one side, then which side of the screen is it preferable to have the flattened knuckles? The substrate side for superior stencil to substrate contact with lower eom's or the squeegee side for superior stencil to blade contact for more efficient ink metering and delivery?



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[KevWilso]

That was a great read.

[jsheridan]

don't let John scare you off.

I used to be really scary 

[brandon]

don't let John scare you off.

I used to be really scary 

I heard you are a sweetheart now . . .