How can we make this better?

[andyandtobie]

Hey everyone, my wife and I just finished our first job with plastisol yesterday, after doing a couple projects with waterbase before that.  We think we're on the right track, but we've got a long way to go.  Maybe someone can help us figure out what we need to do next to make these better?  First thing I need to figure out is how to improve the mat-down of the fibers for the underbase, I think.  I've read most of the posts here that I can find on that topic, so I think it's a matter of practicing my pressure/speed/angle combination, as we're printing manually- but maybe I'm missing something?  But besides that, I know there's still a lot of room for improvement on these.  Honestly this is the best sample of the batch.  On a lot of the other shirts, we had a huge problem with dot gain, especially with the black.  If I back off the pressure enough to just barely touch it, it prints nice, but doesn't clear completely, so the next print looks like crap.  If I give it enough pressure to clear the screen, or a second stroke to clear the screen, we get the huge dot gain, and everything turns dark.  Now I did mix in 5% curable reducer into the black (trying to reduce gloss) and the squeegee edge might be a little dull, so I thought I'd avoid the reducer and get fresh squeegees next time.  We also had trouble with colors "squishing out" or sticking to the bottom of the next screen, especially on the light blue or the red, where there were big solid areas.  I tried to keep the pressure low and the speed up, but then I'm back to not getting a clear screen.  I ended up having to add two more flashes to the sequence, which really slowed us down.  Any idea what I'm missing?  Here's the specs, if that helps:

Press is a 6/4 manual we bought used here locally, push stroke for everything.
Screens are Murakami 225-S statics for the colors, 150-S for the white.
Murakami Photocure Pro emulsion, coated 1/1 on colors, 1/2 on white. 
Ink is QCM, QMX colors, on QCM 159 white for the underbase.  White ink warmed up to about 90 degrees.
Print order by the time I was finished was white / flash / white / flash / yellow / light blue / flash / red / dark blue / flash / black

Thanks again, everyone!  There's no way we could have got to this point without the information on this forum.  Now we're just hoping to make it to the next step.

[Dottonedan]

Wowza. You have been reading haven't you.  Great start. How long did you say you've been doing this?


1, Here is a link to a test file you can download. http://www.theshirtboard.com/index.php/topic,13579.msg130964.html#msg130964


Print that to film at whatever line screen you are using for your mesh. Expose, wash out, print using black ink on white shirt....and post a pic here and I will discuss my thoughts on the results and others can feel free to chime in.  Doing this first, should give you and all of us a better understanding of what you can work with. THIS test, and making the right adjustments based on your findings, will help your printed images look closer to what you are wanting.


2, From what I read, it sounds like your mesh might be too loose. Not tensioned tight enough or not (all) of them tensioned equally. Now, I know for manuals, it's all that much harder to control the dot gain, (smashing out) but that mostly has to do with the tension. Then, you have the "ink" or image data content to contend with. Knowing that things sort of smash out more on press, you can cut your image halftone content back a little. Meaning, some how, some way, what you read (as a percentage) in your file, needs to be cut back a tad. Lets say that way reads as a 50% area may be printing as 60 or so.  So, in the art, you adjust that art to be able to print out at 40% so that with print pressure and loose tension, your 40's become 50's.


There will be more to add but lets see a test result first and also get some more discussion going from the others who are more from the printer side. I'm thinking you might want to think your inks down a bit as well.


What squeegees are you using?


What is your angle on the squeegee push?


Oh, and two blacks maybe. Like, one for the solid art and one for the halftone art (but if not real solid ares exist in the art, then maybe just look at cutting that dot gain back a good bit more on the black screen. Black is always going to be more powerful than the others.

[dirkdiggler]

Personally i think you could put the white on a 225S and change the colors to 305.  You will have less dot gain and you won't need all of those flashes.  Also make sure you have some off contact.  Guarantee this will help.

[screenxpress]

For a first time at plastisol and halftones with WOW to boot, all I can say is it's pretty dam awesome. 

Keep at it and you'll work out the bugs.

[Frog]

If this forum really played the part Andy and Tobie say it did, these two get my vote for spokespeople!
Maybe this will soon be the go-to forum for Newbies as well as intermediate and advanced now! 

Spread the word you two! And keep up the great work!

[sqslabs]

Great advice in the thread already, so I just wanted to say awesome first plastisol print.  You guys knocked it out of the park. 

[farmboygraphics]

Personally i think you could put the white on a 225S and change the colors to 305.  You will have less dot gain and you won't need all of those flashes.  Also make sure you have some off contact.  Guarantee this will help.

Dirk,
Mind if I ask, would that be using a 1/1 or a 2/2 coat?
Thanks.

[jvanick]

On a 305, you'll want less emulsion so that you can clear all the ink from the screen.

1/1 sharp edge is what I'd try.

[Itsa Little CrOoked]

Sheesh!

So I suppose you sepped this too??

Your first job really should just be stick figures. You know, like the one color stick family on the back of a soccer mom's Dodge Caravan. On white shirts.

I should just quit.

(Great start!)

[farmboygraphics]

On a 305, you'll want less emulsion so that you can clear all the ink from the screen.

1/1 sharp edge is what I'd try.

Thanks. That's how I've been coating.

[jvanick]

I should clarify the clearing the ink from the screen.  When doing halftone printing on fine mesh, if you have too much emulsion. You can make too deep of a tunnel for the ink to go through.

[farmboygraphics]

I gotcha, been doing this for 13 years. Looking around at some of the work here makes me feel like a hack. We don't really get any high end stuff, but with the purchase of an auto last year I just feel the need to step it up. Skulking around here has been a step in the right direction. For the most part I just shut up and listen.

[screenxpress]

Your first job really should just be stick figures. You know, like the one color stick family on the back of a soccer mom's Dodge Caravan.

That's pretty funny.  I drifted back and I think my first print actually was 3 stick figures (girls) dancing over a wavey line like a field, lol.

[andyandtobie]

Thanks, everyone!  Sorry I've been gone for a couple of days helping my old buddy get hitched.  Dan, thanks for the test pattern.  I'll try to get that burned and printed later in the week.  I don't know if I'll be able to get the whole pattern on one screen, though.  We're exposing with a tiny florescent unit, and I doubt I'll be able to get the extreme ends of the gray scale to expose and develop.  But I'll see what I can do!  Squeegee for the white was a new one we bought to troubleshoot with, common yellow 70 duro.  The squeegees for the colors, I'll admit, are whatever we bought from (here it comes) Dick Blick last winter.  They're clear in color, not exactly sure of the duro, and I think they're not the sharpest.  That's why we bought a fresh one for the white, and will replace the others as soon as we can afford to.  As for squeegee angle, it's about 45 degrees, maybe a little flatter, with a push stroke.

Dirk, Jvanick, Farmboy, thanks a lot for the info on switching to 305 (300S?) and keeping the emulsion thin.  As for off-contact, we're at 1/8."  As soon as I can scrape up the cash I'll order another set of screens and we'll go for it.  If that will reduce our dot gain / sticky ink problems, maybe we'll start to get somewhere.  Right now, the inconsistency because of the dot gain is beating us pretty bad, as it makes it tough for us to feel confident enough to start advertising. 

Farmboy and Itsa Little CrOoked, don't get down in the mouth.  You guys are making money, and we're going broke, as we've sunk every dime we've got into this thing, and there weren't many dimes to start with.  Hoping to get things turned around soon and get going the other way.  As it is, Tobie's working retail full time and I'm barely making ends meet by selling artwork online, having quit my auto parts job back in May.  Honestly, if someone wanted us to print those stick figures you mentioned, we'd be scared to take the job, because they'd be rough and fuzzy looking.  I'll attach a closeup of the text from this job so you can see what I mean.  Maybe switching from a 150s to 225s would help that problem?

As for the seps, yes, I did them, but it's nothing to be that proud of.  I actually lost quite a bit from the original artwork.  I separated it in Photoshop, mostly using the color range tool, after buying Mitch Different's book and reading just enough to scrape by.  We bought FilmMaker and an Epson R3000 with ink from inkjetmall.com and cheapo film from eBay.  The first job we did, the fishing boat I posted in the introduction section, took me a week to sep (before I bought the book) and the films look absolutely horrible.  Seriously, it printed okay, but you'd laugh if you saw the films.  This job, thankfully, took a day instead of a week and the films are decent.  In the book it says it should take less than an hour, so that's the goal I need to shoot for. 

Frog, am I correct in assuming that this whole show is your doing?  If so, we can't say thanks enough.  It's not like we can afford to go to school for this, and I don't have any marketable skills beyond "starving artist" and experience in the dead-end career of selling auto parts.  It's true that we spent the early part of the year hanging around another forum full of good intentions, nice people, and shaky advice.  Finding this place was a breakthrough.  By trying to cram as much intermediate and advanced-level info into our heads as possible from the start, it's helped us know which direction our basic efforts need to go.

Of course, I don't know what help we could possibly offer anyone else at this point, but if anyone has any questions, maybe geared towards the artwork side of things (as that's about all I know), please don't hesitate to ask.   

[Dottonedan]

One of your biggest contributions would be to assist other new printers with what you're experiencing. It will be fresh in your head while someone new will post the same questions. For many of us, we forgot what it's like to start out. Not me so much. I'm still starting out. LOL.


There are three of what's technically called "owners" of this forum but we consider all of us members as virtual owners since you are the forum and have much weight as to how things are done. You will eventually see a lot of Pierre from Blue Moon. Then you have already seen Frog, aka Andy and myself. We came together to create a forum with some ethics etc. free of ulterior motives after some bad experiences from other forums and here we are. Frog is our day to day contact and custodian so to speak.