Educational H20 discussion - Mark Gervais

[IntegrityShirts]

And recently the Murakami Aquasol HV.  It worked amazingly well.  I loved it!  Only drawback is it's low flexibility/brittleness.  The edges of the squeegee can wear through the emulsion within a shockingly few number of print strokes.  Regardless of post exposure/hardening/right off the exposure unit.  So the search is on for a new emulsion

I have the same problem with Aquasol and that's my only complaint.  I have to run an extra piece of tape on each side to keep the squeegee from cracking and breaking down the mesh.  Any advice would be welcomed on how to fix that.

I can't imagine 80-90% dot being held at 60lpi on 150S mesh.  In my mind the open area is bigger than the dots of emulsion that are supposed to be there.  Sure you'll capture the dots that catch a cross-section of thread, but there's going to be drop out where there's no thread for the emulsion to live.

The other end of the spectrum holding 5-20% dot I could see bridging properties of the emulsion being a benefit to keep dots even where the mesh isn't.

Wish I could FEEL the hand on the HSA's printed on higher EOM.  I'm sure they still drop into the garment a lot more than plastisols.

[StuJohnston]

At the beginning, he was saying something was a dead technology. Was that Aquasol? I couldn't quite make it out and though he was talking about an ink called acrysol or something.

[Rob Coleman]

At the beginning, he was saying something was a dead technology. Was that Aquasol? I couldn't quite make it out and though he was talking about an ink called acrysol or something.

Mark was referring to the Acrylic "plastisols".  He calls them "Acrosols".  I never heard that term before. 

These use No PVC resin - use acrylic resin instead, but still use plasticizers.  Many ink companies have dabbled in this technology - the main problem as I see it is the lack of durability to pass some of the major brand strict wash requirements.  The surface abdrades much easier than a pvc-based chemistry.

I saw a lot of this in my previous life -- did not see on brand that would pass wash, crock, etc. UNLESS you too extra steps.....

[ericheartsu]

just watched this again tonight, really helpful.

[ZooCity]

At the beginning, he was saying something was a dead technology. Was that Aquasol? I couldn't quite make it out and though he was talking about an ink called acrysol or something.

Mark was referring to the Acrylic "plastisols".  He calls them "Acrosols".  I never heard that term before. 

These use No PVC resin - use acrylic resin instead, but still use plasticizers.  Many ink companies have dabbled in this technology - the main problem as I see it is the lack of durability to pass some of the major brand strict wash requirements.  The surface abdrades much easier than a pvc-based chemistry.

I saw a lot of this in my previous life -- did not see on brand that would pass wash, crock, etc. UNLESS you too extra steps.....

Has this changed in the past couple years?  I feel like Sericol, Rutland and others have "acrosols" out there.  They supposedly have very good drape I heard but require a flash after each color. 

[jamiem]

They both do, yes.  Rutland is the most commonly used out there in the brand printing world.  Haven't heard of anyone using the Sericol, they had some serious durability issues, which may have been corrected, but I have not heard one way or another.

[ZooCity]

I too have been hearing about the Rutland "acrosol" being used for brand printing and I was surprised.  Is it used as a specialty thing or standing in for HSA with the PVC-free brands?

My last impression was that Sericol did one and was doing their thing where they only sell drums to ocean containers of the stuff so my guess was it just wasn't available to most of us in the states.  I'm surprised it had durability issues, fujifilm has some serious ability to test inks I thought. 

[jamiem]

It is being used instead of water base.  Some companies have chosen this route, especially when printing smaller runs, 144's.  This technology seems to be a bit tricky.  Many ink companies have tried, yet failed to get passing results for brand durability testing.

[ZooCity]

Interesting, thanks for update. 

[ABuffington]

The seminars that Mark gave were organized for Mark by Walt at a past ISS show, Walt is one of Murakami's salesman. Mark shares his years of experience with us and deserves a big thanks.  Walt from Murakami and Mark go way back.  M&R shot the videos and did the editing to preserve this once in a few years seminar by Mark.  Mark is a big fan of S Mesh and our emulsions. At one time he was using SP-1400, but he has access to many of our emulsions that aren't sold in the states.  50 line 61 degrees is totally possible on 135S or LX 135.  His work is incredible. Here is one,

    

To get good adhesion to the mesh you need to look at your degreaser.  We provide a system from degreaser to mesh to emulsion.  They are designed to work together.  Our MS-degreaser really preps the screen well to hold onto the upper tonals where just an edge of the halftone will touch the mesh.  All Murakami Mesh above 280 is treated to promote halftone adhesion as well as to allow ink to transfer easily.

For those having any flexibility issues with HV; what type of off contact are you running, what tension?  This is news to me.  If you want a really flexible emulsion with even better resolution than HV try SP-7500.  Use MS Hardener for discharge on SP-7500, or A&B Hardener for a semi permanent screen.  SP-7500 can be a little tacky, which was engineered that way to promote true film adhesion at a large LA printer.  Heat up the glass enough and most emulsions can get tacky.  Just put some talc or baby powder on the screen before you attach the film.  Saves your film. 

All videos are posted here as well at the bottom of this page: http://murakamiscreen.com/murakami-videos/

Al

[Dottonedan]

Pertaining to the 60lpi on 125-225 S mesh, you can hear in the video what that means when he says to make sure you use your curves and tonal adjustments aka tonal compression.

I am going out on a limb to guess that the smallest dots are in the 20% area (of a compressed 60lpi) and the darkest shadow areas lean towards the 75-80% area.  Using the higher lpi of 60 can give you great image detail all in between those areas) with a more precise print or less gain. To give you an idea, the 20% dot in good film is like a 5% dot in your typical Epson film seps at 45lpi. Those aren't accurate numbers, because I don't know his exact percentages, but that's a good guess. It's all in the tonal compression and what you are trying to do with the seps. Also note in his examples of color and print sequence, you may find a blue printing before red and yellow above those and then a megenta. It's not set up by a dark to light or a light to dark,,,but what he's wanting to do in the seps. what colors is wants to get out of those and how he wants it to react with each other in the sequence. It's a good example of the thought process.

This is why you can hear of outragous lpi now and then. Most notably is Target Graphics. Check out their website and they tout 120lpi on tee shirts. From my conversations with them and seeing there samples, they typically print plastisol and the feel of the prints are very lacking in my personal opinion and would be much better in waterbase. The feel rough, hard and what I call scruffy. I believe it's due to flashing in between each color, not allowing the dots to melt together. This is like graphics printing in my opinion where each color is dried first before printing the next color (if I remember correctly).

http://www.targetda.com/services/screen-printing/hi-res-halftones/

http://www.targetda.com/services/screen-printing/hi-res-accucolor/

[ABuffington]

Dan is correct, the tonal info has to be curved and limited on either end of the scale.  True film is another key to the quality of his prints.  Halftones are sharp and the d-max allows for a long burn time to get very strong durable screens. 

Mark also is the founder of Screen Trappers, a select group of printers who share their best prints to further screen print techniques.
This print is a 3 color HSA print.  Incredible art and sep skills here for only 3 colors.