5.5 oz and lower with high mesh questions

[im_mcguire]

Hello everyone!
I have a small question about 5.4 oz and 5.5 oz shirts i print for most of my clients.  My question is this...

When printing a 230 mesh on these shirts that have a loose weave on these shirts, I can see through the ink and it is not the greatest looking.  I was curious what your standard is when printing a halftone with black with no underbase.

Attached are a couple images of what I am seeing on this job that I am not 100% satisfied with...

Printing 230 mesh
Black Ink reduced down with a little softee base
70 duro squeegee
3 strokes

Thanks everyone!

[Frog]

first thing that I'll say is that if you're using (needing) three strokes, it's not a lot different than using a lower mesh count with fewer strokes.

[im_mcguire]

The center of the image is a halftone, as I type this I am thinking that on my solid areas I should have used a lower mesh screen

[Underbase37]

Neon shirts of this kind seem to have this problem more so than other colors.

You could put your solids on a separate screen with a lower mesh count. Or as an on press fix try using softer squeegee 60/90/60, last thin thread mesh will help with this as well ( not sure if that is what your using already)

Murphy

[Colin]

Unfortunately, with 3 strokes you are no longer printing halftones   You are attempting to make everything solid.

For open weave garments like that, I go to 180/180 S mesh and lower my halftones to 40 lpi.  Sometimes I will go down to a 150.  For both I would use a 70/90/70 type blade with heavy pressure.  Hard flood and a slower stroke.

My black is an in house mix using C3 black at 10% and certain other bases (a softee type product is used).  I get excellent release/laydown of the ink as well as fantastic washability.

Bridging of the garment is very very difficult unless you want a THICK ink deposit.

[Underbase37]

The best fix here should be a mesh change.

Murphy

[im_mcguire]

I'm going to change screens now. Thanks everyone!

[mimosatexas]

Might sounds counter to how a lot of shops run, but I honestly try to use the highest mesh that will cleanly lay down the ink with a single stroke.  Sometimes this ends up being a lot LOWER mesh than you might think you need.  As someone else mentioned the 180S is great for solid black prints.  225S will still have issues like you show in your original post, though that would be after a single stroke.  The 230 standard mesh really kind of sucks honestly...

The only standard mesh I still use is 280, and only because they don't make a higher S mesh static

edit: elaborated a bit on the first sentence.

[im_mcguire]

Yeah, I just got my hands on my first s mesh about 2 months ago.  They really are great.  I need to diversify my mesh now.  Get rid of all of my regular higher mesh statics, and then get some 150, 180 s mesh.