Newbie to waterbase printing.

[Doug S]

I finally got a couple of slower weeks after 7 months of hard plugging at it here.  I'm taking this time to dive off into new areas of printing to me.  I developed screens today for a 4 color waterbase print tomorrow to try out the waterbase kit I bought over 2 years ago.  This will be a halftoned print. 

I've printed discharge several times but never just straight waterbase.  Do you have to do anything different as far as the printing goes like flash between each color?  I have an underbase screen a 225 and 3 top colors all on 280s.  This is just an experiment to me but I 'm hoping that someone may chime in here and get me a couple of steps ahead.  I know about the longer dwell times which I'm hoping that my 8ft of drying chamber on my minisprint will be enough.

Thanks in advance!

[DannyGruninger]

What brand of inks? What type of shirt color?

[abchung]

I am looking into making one of these so I have less problems with my halftones dots.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBLXMA0lvp8

[Doug S]

What brand of inks? What type of shirt color?

Sorry about that.  I'll be using CCI and printing on a cherry red G2000

[Doug S]

I printed my first waterbase experiment today.  It came out looking pretty snazzy.  The only thing I didn't like was that the white was a semi-opaque white.  Even with an underbase and a highlight, it wasn't as bright as plastisol.  I used a 225 for the ub and a 280 for a hightlight white.  Maybe I should've used a 225 for the highlight.  I was using cryocoat coated 1/1 with a round edge. 

Is there an opaque waterbase white by CCI? 

I really like the ease of printing with waterbase especially for mixing and printing halftones, I'm not sure it would be as easy with a solid spot color design especially a multicolor because I think I've read in the past that you have to flash between every color. 

[ericheartsu]

we really like the matsui stretch white, mixed 50/50 with their standard white, for an opaquer white.

[Doug S]

Thanks, I'll have to give the matsui a try.  I didn't know if I was expecting too much coming from printing strictly plastisol. 

I guess I have  a few other questions:

Is it best to have a thinner stencil?
Do I need to use a hard or soft flood.
What about squeegee pressure? Heavy or light?

By the way, here is a pic of the experiment.

[abchung]

Matsui 301:
Thick stencil.
some of us like hard flood, other soft but double stroke.
Soft stroke for printing.
Print flash print on all colours.

We find in halftone printing, the 301 colours are not as bright or strong as plastisol.

For better white opacity, we adjust fresh white with white inks from previous runs.
We also mix 50-50 normal white with stretch white so the top colours does not crack.

[Doug S]

Thanks for the tips. 

I only double stroked the underbase so that may be a large problem and also I only flashed after the ub.