Who decides which screen to use?

[Maxie]

I have visited different shops and noticed that in some of them the graphics dept decide mesh count to use when printing.
We have the screen maker, who is also a printer decide?
What do you do?     Should we be teaching our design team about mesh counts

[Colin]

Yes, your design team should also be given on press experience.

This is simply so that they know the tools that are being used to actually create that pretty logo they see on their screen   Think of squeegees and mesh as their brush of choice...

Until they have used their brushes for a while, they don't really know which one suites their design best.

[willy35]

In my shop, the one who makes the separation, gives the instructions to the guy who expose. (he knows how to print shirt, so that helps a lot)

[Stinkhorn Press]

small, one auto shop. no employees have ever worked another screen printing shop.

we went as far as to REDUCE down to three available meshes.  (100, 135, 200)
we're still in the middle of 4 of 5 employees giving feedback on mesh choices: printer, artist, screen dude, me.

we would love to have a secure knowledge that can be easily understood and written up to cover 90% of cases, so it can be firmly understood and decided at the ART level, so it goes on the production sheet before going to screen room and before going to press.

[Sbrem]

Most of us here know which to use, though we always have discussions on jobs, to be sure we're on the same page. There are no young folk here...

Steve

[Dottonedan]

Open line of communication between artist who create the art...and the artist who prints the films (could be two different people, but they often already communicate on what is desired. The shop (print Mgr) or screen room person then also needs to communicate with art department.


Some (or many) art departments are artist who don't know much about screen printing. They create and leave it up to the print production. THIS, is a mistake. The artist may put in way too much fine detail to be printed easily.


A typical response is for production to look a the seps and say, that's gotta go on a 305 mesh to holds those dots. But the art dept. really want heavy coverage etc.



Always a BEST case scenario to have your artist knowledgeable of halftones and why we use them for different mesh. Then, what the artist calls out...should be given much credit, but left as a guide only...at least until the art dpet. and the prod dept are confident in each other.

[tonypep]

Thats pretty much how its done here. In the end , for now, I make the final call

[ZooCity]

Two things:

• Prepress Tech sets the mesh. (screen tech can override by going up a count if a color plate is not imaging well on what was called out)
• Consolidate your mesh counts so the decision is not complicated.

Stinkhorn has the right idea here.  While those counts mentioned wouldn't work for our shop, we're doing essentially the same thing and running 90% of our work across two mesh counts.  It makes the screen callout much easier to train anyone to do.  And, slightly off topic, it also simplifies so much up and down stream of pre press. 

I set our sop for selecting mesh and update it form time to time but I try very hard not to ever make the day to day screen decisions.  Our artist does and, if in doubt, asks the production team.  Only if nobody can provide an answer do I step in.  I do review all our prepress still and fix any obvious errors but that's it.  If you embed yourself as an owner into this part of the process you'll never get free.

[Prince Art]

Stinkhorn has the right idea here.  While those counts mentioned wouldn't work for our shop, we're doing essentially the same thing and running 90% of our work across two mesh counts.  It makes the screen callout much easier to train anyone to do.  And, slightly off topic, it also simplifies so much up and down stream of pre press.

Obvious question: what are those two mesh counts?

[Dottonedan]

Streamlining the mesh counts is a great idea for a shop that does about the same look on most things. Works in many shops but not in others.  Some shops need a wide variety of mesh for a wide variety of types of printing/designs.

For example, Printers who do a lot of souvenir/resort/attraction type work may find themselves needing lower mesh for special affect inks on up to high mesh such as 300 s for simprocess. As is the case for Maxie.

Different strokes indeed.

[SEPSINK]

My team and I call the mesh when separating.

[ZooCity]

Stinkhorn has the right idea here.  While those counts mentioned wouldn't work for our shop, we're doing essentially the same thing and running 90% of our work across two mesh counts.  It makes the screen callout much easier to train anyone to do.  And, slightly off topic, it also simplifies so much up and down stream of pre press.

Obvious question: what are those two mesh counts?

150/48 and 225/40

We do coat the 150s in two ways- high and then std eom.   I'd love to get out of that too but it's a necessity for quality plastisol printing in our shop to have a taller stencil gasket.

[DannyGruninger]

Stinkhorn has the right idea here.  While those counts mentioned wouldn't work for our shop, we're doing essentially the same thing and running 90% of our work across two mesh counts.  It makes the screen callout much easier to train anyone to do.  And, slightly off topic, it also simplifies so much up and down stream of pre press.

Obvious question: what are those two mesh counts?

150/48 and 225/40

We do coat the 150s in two ways- high and then std eom.   I'd love to get out of that too but it's a necessity for quality plastisol printing in our shop to have a taller stencil gasket.

Sounds about the same here..... I just sold all my roller frames - going to statics and 99% of what we are doing is only 3 mesh counts which makes things so nice

[alan802]

I choose the mesh counts here, and will do so until someone else can make the those decisions close to what I do.  When I had an experienced printer here there were many times where he would choose the count and on a few hundred occasions over those years I fixed a problem by using a better mesh count.  Even moving from a 150 to a 180 can make all the difference in the world with how a print looks and most importantly, how it runs.

And I'm against the grain with some of the other great shops, I like having a ton of different mesh counts in the dark room because I like the control.  I agree on paper with consolidating mesh counts down to 3 or 4, but as long as I'm making the mesh count decisions I'm going to keep 12 different mesh counts on hand.  83, 90, 100, 110, 120, 135, 150, 180, 225, 280, 300, 305.  For years I've been thinking about adding something between the 180 and 225 so maybe I'll go with a 200 thin thread.

[ZooCity]

For standard printing we use 4 mesh counts with one coated 2 different ways for 5 total.  If we didn't print HSA it would be 4 total screen options across 3 mesh counts.

Then we have some low count stuff for glitter, shimmer, etc but I don't count it.  It's a handful of panels on or off frames, done "as needed" v. being in the regular cycle of screens.

Alan, I'm with you- I thought for sure I would freak out consolidating but it turns out it works equally well because you tune your system back from the limited counts.  Kinda hard to explain in detail but just try it for a few weeks, you can always get the other screens back out.