Placement of screen relitive to shirt

[xcelr8hard]

Wooden paint stir sticks from Home Depot/Lowes. They are free. I use them every now and again, especially on fleece.

Butch

[screenxpress]

I don't know what rasta bar is, but shims went out the window about 35 years ago for us. Most good manuals have an off-contact adjustment.

Steve

I still use shims on a back clamp manual. 

It's true that the press has off-contact adjustment....but....when you run the squeegee (push or pull), there is no way the back clamp can maintain the off-contact and the screen will drop down on the substrate effectively negating the off-contact setting. 

Possibly a side clamp press may not have this issue, but my back clamp Workhorse does. 

I simply cut up a thin yardstick into 10 or 12 inch lengths and tape to the underside of the screen front edge (and sometimes to the back edge also to avoid any issues with the arm flexing) so the screen frame maintains the desired off-contact through the entire stroke allowing the screen to do the "wave" laying down ink.   

I may be in the minority, but it's what I do.

Problems with this may have been the case more with wooden frames with loose corner joints, but for me, I find that the rear clamp, off contact works as advertised with aluminum frames. Pops off just fine. (assuming that the screen level/tilt adjustment is also set correctly.)

Yes, I cannot remember the last time I did a rear shim.  The rear holds the off contact okay.  It's just the front that dips down from exerted pressure during squeegee stroke. 

[Frog]

I don't know what rasta bar is, but shims went out the window about 35 years ago for us. Most good manuals have an off-contact adjustment.

Steve

I still use shims on a back clamp manual. 

It's true that the press has off-contact adjustment....but....when you run the squeegee (push or pull), there is no way the back clamp can maintain the off-contact and the screen will drop down on the substrate effectively negating the off-contact setting. 

Possibly a side clamp press may not have this issue, but my back clamp Workhorse does. 

I simply cut up a thin yardstick into 10 or 12 inch lengths and tape to the underside of the screen front edge (and sometimes to the back edge also to avoid any issues with the arm flexing) so the screen frame maintains the desired off-contact through the entire stroke allowing the screen to do the "wave" laying down ink.   

I may be in the minority, but it's what I do.

Problems with this may have been the case more with wooden frames with loose corner joints, but for me, I find that the rear clamp, off contact works as advertised with aluminum frames. Pops off just fine. (assuming that the screen level/tilt adjustment is also set correctly.)

Yes, I cannot remember the last time I did a rear shim.  The rear holds the off contact okay. It's just the front that dips down from exerted pressure during squeegee stroke.

Yes, it may dip down during the stroke, but it's just that that doesn't seem to affect my registration or prints, but rather is just part of the off-contact process/effect. I suppose with excessive off-contact, this could be a problem.