We have been working with the fine team at Virus Inks on a new winged flood bar design that is better for water based inks.
Action Engineering is pleased to present yet another great solution for the challenges of garment decorating. Introducing The Aqua Flood - a special winged flood bar used during the printing of water based inks.
Question - Why do you need a different winged flood bar for printing water based inks?
Answer - So that you can have a thick flood deposit and still keep the ink where it needs to be. Printing with water based inks is a bit different than printing with plastisol. Among the differences is the thickness of ink used for the flooding of the stencil. With water based inks it is best to have a thick flood deposit. One reason for this is that the ink is less able to dry out and clog your screen. Thick ink like a base white will dry out faster than the thin inks. Therefore - a thick layer of thick ink is accomplished using a winged flood bar with a gap of 5mm. This means - the wings are kissing the mesh and the distance between the screen and flood edge is 5mm.
Why do you need the special flood bars - why not just raise the flood bars that you have? You can. However - if you're using standard winged flood bars - this will defeat the purpose of the wings. Also - you have to spend the time making the adjustment and will then have to adjust it back when you change inks. The new Aqua Floods - keep the wings kissing the mesh and allow for the gap between the flood edge n the mesh to be changed as needed. So - you keep the ink out of the sides of the frame - you control the flood deposit - and you don't have to make an adjustment to your flood bar height. It's really a no-brainer.
Our new Aqua Floods are specially designed to keep your ink where it needs to be while allowing for various thicknesses of flood deposit. From the research and development department of Virus Inks - it has been concluded that the best case setup is to employ three different thickness when using this type of ink. So- thick inks need a thick ink deposit - and thin inks need a thin ink deposit.
We offer three versions for three different ink thicknesses.
5mm Aqua Flood gives you a 5mm ink deposit - for use with thick ink such as a base white
3mm Aqua Flood gives you a 3mm ink deposit - for use with standard color ink
1mm Aqua Flood gives you a 1mm ink deposit - for use with thick ink such as a base white
From Beppe Quaglia of Virus Inks - "The concept to keep a thick food with water-based inks has been a Virus prerogative" -
