screen printing > Newbie

Plastisol: print in layers or cut out?

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OhNoPrinting:
hey,

i have a pretty simple, three color print on a light blueish hoodie. Thickness of the final print is not my biggest concern, but registration.

I figured there might be multiple ways how to print it, but because I started with vinyl, i am stuck a bit with cutting away instead of printing on top. But on the other hand, printing on top of plastisol is the idea of underbase, so it should work, no?

Here my idea:



Top row is the final grafik:

way1:

just layer the ink on top of each other, flash inbetween. /problem: the white might migrate with the red?

way2:

cut out the shapes, add a pixel or two /problem: registration

way3:

print an underbase, red (add a pixel) and blue on top (avoid some registration problems)

I am prefering way3 right now, because of the idea of underbase and getting the best red. But maybe it is overkill and the least amount of layers is best?
 

Dottonedan:
The accommodations for registration should be applied to your base white only. (in most cases).


No matter what graphic program you are using, you want to "choke" or cut away from the base. Leac the toip colors as they are, (but you use the OVERPRINT feature to assist you in your separations. How much choke depends on the quality of your press and mesh tension but in general, you want about 0.25" choke on the base. You can do that with a color that does not print, or with a computer white (aka process white). There is no such thing as a process white ink, but...for separations, If you create a custom color in process and not as a spot color, that color can be used as a knockout color. Then you don't have to play with having a custom color that does not print...and use that for your knockout color. Don't really need it to be that way.


EXAMPLE:


You want your TOP WHITE on the flag to OVERPRINT so that it does not knock out the color below it. In that case, the color below it would be the base white.
In Illustrator this overprint feature is found in the ATTRIBUTES window ...under WINDOWS.  You just check or uncheck overprint to get it to do what you want for each element. Same for the strokes (if any).


You don't want to use too low of a mesh for this art since it's all solid. it would be caked on too heavy. But in general MOST people would print a solid but choked base and print the solid colors over top. You can flash in-between.


If it were me, I'd prefer a thinner mesh on the base, like on a 230 mesh (used only to support the colors)...and then print the top white even on a manual. This method might be different than some people would do on a manual. They may feel using two whites on a manual is overkill, considering that you can print the base, then flash, and print again, as much as you want to geta bright white. To me, I only want enough under the colors to support the color. It's very common to use a low mesh on a base white for a job like this but I would not. I think it all comes down to how you want to handle it. Personal preferences.   others can chime in on their preferences for that. I'd be interested to hear other people's thoughts on that.


If you used medium mesh, you might get away with less flashing.
The more ink you put down quickly, the more flashing you will need.

tonypep:
Since this is a fleece project 125 mesh for ub with a .5 choke, 196 mesh for top colors with .25 trap between the top colors so they do not perfectly touch and bleed into eachother. The dot gain when printing will make up for that. Or you could flash after every screen which would not be fun for a long run. My 2cents anyway

Dottonedan:
I ran with the sep part and overlooked that it was going on hoodies. Tony, would you have a top white in this or rely on using the base white only?


Tony’s suggestion is an example of the different ways people approach a job. We can do it differently yet still achieve a good print.

At any other job I’ve had except the next one below, we didn’t add a gap of any size (between colors). We would choke .5 from the center line (on the base only) and for solid art only. For sim process, we did not choke “the colors” on the inside of the art. Even on the base, we would only choke the outside edges so that the base would not peak out. That’s for the sim process. I’ve got plenty of years of doing it this way successfully.  This goes to show that it’s just another way. A different method to achieve the same.

At one of my jobs, the prod mgr requested what’s known as a gutter space between colors (on the base only), but even for sim process. The colors were not gapped, but the base did have a gap of .5 (from the center line) giving .25 on either side for every type of sep.  I wasn’t fond of that method but it’s what he wanted. The downside of this method is when you had a dark garment, with light  colored ink you would see this darker shade of an outline around the whole color on the inside. Didn’t help the visual much at all in my opinion but I think he felt that helped production speed?  Not sure. It may have just been that this is how that prod. Mgr learned and kept with it.

Tony’s suggestions above, is to add a gap (on the colors also). I assume that is (in addition to the base)? That may be since it’s on fleece. Tony can elaborate on that himself if he happens to come back to this post.

This is a good post. A good example of “different methods” to approach the same job. There are no exact rules.

Maxie:
We would print a base white with a choke on a 1`50 screen and then each of the 3 colors seperately on either a 220 or 175 depending on the quality of the shirt.
We obviously flash the base and would most probable have a second flash after the red then blue and white last.

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