Well, sometimes mesh just bust I guess.

[ZooCity]

I still want to emphasize that there's something to the roller mesh that made it tough as nails compared to good quality mesh at the same thread diameter and tpi.  And I guess there better be for the price they charge for that stuff!

And that is my only complaint... though due to some kind soul   I didn't have to pay that much for this mesh I DO know what it's worth and seeing it breaks my heart in that manner.

Oh lordy, I totally forgot about that and was like "why is he winking at me?".  Haha. 

Don't stress it, it's part of learning.  Make everywhere you set a screen mesh safe.  Everywhere. No exceptions for anyone.  No screens clanging around against each other stacked on the wall, ever.  It will solve 99% of these sort of problems and certainly isn't hurting anything or costing too much to arrange your shop like this. 

The 128n should not have popped at 30, they can go to some sphincter-tightening high tensions and hold them for many cycles.  If Alan built your screen I'm sure he softened the corners correctly.   

[jsheridan]

The 128n should not have popped at 30, they can go to some sphincter-tightening high tensions and hold them for many cycles.  If Alan built your screen I'm sure he softened the corners correctly.

The 128n can handle 60n with ease on an M3 frame.

I've got some 205n's, 230's and 255's that I made last year.. been sitting at 40 ever since and i used the heck outa them over the last year. I do have one of them that has a small nick down by the bar and it hasn't grown or given me a problem. I've not broken a screen yet over the past year and I'm not that gentle with my screens.

[ZooCity]

The 128n should not have popped at 30, they can go to some sphincter-tightening high tensions and hold them for many cycles.  If Alan built your screen I'm sure he softened the corners correctly.

The 128n can handle 60n with ease on an M3 frame.

I've got some 205n's, 230's and 255's that I made last year.. been sitting at 40 ever since and i used the heck outa them over the last year. I do have one of them that has a small nick down by the bar and it hasn't grown or given me a problem. I've not broken a screen yet over the past year and I'm not that gentle with my screens.

That's about what I ran them at when I used that mesh, I think it was around 65 n/cm. 

[jsheridan]

That's about what I ran them at when I used that mesh, I think it was around 65 n/cm.

Run white bases on those tensions for awhile and everything else feels like rowing a boat against the tide.

[ZooCity]

yeah, it was sweet for thick bodied plastisol, especially for being a manual shop.  I must say that the 150s/48 outperforms it though.  but I miss the ultra low o.c. with the roller mesh.

[IntegrityShirts]

Hell I busted two 150/48 s-threads on Monday learning how to soften the corners just right.  Think I got it figured out now!

[jsheridan]

My first two years working with newmans was on 18x20's with all mesh stretched to 50n. Maybe that why I have roller sickness and always strive for the best screen possible.

25 yrs later, I'm still chasing high tension.

[ZooCity]

My first two years working with newmans was on 18x20's with all mesh stretched to 50n. Maybe that why I have roller sickness and always strive for the best screen possible.

25 yrs later, I'm still chasing high tension.

I think you get there easier with a more square frame, like an 18x20 or the 25x30 M3s that we use.  The screen is more balanced it seems than with, say a 25x36, although I greatly prefer that longer frame size. 

Aside from getting your staff to handle them correctly the much bigger challenge is having a press that can accurately hold the very low off contact and other parameters that high tensions allow and require to take full advantage of the situation.  I think some of the newman gear puts the cart ahead of the horse in this regard. 

With roller mesh, it's not difficult at all to have all your screens stabilized at 45 n/cm+, I think you could make that happen in a high production environment and reap the benefits of reduced press time for the effort. 

[alan802]

I have to keep an eye on our press a little more often to make sure it's within a certain tolerance because we use higher tension screens, but if I had to do 3-4 times as much maintenance as I do now, I still think it would be worth it.  The ink consumption, press setup time, more likely to get a "One Hit", never having to double stroke anything, quality (subjective), etc. all make it worth it to me to get, and then maintain high tension. 

If a mesh is supposed to be able to handle 25 newtons max, I can and have been taking them up to 30-35 and then letting them relax down to 25, then retension them back to 30 and by the time they work harden, they are usually right at that 25 newton target level.  On our roller mesh, I don't take it up past it's max tension level, but right to it, then try to keep them all around 40-45 newtons.  I just haven't been able to convince myself it's worth it to get a 205 up to 60 newtons and keep it there when 45 works great.  The 205N's that I have printed at 60 newtons were great, but so are the ones at 45.

I love tension and screen talk, it's my second favorite topic in this industry.

[ZooCity]

I reached a similar conclusion.  The Roller mesh seems to really settle into 40-45 n/cm naturally and requires very little upkeep after it becomes stable and work-hardened. 

It's been said that you don't start seeing additional benefits until you get up into 80 n/cm territory or something like that.  I think there is a benefit to being in the 60s but it only becomes apparent when doing some crazy shizzle like printing top colors over a wet underbase.  You do need to retension a lot more to hold it at 60 though. 

I think dedication to press maintenance and the ability of your press to make that maintenance easy and then hold it's tolerances are what makes high and ultra high tension work for a shop. It's a systemic commitment that goes beyond simply increasing tension. 

I found we were spinning our tires with ultra high tension as our platens could not stay in close enough parallel and the press heads could not hold o.c. consistently enough to take advantage of it.   With the right machine I'd wager you would reap many hours of saved press time for every hour you put into adjusting the press.

[alan802]

I wonder if any autos out there right now could really hold it's parallelism enough to calibrate it and forget it for a year or so?  I doubt it, I know ours needs tweaked here and there and there are lots of autos out there that aren't near as stout in those areas so I bet they need constant care to keep within 200 microns or so between all pallets and printheads.  I think our old centurian could have been one to hold everything in place once you got it dialed in, but getting the pallets parallel was hard for me, and took a lot of time each time I tried.  But the way it was engineered, having pallet tips and printhead stabilizers with a double track printhead and not a single would have helped a lot over the more traditional press you see today.

I tried keeping our pallets within a sheet of paper of one another and all of our newmans at the maximum tension level for that mesh count and I couldn't keep up and still do other things I wanted to do around the shop.  Setups were fast, but not that much faster than they were with 35 newton screens.  Now with a working regi system, as long as we are within a certain tolerance of parallel, our screens all at a good tension level, we can setup a 6 color in 10 minutes including test prints and taping off regi marks.  I've preached about high tension and the benefits for a few years now, and I certainly understand the arguments against, but when I look back at all the headaches we used to have and the crap we went through during setups, now we don't have any of that and most of it has to do with proper tensioned screens.  Sure there are plenty of other things that went into it, but it had as big of a role as any other variable that we've changed around here.  You can get quality with 15 newtons, most of us have done it, but you can also get from LA to New York on a stagecoach, or you could fly first class.

[ScreenPrinter123]

Having never used Newman's roller mesh, what benefits do you see of that mesh over the S mesh?  Obviously you can hold higher tension, but is that necessarily a better thing than the S mesh, which is recommended to be at 15-30 newtons depending on the mesh count?  Is the open area between the threads the same?  I'm imagining not, as that is what seems to make the s mesh so delicate - the fact that its threads are so thin and thus the open area in between the threads larger.  I'm guessing that's the trade off: only capable of lower tension with the S mesh, but it comes more open area?  The three brand names of mesh I've always heard very good things were Murakami, Newman, and Sefar.  Anyone wanna give a crash course on the pros/cons of each?  I haven't encountered any registration issues with the Murakami Smart mesh, which was one of our big concerns moving to a lower tension mesh. 

We use to use an unknown brand name from our supplier and maintained 40-55 newtons on our m3's, but I'd take the lower tensioned s mesh over it any day -- less headaches and stoppage on-press has been so worth it with the s mesh (especially with white underbases and solid/spot top colors), even if it meant a learning curve on accepting that we shouldn't go above 20-23 newtons on the 310s.  I'd rather have delays, if any, while off-press than the headache of having to double stroke things to get the ink to clear with a butt-load of pressure with high tensioned mesh -- of course I was also using a v-squeegee at the time too.

And lastly, Alan, I see that you are still avoiding accountability for Gilligan's busted screens.  Tsk.. Tsk.. Tsk..

[Gilligan]

LOL... if I would have faulted Alan I would have never posted this.  I know it was a joke but I don't ever look a gift horse in the mouth or leave them hanging out to dry.

Clearly we did something wrong... we are holding off on the rollers till we get moved into the new space (more motivation?)... really sucks because I just got 24 M3's in today 14 of them still have mesh on them and just need to be retensioned back up!  Maybe that will motivate?

Since we are discussiong S mesh vs Newman... how does the opening affect what kind of detail you can hold?  I would think that with more open mesh you are essentially lower the mesh count in a sense... am I wrong in thinking that?  Or is it slightly the case but not much given that you still have X threads per inch?

[ScreenPrinter123]

I'm far from a guru (obviously), but I haven't notice any loss in detail.  If anything it may have improved because what I couldn't push through a 200 before, I can now whistle through a 310s.  I remember double stroking Union's Ultrasoft Lemon Yellow on our Freedom on a 200 and still not having the opacity I am getting with a 310s (as a top coat) [don't know how much the v-squeegee and non-triple durometer squeegee accounted for that though] -- in fact, we are easily clearing the screen with Union's Maxopake inks with the 310s for top prints.  So if detail is lost by more open area when comparing same non-s mesh counts to s mesh counts, it would, it my estimation be offset -- if not made better -- by being able to go higher in mesh counts with the S mesh.   Back to my dark corner now...

[alan802]

I'm going to say I had nothing to do with it's short life   I'll just post this link and let you guys read the article about the benefits of S threads and most of your questions can be answered  within that article.  It's really a great technical article that I've printed out and read a dozen times or so. http://www.murakamiscreen.com/documents/MURAKAMITECHNICALFOCUSSTHREADS.pdf


I plan on having a 50/50 combo of S thread screens and roller mesh screens in our shop.  They both do everything well, the roller mesh will hold amazingly high tension and we all know the benefits of that, plus on the lower mesh counts, you can deposit a lot of ink with one stroke, and I have had great luck with "one hits" using the 102N.  They both will do the same thing essentially, but I think the S threads are more versatile.  However, I want the roller mesh on hand for my workhorse mesh.  I know the roller mesh will last forever and will do all the grunt work, any of my "one hits", then the S threads will be for my discharge jobs, along with any process jobs and underbasing for sim process on darks with a 225S.  I like the S thread because it will hold some great detail at lower mesh counts and it's obviously easier to print with with the higher % open area.  Any shop could be successful with either mesh and I want to have a combination.  I want 88N and 102N's for one hits, 205N as a great all-around mesh as my workhorse that can do anything from underbasing to halftones, and maybe one of the higher mesh counts like the 272N.  The most common mesh count we use in the shop right now is the 205N.  In the S threads I want 135S, 150S, 180S, 225S, 300S and finally the 330S.  Now there is no way anyone needs that many different mesh counts maybe you could get by with the 110S, 150S, 225S and 300S without having any real problems, but I really like to have as much control over the process as possible and have the perfect mesh count for any occasion.