One Stroke Printing

[ZooCity]

I've found that most people fail at this because they refuse to use a low enough mesh count because it's looked down upon to have low mesh in the shop by many these days. 

It's really simple if you break it down, it takes a certain volume/thickness ink deposit to cover the shirt fibers and look opaque. 

Very well spoken.   You can hit the more open mesh once or the less open mesh twice is what it boils down to in many cases, presuming everything else is on point of course.   

I think the benefit of the thinner thread mesh out there is, as you alluded, the combination of increased open area and the need for less pressure to print. Goes hand in hand with a hard fill and a faster, lighter print stroke with a sharp blade.... interdependent variables indeed.

But side by side using comparable mesh like very high tension roller mesh (std thread thickness, 45 n/cm+) and low tension S mesh (thin threads, 24 n/cm avg.) they can both make almost the exact same print using different methods.

[Inkworks]

@Alan802:



Thanks, that re-affirms some of my findings is my recent foray. It seems that as with most things in this business it comes down to a variety of variables and you really need to have most of them in-line before you find success.

Any chance on expanding on your flooding techniques? I know you mentioned before that you often flood much harder than most would, and that seems to make sense. i assume you flood with the platens down on the auto too?

Cheers,
jon

[tancehughes]

I'm going to chime in here..

I agree with Alan and what he said was very well spelled out. In my experience, roller frames with high tension, a hard flood, and quick print speed are the best for one stroke white. We print one stroke white all the time, no highlight white. I was checking some of our 110's and had a couple around 48 newtons, one even at 58 newtons, and boy those screens can pop out some good white.

Yes many other variables can come in to play and normally, something always pops up. If you can can get a high tensioned roller frame with a good stencil, you'll be on the way to one stroke.

[Gilligan]

I think he's also just looking to make sure to CLEAR the screen in one stroke, not necessarily get a "one hit white".  Though the principles are very similar.

[alan802]

I forgot to mention the hard flood and also the role that tension plays.  Our flood bars come down on the mesh so that when you rub your hand on the shirt side of the screen, you can feel the floodbar.  Now you can go too hard with the flood and end up doing damage to your screens.  I'll see if I can get a picture of what a "filled" stencil looks like on our auto.  Depending on the ink, sometimes you can actually see the image being printed after the fill stroke, but not usually on white ink.

Tension tension tension...If all you have is 15-20 newton screens, just stop wasting your time.  Maybe you catch lightning in a bottle once and get what you're looking for but I've had better results as my tension levels got higher.  The best we ever did was on a 102N newman roller mesh on M3 @ 60 newtons.  I was printing at 18" per second with a Manny blade and the print was perfect, on black shirts.  The arwork was text, not that small but not that big either.  The 102N is a thick thread but fairly large open area mesh count, with a thick stencil you have to be careful, you can throw down a ton of ink.  I stretched up some 123/70's late yesterday but I think that mesh count might be a good one for one hits.  I'll keep all informed.

[ScreenFoo]

Just realized neither this, nor the earlier thread on the one hit white subject never mentioned IMHO one of the most important variables--the substrate. 
Try one hitting a performance jersey, and try the same with a potato sack and you'll see what I mean. 

Smooth, dense, clean fabric will drastically reduce the amount of effort and technique required to get a print down in one stroke that looks good.

BTW Alan--I run a 125/70 Saati Hitech coated 2/1 or 2/2 for most poly/nylon stuff on the manual--works like a dream with everything else nailed down. 
I have not played too much with tensions above 40 N/cm on the auto, although even mid tensions with standard EOM yield a very opaque first down print.  Interested to hear your take on the count.

[alan802]

Yes Foo, that is a big one.  We've had jobs that had 100% cotton and then 50/50's within the same order and print, and it's really amazing at how much better or worse the same exact print and parameters can look.  I like test printing on these 50/50 red tees that we screwed up a few years ago because if I can get the white to pop on those then when we get to the order there are no surprises and it looks great.  I hate 50/50's, they just seem to suck/absorb the ink.