Screen Tensions....???

[JBLUE]

By the looks and sounds of everything so far screen tensions are pretty far down on the to do list. Fix the other variables and then attack tension. Your shop may not even be able to work with the higher tensions at this point.

A good printer can make a good print with a loose screen or a tight one. A bad printer will make both look like crap. Address your rack, coating, print practices, and tensions as you go. Just use screens that are close to each other in tension while you get the rest situated.

[Rocfrog]

Well I've decided that next week I will tackle the dark room and try and rebuild the "shelves" the correct way using the materials we have on hand, it shouldn't take me more than a day and since we are pretty much dead anyway it'll give me something to do....

FYI I'm loving all the GREAT feedback, I want to thrive in this industry and the more I learn the better off I feel that I'm headed in the right direction!

Nick

[inkman996]

Well I've decided that next week I will tackle the dark room and try and rebuild the "shelves" the correct way using the materials we have on hand, it shouldn't take me more than a day and since we are pretty much dead anyway it'll give me something to do....

FYI I'm loving all the GREAT feedback, I want to thrive in this industry and the more I learn the better off I feel that I'm headed in the right direction!

Nick

Not sure what your position there entitles exactly but me for instance I am the production Manager and a few other hats but the most important thing is getting the work through the system. I am expected to actually make things work better, I do not have to ask permission to do any upgrade as long as its with in reason I am expected to do it its my job. My boss gives me the respect that a person with responsibilities should have. Why hire someone for running production and not letting do what is necessary? I can purchase what is needed with out having to ask unless its big bucks of course. IN your case you mention you are dead, that my friend is normally translated in to up keep and upgrade time in our industry, your bosses should be expecting and allowing you to improve on systems and equipment when time is so available. Even tho we are far from dead we are far from slammed so i have several projects cooking currently, I have to take advantage of slower times to do certain things because you can never take for granted that next week or the week after will be slow.

[Rocfrog]

That's the hard thing about here...there is no real system/structure.....no real "expectations", other than to get the job done. As far as spending monies as far as I know all purchases have to be approved before hand...ALL PURCHASES! Everything here is super loose and no real direction or understanding, it just kind of functions. It is really hard for me to explain the operations of this place to others (my wife included) unless you work here or have worked here, it is a very odd situation and very hard place to work.....

Nick

[Rocfrog]

Ok so I have a question about the EOM......

Everyone is saying that we need to flip our screen so when they dry we get a good EOM due to gravity. Well I went out and checked our current screens by running my finger on them to see if i could notice and sort of difference between coated and non-coated surfaces (ink gasket area). Well I checked the shirt side and couldn't feel a difference at all. And after a few i thought about it and thought that based on this discussion I should be able to feel the "ink gasket" on the ink side because technically the screens are backwards. So I checked the ink side the same way and still nothing....I couldn't feel the "edge" of the emulsion at all....

So with that said....is there a way to accurately measure this with out any fancy tools? What else could be wrong here? Because at this point I don't think flipping them is going to fix that. We coat our screens 2:1 for anything below 230 and 1:1 for anything above that......

Nick

[alan802]

You have no EOM basically, you need more emulsion on the screen and that will help with some of your issues.  It won't be the only fix you need but it's a start.  A good way to tell if you what 100 microns eom is going to feel like is to set a piece of paper on the table and rub your finger across the edge and feel that "step" between the table and the piece of paper.  That's what you're going to look for on your screens, maybe not quite that much but half would be good.  You'll want it to feel like that on your lower mesh counts, but your mid to high mesh counts need to feel less step than the sheet of paper, but still noticeable. 

You need to use the glisten method of coating.  I'll see if I can find the thread on it somewhere on this forum so we don't have to retype all that.  The glisten method gets you in that 15-25% EOM ratio that you need for most of your screens.  We shoot for 20% for most everything except 86-135 where we are around 30-50% and 230's and 305's we try to stay around 12-15% to keep our exposure times down a bit to hold that finer detail since we use film from inkjet and not imagesetter or CTS.

[abchung]

For a quick simple experiment to see if flipping over the frame over will help is to tape some old cut squeegee on the shirt side so the emulsion does touch the wood. If the squeegee is too thick, use some coins.

My guys did not believe in it until I have to prove it to them..


Good luck
Anthony

[mooseman]

So with that said....is there a way to accurately measure this with out any fancy tools? What else could be wrong here? Because at this point I don't think flipping them is going to fix that. We coat our screens 2:1 for anything below 230 and 1:1 for anything above that......

Nick

Nick, why not simply sacrifice a little emulsion and one screen cycle by taking a screen with the same mesh that you have coated with your 2:1 or 1:1 process and coat a second screen  3 or 4 times on the shirt side and 2 or 3  times on the squeegee side  JUST to see if you get any different results in the EOM / finished stencil.
You then could evaluate the screen (stencil) you are producing now vs the stencil you might get with the 4 /2 coating method.
A subjective review then might help you see a difference given the two methods and indicate that a change in coating process did or didn't change your results.
 It might indicate the root of the problem lives somewhere other than you 2:1 or 1:1 coating process and move off to another review or may get you the results you are looking for.
Only cost you a few pennies of emulsion and an hour or so work.
respectfully
mooseman

[Frog]

Coating Screens for Maximum Effect, The Glisten Method.

http://www.theshirtboard.com/index.php/topic,2621.0.html

[Rocfrog]

once again guys, this is GREAT information. Thank you again for helping me out.

I was hoping that the stack we had in the darkroom was not coated yet but I get they got coated on Friday, so we have a few that need to be reclaimed so in the mean time I will try and redo the "dry rack" so it is to hold the screens the proper way and I will show this "glisten" method to the person that coats them and we'll go from there....

I'm excited to see the results!

Nick

[inkman996]

Alan gave great advice but make sure when you check the edge of the emulsion its on a developed screen, your looking for a crisp edge where the stencil is, with 110 or even 156 you can see the OEM by eye easily with out feeling the edge. Trying to guage your OEM on a coated non burned screen is hard with out the right tools.

[Gilligan]

Alan gave great advice but make sure when you check the edge of the emulsion its on a developed screen, your looking for a crisp edge where the stencil is, with 110 or even 156 you can see the OEM by eye easily with out feeling the edge. Trying to guage your OEM on a coated non burned screen is hard with out the right tools.

Even still, 0% Eom vs 30% EOM is pretty easy to see the difference.  I can see our 100% EOM's just by looking at the dry emulsion on the screen.  Nice and dark blue.

[inkman996]

Alan gave great advice but make sure when you check the edge of the emulsion its on a developed screen, your looking for a crisp edge where the stencil is, with 110 or even 156 you can see the OEM by eye easily with out feeling the edge. Trying to guage your OEM on a coated non burned screen is hard with out the right tools.

Even still, 0% Eom vs 30% EOM is pretty easy to see the difference.  I can see our 100% EOM's just by looking at the dry emulsion on the screen.  Nice and dark blue.

You can but on our 305's and 260's which we use a ton of you can't accurately tell anything on just a plain coated dried screen.

[3Deep]

Wow this was just to much to read and I may be saying something that has already been said, but you hit a key word "sport store" and 20 years old.  You just told me that is what your company prints or started out printing and that type of printing was and still to some degree been heavy printing thru low mesh counts with 2 to 3 colors.  Sports such as football, baseball, basketball, softball etc tend to lean toward heavy printing for durability (that has change some now because of dryfit which needs a thinner ink or waterbase).  I might be wrong but sounds like your company was sports printing and just started taking more detail jobs and using the same process as they did for sports.  You might not have a screen tension problem but a problem with the style of printing you all are doing, fine graphics with halftones and thin lines, high detail needs to be printed with higher mesh counts and even your screen coating (EOM) may need to change.  We print both styles here in our shop sports and high detail and sports like baseball and football the graphics are 95% spot with only a few halftones on 87,110,137 and I coat those screen a little thicker,  High end stuff 110 to 305 mesh, like I said someone may have mention this already, but check your printing process and separate the two..Oh and squeegees, 60, 70 duro standard printing 60/90/60 , 70/90/70 high end printing etc.

Darryl

[Rocfrog]

Wow this was just to much to read and I may be saying something that has already been said, but you hit a key word "sport store" and 20 years old.  You just told me that is what your company prints or started out printing and that type of printing was and still to some degree been heavy printing thru low mesh counts with 2 to 3 colors.  Sports such as football, baseball, basketball, softball etc tend to lean toward heavy printing for durability (that has change some now because of dryfit which needs a thinner ink or waterbase).  I might be wrong but sounds like your company was sports printing and just started taking more detail jobs and using the same process as they did for sports.  You might not have a screen tension problem but a problem with the style of printing you all are doing, fine graphics with halftones and thin lines, high detail needs to be printed with higher mesh counts and even your screen coating (EOM) may need to change.  We print both styles here in our shop sports and high detail and sports like baseball and football the graphics are 95% spot with only a few halftones on 87,110,137 and I coat those screen a little thicker,  High end stuff 110 to 305 mesh, like I said someone may have mention this already, but check your printing process and separate the two..Oh and squeegees, 60, 70 duro standard printing 60/90/60 , 70/90/70 high end printing etc.

Darryl

Yes we are a Sports store first! 99.9% of everything we print is High School related with a few Little leagues mixed in. Most of all our printing happens on our 156-160 mesh screens unless it has a halftone in it then it get's printed on a 230. We have a few 110's and a few 305's but those rarely get used. Other than our number screens for The Ultimate Numbering System which are all 110mesh. 90% of our jobs are for "teams" so we usually do numbers less than 30 per run, unless it's "spirit wear" and then they can range but usually never go above 100-150. And of that 90% of it is one to two color prints, we do have one school that we do quite a bit of four color stuff, but we only do SPOT printing...we don't even have process inks.....

The only "high detail" (as you put it) has been stuff that I have "played" with and/or "tried" to print. Unless your counting basic halftone's, which I try and use as often as I can because they can help make a one/two color design stand out more.

If anyone wants to see some of the stuff we print this is a link to my personal website that has some examples of what we have done....
http://creativenick.carbonmade.com/projects/4510568#1

Nick