screen printing > Ink and Chemicals

How does one stop filibration on......

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jsheridan:
Someone is using to much squeegee pressure, not enough flood pressure to fill the open areas and low EOM screens to put the ink IN the shirt.

Coat some screens with a high EOM and re-shoot the base. Load the press with some dark test shirts.

Adjust your flood so it's just above the screen, slow it down a bit to ensure it fills the open areas of the mesh. Back off on squeegee pressure and print once.. adjust pressure down and print again.. only print each shirt twice. Keep indexing to next clean shirt and keep adding pressure until you clear the screen with a single pass. This is your printing pressure. Now adjust your print speed. You want to stroke as fast as the ink will allow you (BTW.. Triangle phoenix white is thick and generally crappy ink, thin it down a little with reducer and it'll print 10 times better) Add speed until the screen no longer clears, back off the speed a bit and you should be ready to print. If all went well you won't need to P-F-P as this is the recipe for a single hit white.

ebscreen:
While all of the above is true, in the end it some down to the fabric.
I've meant to research yarn types for some time, anyone have a resource?

Soft fuzzy fabric with a  million yarn ends sticking up will never print as
well as a smooth jersey knit surface, assuming plastisol.

 I can setup a print that looks absolutely stellar on a Gildan or any standard shirt
or my favorite, Sun Apparel (30 singles yarn). Throw an American Apparel 2102 on there
and it will never look as good, plain and simple.

When it comes to AA I drop white down to 125. Yep, 125. That is if we can't discharge for
some reason, which is our preferred method.  This print:




Is a discharge underbase, 230 colors and 180 highlight white, no flash. You can't see softness, but it's
our best results for non-straight-discharge on AA.


Do yourself a favor and try some Sun Apparel 30500's. While it won't help if the client demands
a certain brand, it will definitely give you an idea of the difference fabric makes. 30 singles.

ZooCity:
All good thoughts above.  If you want to have any hope of winning the battle v. fibrillation you need that underbase to go down in a single hit and you need it up on top of those fibers.  Pierre's method with the double, high tpi screens is awesome but not every job has the room for this of course.

Try a 150s mesh screen and coat it 2/1 with the round end of the coater, nice and slow.  You should see a glassy, smooth finish on the print side of the stencil.  Properly coated and exposed, the 150 will hold 55lpi dots so you can still use a percentage ub if you like.  Alternatively you could just drop your mesh count down with standard thread mesh and get a similar effect.  And yes, fill that stencil don't just flood ink over top the screen. 

I'm not an auto operator but I do just what John described on the manual until I get the screen 100% cleared with only as much pressure as necessary.  Then I have to rely on concentration and muscle memory to complete the job consistently.  The static variables of your auto are your friend when printing so take advantage and record them when you get success. 

The white actually could be a big part of the problem.  While most white inks are "just fine", you do need something that's easy printing and will clear the mesh but still have enough body to matte down the fibers.  A stiff, tacky ink might matte those fibers down but require a triple hit to clear the screen whereas a based down white might clear first time yet not have enough body to hold the fibers down.   You'll have to find that balance in your underbase ink especially.  My tip for you here is use a high-quality white and not only stir but actually warm that ink before printing.  We use Epic Quick from Wilflex and warm it to around 100 degrees F before stirring and printing and reload with fresh warm ink as needed.  Your white should "roll" in front of the squeegee like a little ink tsunami, shearing the ink you pre-loaded the stencil with and using it's "hydrology" or whatever you might call it to assist this.   If it's dragging around like refrigerated peanut butter, get it out of there. 

Long post, but to wrap it up, you're seeing fibers because the first hit is actually giving the fibers a foundation to hold onto while leaving their ends sticking up.  Second hit is just adding another layer to the foundation and maybe lightly coating the fiber ends.  You need to knock those suckers down on the first hit.  Then, if necessary the second underbase screen or the top colors themselves will fill in the gaps and smooth it out.  You can only make it so good on this type of fabric though. 

Nice print eb!  I've heard about Sun before and meaning to check 'em out.  Do they have distribution? 

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