What have you printed lately?

[alan802]

This print could have been so much better if we had not had to keep the color count to a minimum.


Def nothing cool about this one but we did it as a one-hit white so I snapped a pic.

[bulldog]

Alan...what mesh gave you the one hit? Looks good.

[alan802]

Are hands were also tied with this one due to the artist who designed it loses his mind if one tiny detail is not like he made it.  He still likes to bring up how they used to use this other shop in town but the powers that be have chosen to use us and he doesn't like it so he tries his best to make us look bad.  The funny thing is the shop he wants to use is one of the worst quality shops in town.  They've double-stroked every screen of every print for the last 20 years and I've seen a lot of their work over the years and there is no telling what they would have done with some of the designs we've done for these people.  They are always full of small details that I know would be difficult if you double-stroked everything.

[alan802]

Alan...what mesh gave you the one hit? Looks good.

I believe it was a 90/71.  Small chance it was a 120/54 but I doubt we would have gotten that opacity with one stroke on that color shirt with the 120.

[Underbase37]

Nice work all.

Alan, that's some big chunks of one hit white. Wow, and on a maroon shirt , nice going. How thick of micron stencil?

Murphy37

[alan802]

Nice work all.

Alan, that's some big chunks of one hit white. Wow, and on a maroon shirt , nice going. How thick of micron stencil?

Murphy37

Not very thick relatively speaking but the EOMR is higher than the recommended ratio, 40'ish% is what I'm seeing on average for those lower mesh counts, probably 40 microns EOM max on the average 90/71.  It's been a few months since I've measured EOM but we haven't changed anything except I'm coating more screens now since we're so busy.  We coat a 90/71 1/1 with the round edge and when I measure those they are almost always in the 35-45 micron range.  For those of you interested, squeegee blade, mesh, pressure and speed are what I'd recommend focusing on most.  Soft, sharp blade, open mesh count with enough volume to hold enough ink to cover, very little pressure and FAST squeegee speeds.  A good short bodied white that will shear at higher speeds is very important too, but unless you're using someone's junk econo white I think most everyone will have a white ink on the shelf that will give you a chance.  One thing that surprised me at the show last week was the print speed on all the autos I looked at.  I saw them all at their fastest print speed and IT SEEMED that none of them approached 30"/sec and most were probably around 20"/sec max and when doing one-hits, we are at 25-30"/sec most of the time.  Maybe my eyes were off and not being in a print environment threw my perception off but I swear that none of them seemed to get above 20.

[jvanick]

Printed these today for the Global Campaign Against IEDs concert next weekend in Virginia.  The flute player is a artist's rendition of Ian Anderson/Jethro Tull...

6 color sim process.. 50lpi...
200 mesh underbase, 300 for everything else
Seps by Scott from MySeps.com

[alan802]

The bottom print is the one we did yesterday but I wanted to show it's brightness up against a plastisol print.  It's Matsui's latest version of discharge white through a 150/48, one stroke, SOFT duro blade.

[screenprintguy]

Nice D White bro. How did it compare to the older white they made as far as staying liquid instead of cottage cheese?

[alan802]

It didn't get cheesy and kept it's consistency throughout the run, but, when mixing a larger quantity and having to put a lot of activator in it is very hard to mix together traditionally.  It's best to poor the activator into water and have it dissolve, but all you WB/DC guys know how to do that already.  It stayed extremely soft, but very short bodied a lot like whipped cream and not runny peanut butter and that's a problem on the auto on longer runs but it didn't dry up in the mesh at all over 240 pieces.  When I was testing this stuff originally I walked away from the manual several times for minutes at a time without flooding the stencil and it cleared completely with two strokes so dry-in was no issue with this ink.

And then there was this one, I was not looking forward to this job and was worried we'd lose money on it when I saw what was charged, but we managed to get it on and off the press in 45 minutes.  9 color left chest, really small left chest at that which I didn't like at all, if we would have increased the size it would have been much easier to hold all that little detail, but the customer gets what they want.  Rumor going around was the customer was ok to make this a one color print because we were doing it on a one day turn but some brilliant employee said it would be no problem to go ahead and do it as a full color print.  You guys see what I'm dealing with here?  It's amazing that we're busting at the seams because it seems like almost daily two of our six sales people try to sabotage the entire process by accepting stuff like this and it's like they are TRYING to make things as difficult as possible.  If I were trying to hurt the company I worked for as a sales person I couldn't do as good of a job as some around here do at hurting the bottom line.  And some of you want to work with family?  Think it out and call me before you do it.

And no, I will not do a closer pic on this one   I openly admit this was not our best effort because we practically gave this one away and I was not about to put in max effort on something we're losing money on.

[jsheridan]

It's amazing that we're busting at the seams because it seems like almost daily two of our six sales people try to sabotage the entire process by accepting stuff like this and it's like they are TRYING to make things as difficult as possible. 

that's easy.. they make more money on the large colors jobs, they don't care what it does to your production.

[Underbase37]

Nice work Alan, don't beat yourself up so much.

Murphy37

[alan802]

It's amazing that we're busting at the seams because it seems like almost daily two of our six sales people try to sabotage the entire process by accepting stuff like this and it's like they are TRYING to make things as difficult as possible. 

that's easy.. they make more money on the large colors jobs, they don't care what it does to your production.

The two main culprits aren't commissioned.  The main reason is they haven't a clue, after screen printing for 8 years almost, how labor intensive it is and think it's like DTG and you just press print and all these colors come out.  Trust me, I've tried to educate the sales staff but sometimes people can't be taught.  I'd love for them to work in production for a few days and even then I wonder if they'd learn anything. 

[jsheridan]

  I'd love for them to work in production for a few days and even then I wonder if they'd learn anything.

those types eh..

I had those back when i was at logos, we tried to teach them, had them work in production from art to boxing and still... in the end I was just told to hold their hand best I could and get it done.

[mimosatexas]

That came out great Alan!  Especially considering the time crunch and internal frustrations.