How was this printed? Double hits or red under?

[Dottonedan]

Every now and then, I get a customer that shoots me an email back and says, "this aint coming out as planned". Then I find that something has been done way outta wack. He;s a new customer so I don't know much about what he does in terms of printing and quality (but he's got a 6 color auto).

So I get a pic of the print and I'm baffled. How does this happen?  So I gave the print order, called out the pms colors, I confirm that he will be mixing the colors and not just using "whatever is close by" and he's using a 230 on base (Almost solid base by the way since it's going on various colors and all he has is a 6 color auto press.)  He's using 305's on top colors.  So I mention to use semi thin inks so they will bend well. Everything's great.

So he emails back and says this aint working. Now, mind ya, he's got a lot of colors going on so his beef was that the brown type that is made up of %'s of 4 colors is not looking solid. It's a good brown" but not solid and his customer won't buy that. So he wants a revision to add in a brown and take out the highlight. Ok, SO that takes some redoing of all screens. I sent that out last night a couple hours after his email.

Now know, that I had already finished my seps, then decided to cut back in the mid tone by 15% more because he gave me the impression he was printing on a manual and I wanted to compensate for that.  So what he already had, in this pick, was cut back (more than I do for any other customer) on average. So for the revision, I compensated for what I was seeing on the sample print. So I ended up taking out like 45% to compensate for this customers gain.  Sheesh.

He says he did everything as I stated but I'm banking that he either double hit the yellow, or printed the red under the yellow or both. He made the 12% dots look like 70. I don't know how someone does that.   Is it possible that he put yellow in the red screen and printed two yellows?  I donno.
That yellow that is showing through the blue water, that's 7% yellow under that blue.

There seems to be little to no black printing down but there is plenty of black in the seps. The odd thing is, (he did make brown) but jsut not a smooth blended brown. He is printing everything wet on wet after the flash.

Now, he like everything else but the brown letters. Understandably so, since they look choppy or not blending well. This usually is not an issue for me since I use a good mixture of %'s of more than 3 colors that usually blend well. I didn't have a brown available and it's going on various garments so I opted to add in a top white for the bright areas. This is no biggie for the type and enabled me to actually use a brown in the Bull that will look much better than trying to mix it.  There is a banner that is a beige color (mixed before) that came out way too yellow. Now I can use brown in the mix to help get a very good beige. The beige sand came out yellow on previous sample etc.

Still, is he double hitting the yellow?  Even at that, how does 12% become 50-80% and printing red under?

[dirkdiggler]

with a 305 for the top colors those blends should be easy to accomplish.  things that I know would cause that mess, 1.  to much flood pressure, 2. to much squeegee pressure, 3. double strokes (those ruin halftones, IMO),  I think he is not being honest with you.  If anything and he is not experienced I would think everything would be to light on the 305s.  With experience, he should have beautiful half tones on those meshs.  My opinion.

[Lizard]

He needs new squeegees.

[DannyGruninger]

Not sure how much help it would be but if you want.... Send me the seps and I will bust out a printed sample tomorrow for you

[mk162]

Go back even further...how is he outputting his art?  Would it be better to halftone the jobs for him in PS with a 30-50% gain built in and have him output those?

Have him send a pic of the films on a light table or something, or the cut screen.  Something that gives you an idea of what he's doing.

My guess, he's out of his league.

[alan802]

He needs new squeegees.

YEP.  A local shop was having some issues with a sim process job and asked me to come take a look.  I checked the blades 1st and found they were simple awful, I can't believe how dull they were.  He had about 20' just rolled up in a cabinet that was years old, he had his guys cut them up, put them in the holders and the very 1st print was damn near perfect.  We made some adjustments to print angle but 99% of his problems were blade related. 

And I wouldn't doubt there is more to this story.

[Dottonedan]

It would be very good learning tool if I were able to send Danny the seps, to see how it would come out (and I'm sure it would be as it should be), but since this is customer art, I should not send those out for another printer to test print even if it's just a test for learning. Appreciate that gesture though but as you can imagine, it's not in good taste on my end. I'd ask him, but I don't want to  have him feel like I'm calling him a bad printer or something.


I'll ask about the sharp or not sharp squeegees.

mk162,
He did not have a RIP so he asked me to create the halftones in Photoshop. I did, at 1200ppi resolution.

I haven't seen the revised print yet.

Thanks guys.  He did mention last night that he did double hit the yellow (initially) and then changed it up later.

[mk162]

so. many. variables.