An Ah Hah moment on tension.

[blue moon]

no time, but ink does not get pushed through the mesh, it sort of falls out. The force to overcome is the one that binds the ink internally as the mesh always has some ink left on it, thus the internal tack of the ink is the largest factor. Mesh pulls out of the ink deposit this is where the tension comes into play. if it's too low, it will not release cleanly. Thinner mesh gets away with lower tension, whereas the thicker mesh needs more energy (higher tension, thus more springiness) to get out of the also thicker deposit.

at least this is what I understand . . .

pierre

[Dottonedan]

we are running 150LX (S equivalent, but with fused knuckles) and can, and have, run our press at max flood and stroke speed with white ink. Final results is as good as any deposit I've seen. I think it can get just a touch better and deliver that elusive one stroke white on black shirts. We can do it on the royals in some cases, but blacks are not yet there. All our screens are S mesh and they are in 20-25 N range. We print regularly with 225S mesh for underbases and get a nice one hit deposit.

pierre

Re: max flood/stroke speed.  How much is that per hr?

[Doug S]

I can't get into the technical details of the different mesh counts or thin thread vs thicker but I can say that we have slowly converted all to s mesh here with an exception of a few 156's we have left.  The other day I was forced to use a 156/64 instead of a 150 s thread due to a busy week and not having time to reclaim as often as usual.  I noticed a difference right away.  I had to double stroke the 156 to get the same look as the 150 single stroked.  I don't measure the tension as often as I need to but the last time I checked most of my 150's are at 20n and still print like a charm.  We have 5 mesh counts here and they are 150, 180, 200, 225 and 280.  Like Dan said it's great not to have so many different counts in house.  This is a great topic.

[brandon]

Depending on ink consider the printing environment. Being almost all water base we prefer thinner thread which does have lower tension but more open area. And no need to flood which increases evaporation. We found we had to almost always flood on "thicker" thread which defeated the purpose like snake eating tail

[Colin]

Brandon:  Would you have the same results up here in the northwest as you do in Louisiana?

[blue moon]

we are running 150LX (S equivalent, but with fused knuckles) and can, and have, run our press at max flood and stroke speed with white ink. Final results is as good as any deposit I've seen. I think it can get just a touch better and deliver that elusive one stroke white on black shirts. We can do it on the royals in some cases, but blacks are not yet there. All our screens are S mesh and they are in 20-25 N range. We print regularly with 225S mesh for underbases and get a nice one hit deposit.

pierre

Re: max flood/stroke speed.  How much is that per hr?

fastest we load with flashing is probably around 1200 per hour. 850 is no big deal. . . we had an order last year that was 1,000 pieces on a medium colored garment. One side was 2 colors plus flash, the other side was two colors only. We went from staged on carts, set up, register, print, restack, setup other side, register, print, box and back to the dock in 2 hours and 15 min. That's 900 pieces per hour NET!

pierre
p.s. this is not what happens on every job, but it happens. Our average printing speed on most medium sized jobs is pretty close to 1k per hour.

[brandon]

Brandon:  Would you have the same results up here in the northwest as you do in Louisiana?

Hey Colin,

Back then I worked with people that were not capable of handling thinner thread screens and also not understanding them. Almost the same for the rollers we had. The other owner hated, I mean hated having staff "waste time" bring screens back up to tension. As others have noted you might as well be using statics. Anyway, at that point in time we would flood every single screen that was water base. On larger runs over time we would start to have issues. In the middle of a swamp we now just print water base all day like plastisol on thin thread. No point to flood as it is not needed. Not sure about the Pacific NorthWest but I assume with less room to evaporate you can print water base like plastisol. If near the Puget Sound it is humid just not hot so I am sure you would be fine. But if using tight rollers and have correct tension I assume the results would be the same even without thin thread as long as the open area is there.

[alan802]

This community has come such a long way.  Just 2 years ago we all knew about thin thread and many of us were using it, but now seems like the vast majority of members here understand (at least to a degree that it makes sense to them) how all these variables are inextricably linked to one another and how they can affect the big picture...getting shirts down the belt as efficiently as possible and print quality.  We routinely run dark garments with large spot colors at 850-900/hr and it's no big deal and when you do that day after day for an entire year you're able to do the same amount of work with one auto that many shops do with two.  I've despised double stroking (only on the auto) and running a job with the base PFPF since way before I knew how to use thin thread mesh, and the thread diameter is such a huge variable that it floors me to think the majority of the shops we compete with haven't a clue about how important a variable it is.

Now if we can keep pushing the envelope to incorporate squeegee speed and pressure there won't be much use for some of the other tools and techniques that I don't agree with using, but I don't want to open that can of worms right now.

Awesome thread to read.  It makes me very happy happy happy.