"He who marches out of step hears another drum." ~ Ken Kesey
Here are some tips on stretching high S mesh counts. 1. Shurloc panels are the best bet to avoid popping the screen. This is because the mesh never touches the channel, or the old burred plastic strips. The mesh rests on the Shurloc plastic strip.2. Newmans were designed for their very thick thread mesh. The inside of the channel is very thin that mesh wraps around, sharper than a butter knife. So any dents, or especially nicks on the inside channel will cut the fine threads. Same with the plastic strip. If it is burred, cracked or nicked, it will cut the threads. Cut a few and it can pop the mesh. So if you are not using Shurlocs you can do the following: Do not use an old Newman with dents and nicks on the inside edge. Secondly use som 600 wet and dry sand paper and smooth out the channels to get any nicks removed. Sand the plastic capture strips the same way. Here is the big tip: Take a 1/2" piece of masking tape the length of the roller. Place the tape so a little less than half is over the channel, and the other is smoothly adhered to the roller on the edge where the mesh will wrap around. Then take a credit card and wrap it around the channel and adhere it to the underside of the channel. This acts as a shock absorber and provides and softer edge that the mesh wears against.3. The other way to preserve the mesh is drop the weft tension, the narrow direction of the frame by 1-2 newtons. Registration is not affected. Typically we have squeegees within 1 to 1.5 inches from the inside of the frame. This creates high momentary tension during the print stroke when they are too close. Round off your squeegees on the end, polish them smooth so that they don't cut the mesh like a knife. I recommend 330S and 350S over 310S. All have 30 micron thread, so having more threads helps with strength. More threads also allows higher tension. Stretch to the midpoint of our tension guidelines, especially on Newmans. Take 225/40, tension is listed at 18-29 newtons. Stretch to 22-24 for initial tensions. At 28 you are at the breaking point of the mesh. Workable tensions in the low to mid 20's works. If you need higher tensions go to T mesh or thicker threads. 150/48 likes an intitial stretch of 22-24 newtons, a 160T can stretch to 30n, a 160HD to 35n. The 150/48 has better opacity, the 160T or HD has good opacity and is a bit tougher, the S just has better print qualities.Al
300S was a bit too fragile for my liking, so although we use S-Mesh for everything else, we just run standard 305 for process prints. Haven't tried the 280S, but would be interested to hear how they run in regards to ink control vs. a 305.
We have done 310s on the rollers in the past, in our early times using thin thread, and it failed a lot as did the 135s. Well we don't get failure out of any of the 135s anymore so we're bringing back the 310s as I believe we can also maintain it. The 310s is very delicate but man, what a great mesh for process word, it holds most all the detail of the 330s but passes ink much more easily in my experience. With care, some fantastic WB/DC sim pro work can be done with that mesh as it allows enough ink volume to penetrate the shirt. We run S mesh of the bolt on M3 rollers and we don't get any abnormal failures. The channels do have to be perfect. That tip on using masking tape is really interesting. Trouble is, it would degrade in the dip tank/reclaim process.
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Topic: S Mesh Question (Read 3519 times)
