100 lpi on I-Image STEll

[Dottonedan]

Just for giggles, I printed 100 lpi the other day to see how they would come out and how much of a dot gain tonal curve would be needed to maintain the openings of the shadow tones.  It came out super smooth like a continuous tone image.  It looks beautiful. I get all warm and fuzzy inside when I see results like this.

Dots were still there under a loop, and still very clean and clear but visibly merged together near the 90-99 range with the naked eye. To give you an idea, If you wanted to try and screen print this on paper and hold the small dots you would use a 500 mesh count. I'm just digging a little to see where the limitations are. For example, in this case, I've opened up the curve so much in the shadow tones to do this 100lpi  that you reach a point of diminishing return. In other words, I've pretty much maxed out my curve in that shadow range of 95-99% at 100 lpi range. Pretty cool to achieve that.

This was off of an STEll with 3 heads. This D2 ink is truly super opaque. At that small you would think the ink is too thin of an application but this would still expose well, holding everything with a good dual cure. You would need a very this coat of emulsion to maintain that small of a dot in the emulsion with dual cure but people do it for flat stock printing. I think it could be ideal for shops doing screen printed poster prints intended for super fine printing if there are some that still do this. Even with flat stock printing, back in my day we were only doing 85lpi.  I assume most are all digital full color these days anyhow.

[abchung]

I would love to know if laser or led cts can give better resolution. If yes, how come many don't pick that option?

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[jvanick]

I like the laser idea a LOT... especially that one from that company in germany or switzerland...
pretty cool stuff.

[TCT]

I like the laser idea a LOT... especially that one from that company in germany or switzerland...
pretty cool stuff.

Signtronic, Swiss I believe. They use to have a satellite office here in MN believe it or not!

[zanegun08]

I would love to know if laser or led cts can give better resolution. If yes, how come many don't pick that option?

Because an I-Image is $60-70k, and the Signtronix / CST DLE-TEX is + $175k

The Signtronix and CST are also slow in my opinion, as it is exposing rather than printing with a fast expose.

Also, if you did get one of these, good luck finding a tech when it goes down.  Supposedly there are a few shops in Virginia with them, but beyond that, the cost for entry, and ROI prohibitive.

I'll take a small auto and a wax / ink CTS over just a Laser CTS.  If money were no options the Signtronix is great, set 10 screens in, and forget it, go print a job, and come back with your next screens exposed and washed out. 

http://www.douthittcorp.com/STMTEX.htm  once these hit the 80k range, then we are talking, but so many moving parts scares me, keep things simple.

[dirkdiggler]

I-image ST 48k

[pwalsh]

Just for giggles, I printed 100 lpi the other day to see how they would come out and how much of a dot gain tonal curve would be needed to maintain the openings of the shadow tones.  It came out super smooth like a continuous tone image.  It looks beautiful. I get all warm and fuzzy inside when I see results like this.

Dots were still there under a loop, and still very clean and clear but visibly merged together near the 90-99 range with the naked eye. To give you an idea, If you wanted to try and screen print this on paper and hold the small dots you would use a 500 mesh count. I'm just digging a little to see where the limitations are. For example, in this case, I've opened up the curve so much in the shadow tones to do this 100lpi  that you reach a point of diminishing return. In other words, I've pretty much maxed out my curve in that shadow range of 95-99% at 100 lpi range. Pretty cool to achieve that.

This was off of an STEll with 3 heads. This D2 ink is truly super opaque. At that small you would think the ink is too thin of an application but this would still expose well, holding everything with a good dual cure. You would need a very this coat of emulsion to maintain that small of a dot in the emulsion with dual cure but people do it for flat stock printing. I think it could be ideal for shops doing screen printed poster prints intended for super fine printing if there are some that still do this. Even with flat stock printing, back in my day we were only doing 85lpi.  I assume most are all digital full color these days anyhow.

Dan:  I think that it's great to have a computer to screen imaging system that's capable of producing screens at such high resolution.  My advice for any Garment Decorator with a high resolution CTS system from M&R or another manufacturer who's heading down the road to print at 100+ LPI on Tee Shirts, is that they should stand back from the screen after it's been imaged and let out a collective shout of "WOW" this $h!t is incredible. 

The next thing they should do, is immediately return to Planet Earth, and get their head back in the game of producing garments at resolutions / line counts that make money.  The reality is, that it's possible to print tee shirts at 85 or 100LPI but where's the payback?  IMHO unless a screen printer has a client willing to pay more for garments printed at these elevated line counts they should perfect their craft producing garments at 55 or 65 LPI, and get serious about taking care of business and making some money.

[Dottonedan]

Your're right Peter, but I did mention that

A, the only area of screen printing where this would apply would be for flat stock printing such as posters, not Apparel.

B, It was just for giggles to see the results. As mentioned, I printed the test on photo paper.