New to Auto: how to print high on the back of youth shirts?

[Stinkhorn Press]

That is strange, I can print pretty high on any shirt I toss on my platen I just pull the shirt down lower if I need to go higher hmmm, I'll have to go back and read all the post.

pretty sure this is the limitations of printing the backs of Youth XS on adult platens. There simply isn't anything left to pull anywhere, it's tight all around and to the shoulders.

[sqslabs]

haha! jerzees 29M Youth XS printed on adult 16" platens. we don't have any youth platens yet, but that would help a bit just to be able to rotate the smaller shirts up and around the end of the platen towards the press a little bit.

Your platen size is the main issue here.  If you can't get the back collar to the base of the platen, you're not going to be able to get the print anywhere near the collar no matter what.  You need to either score a set of youth platens for the auto or get one or two for the manual for these instances.

[3Deep]

You might need to get youth platens or at least one just for youth shirts if your printing the same size design on all the shirts, but set the blades and floods to work on the youth platen and then adjust your adult shirts on the other  platen.  I thought about doing this instead of buying a whole set of youth platen's, I pretty much print the an oversize design on youth since they only have a few.

[Frog]

He showed us a youth XS(with a non-distorted image) as an example. He has to be using youth platens. Even Gildan XS's wouldn't stretch on most 14"-16" wide adult boards!

haha! jerzees 29M Youth XS printed on adult 16" platens. we don't have any youth platens yet, but that would help a bit just to be able to rotate the smaller shirts up and around the end of the platen towards the press a little bit.

Okay, so this is on an adult board! Is it stretched to go on and then the design "condenses" when the shirt is removed?
I don't go smaller than youth medium on my adult boards due to distortion in the finished product (though I have worked places that specifically used 50/50 youth on an otherwise 100% cotton job because they stretch more)

[Inkworks]

We start the print off the platen all the time, no problems, even with s-mesh and decent tensions. That and tilt the flood as mentioned above. with plastisol the squeegee should carry enough ink to print a few inches without a full flood, unless you're doing a heavy flood-load print, in which case it may print a little lighter there.

[whitewater]

why not just burn the image higher on the screen?

[jvanick]

you need 2 to 3 inches of travel to properly flood.... plus the carriage can only go so far forward...

if you're doing nape prints, you're 1-2 inches down from the collar typically....

if the collar is just off the platen (in order to account for easy loading and the shoulder seams), it means you need to start the travel of the squeegee past the platen in order to make up for it.

problem here is that you're printing with far too much pressure on your auto.

work on your print technique and get your print pressures into reasonable ranges and you should be fine.

[Stinkhorn Press]

thanks all. good stuff here.

we need to get youth platens.
we need to up our auto printing skills so as to be not abusing the squeegee travel distance.

and in the meantime we can cheat the flood and squeegee closer to one another and/or just not flood the last bits at the top.

[Printficient]

Where are you located?

[Stinkhorn Press]

Where are you located?

mid-ohio, 'bout an hour N of columbus

[244]

Where are you located?

mid-ohio, 'bout an hour N of columbus

If this is an M&R press there is a pretty easy way to flood past the start area of the squeegee print. If it is contact me and I will walk you through how to do it.

[Frog]

Where are you located?

mid-ohio, 'bout an hour N of columbus

If this is an M&R press there is a pretty easy way to flood past the start area of the squeegee print. If it is contact me and I will walk you through how to do it.

RPM

[DannyGruninger]

You said you had rpm machine which I assume has side clamps. Just move your screen out putting the design closer to the edge of pallet. This is easy fix many ways but if you lay a shirt on top of a pallet and the shirt naturally is more narrow then the pallet your pallet is too large. You should be able to slide a shirt collar on a couple inches on a pallet if it's sized right/needed. But ways to fix would be move image up on screen, position screen further outward, and get smaller pallets(suggested due to widths anyway) so you can load deeper. Running more vertical on the print and more angle on the flood can get you a bit more like others mentioned as well.