180 S mesh.

[Dottonedan]

That art looks ideal for a 135S mesh.  I just got some of those in along with 180.

Gotta say tho. Was very disappointed at the image quality we get with our bulb lamps and an exposure halftone test on the 180S mesh.  I'm SURE our exposure times are off and will adjust that soon. But we didn't hold the 7-10% range on a 45lpi. THAT SUCKS.  Did 75, 65, 55 and 45 lpi.  The best is at the 45 and only in the 10% range did we get decent results.

[Sbrem]

That art looks ideal for a 135S mesh.  I just got some of those in along with 180.

Gotta say tho. Was very disappointed at the image quality we get with our bulb lamps and an exposure halftone test on the 180S mesh.  I'm SURE our exposure times are off and will adjust that soon. But we didn't hold the 7-10% range on a 45lpi. THAT SUCKS.  Did 75, 65, 55 and 45 lpi.  The best is at the 45 and only in the 10% range did we get decent results.

get a real lamp, find an old metal halide somewhere... not being snooty, but why hamper your work?

Steve

[mimosatexas]

I don't have my crap dialed in anywhere close to most of the shops here, and have improved other things along the way, but I can hold 55lpi better with MH than I could even dream of holding 45lpi with tubes on the same mesh counts.

[Dottonedan]

I hear ya.  I will say tho, I think it's in large part, due to just needing proper exposure testing that I've not been involved in as of yet.

I did have them use the 21 step on their 230 and 305's and can tell you we are doing very good there.
Getting 3% at 55lpi on 305 and a good 6% at 55lpi on a 230. but, I feel they are still a tad under. Could be honed in on a little tighter. IMO. Just guessing, since I've not been the one in there doing it.

So even at that, I just expected more out of the S mesh. Since people were saying thy can hold 65lpi on a 180 and even a 150S.   My expectations are that they aren't really holding the 3-5%-95% like a full 65 would be. even with thin thread, it's going to get blocked somewhere. But I was expecting a little better than 10% at 45lpi.  Again, I'm sure we need to hone in on that exposure time and I'll post m results again later.

[Colin]

Yup, tonal compression!

From my iImage I can get standard 60 lpi on a 180s down to 5-10%, even lower if I make my stencil thinner.  But there is definitely some good thread/dot interference issues.  Starlight exposure unit, Murakami T9 with Diazo to help with dot resolution.

Even if I was able to completely spray out and resolve the "dot space" on the front and back of my screen/stencil..... When printed, I would still have the dot issues show up.

High lpi on 180s/150s are better used as base plates that do not have fine dots/dots under 25%.  So issues like that do not show up on the shirt.

If you were to go look at all the shirts printed at 75+lpi or that claim to hold 65lpi on 150/180 mesh, you would still see dot issues - and I have looked at this numerous times...  They are just usually buried well.

[Lizard]

Dan,

We recently tried some 150S in hopes of being able to use as our base plate and not impressed either.   Thread interference is an issue at 55 line even with 20% dots. Maybe someone can shed some light on this. 

[mk162]

150s and 135s are pretty open in my opinion.

If you are looking at halftone bases go up to 225s, maybe 180s.  They are FANTASTIC for that.  I just ran a 12x15" print that was almost a full underbase and the image came out so much thinner, smoother and better looking than last year in a 225s at 65lpi.

We are using our 150s for what we would have used 110's for.  I don's use many 110's, so these won't get much use at all.

I will be ordering more 180s and 225s next week though...they have been a game changer around here.

[ABuffington]

OK, some observations on S mesh.  With more open area it can get too much emulsion on it and affect the <10% halftones.  Try a 1:1 sharp only on S Mesh for bases in the 150S to 225S meshes.  I found using my 1:1 dull method was giving me 30% EOM using Murakami T9.  Too much for halftones.  My 1:1 sharp coats gave me 7-10% EOM and better able to resolve fine details.  The higher the viscosity the emulsion the more you have to watch coating technique.  If you have a thickness gauge it can help dial in your coating technique to get EOM down to the 7% range for good halftone images and good durability.  Vector art I would have higher at 12-15%, especially for discharge to get more squeegee abrasion resistance and a bigger ink well for better discharged color.

Not all printers imaging 4-10% have the same halftones, even if they have the same Epson 9880 or whatever.  The reason is found under a microscope.  Older ink jets lose their ability to control the 6-8 transparent pico liter dots to gather together to form a dot the emulsion can image.  If they don't overlap there is not enough image density to prevent burn through, while an image setter dot will be a perfect dot with sharp edges and 4.0 dmax.

Al