Base white 2 stroked (pressure settings)

[Dottonedan]

Just curious what others are doing.


Do you all leave the pressure where you normally do on all colors...or, when printing. a base, and doing Print-print (two strokes), do you decrease the pressure?  Lets say you normally like 50lbs on all heads, do you decrease pressure when doing two strokes...or leave it at 50 and do the two strokes? 


Maybe different for different ink types.


Before I post more info, I'll hold off.  I would not want my next post to unknowingly or potentially sway opinions or answers based on what is mentioned.

[Colin]

If 2 stroking for added opacity - I will back off as much as I can.  Plastisol ink here.  Otherwise we will create a ton of dot gain.

Now that may only be 5 lbs of pressure - or it could be 20 lbs of pressure - its situational on garment/mesh/blade/ink/heat etc.

Example: 150s mesh base.  Triple duro 60/90/60 blade we will run 30 lbs (or less) of pressure on our 14 color sportsman and closer to 20 lbs on our 12 color sportsman that has shorter arms.

We will go up as high as 50 for 225s mesh halftone base plates.  As everything gets hot, we can back off to about 40.  This is on the 14 color with longer arms (more platen deflection).

What have you got going Dan?

[mimosatexas]

Brand new to our auto (workhorse sabre 8/10), but been testing different stuff everyday.  Using 135S for baseplates typically, 70 duro blade, 10 degree angle, blade speed and stroke speed maxed.  Single stroke takes about 45ish psi to clear 100% cleanly, double stroke takes around 37 to 40 psi, and the finished print is significantly smoother and more opaque with very little gain.  We aren't running a roller squeegee yet, so we are defaulting to the double stroke at the moment.  Have tested everything from 20psi to 80 psi and angles of 5 up to 20.  Going to test other squeegee blades soon as well.

[Stinkhorn Press]

YMMV - all presses are different pressure-wise, duh, disclaimer.

print ub single stroke at 28-30 psi.
print ub double stroke at 26-28 psi BUT ONLY UNTIL it can clear with ONE at 28-30 psi.

top colors start at 30 psi. if a big run or heavy wow will walk down from there.

so basically - everything at 30 psi. with tiny variations. double stroke ONLY if ink has sat too long after being shaken.

[3Deep]

When printing two strokes of white I (depends on screen mesh) try and back off as much as possible to get the ink to just lay on top of the garment but yet have a good opacity and smooth print.

[Dottonedan]

Would you all consider a different approach based the garment loftiness? Lets say a Ring Spun 100% versus a Comfort color?

[Colin]

Base line response:

I will always make adjustments - mesh selection/squeegee/eom/flood depth/flash strength/hot head/etc - based on how the garment behaves and accepts ink.

We just ran close to 10k pcs of next level black garments with different designs.  The garment was fuzzy enough to SOAK up the base white - made it look like it had half the normal coverage.  We put in a hot head before the base white - smoothed out the fibers - better print!  Went to a lower mesh count for the next design and used the hot head- even better print! 

We get to play both Sherlock Holmes and McGyver alllll the time.

This is all part and parcel of this being a craft industry... even though we try and make it into a manufacturing gig

[ZooCity]

Pretty much what Colin said, as usual.

If you aren't satisfied with a plasti UB in one stroke, move to 2 faster and lighter strokes. 

Alternately, you could spend some time dialing in the single stroke but not really worth it for most print runs given how fast presses can double stroke these days.  We'll maybe spend that time for a monster run where single stroking would make the difference.

[JBLUE]

People still double stroke plastisol?.....LOL Thats only for the HSA stuff. Get some thin thread mesh and live the single stroke life. Its been a while and figured I would drop in and say hi!

[Dottonedan]

People still double stroke plastisol?.....LOL Thats only for the HSA stuff. Get some thin thread mesh and live the single stroke life. Its been a while and figured I would drop in and say hi!

We print mostly comfort colors. Loftier garments. A little harder to clear the screen on those in one stroke.  We use hard 70/90/70 printing at near vertical angle. Off contact is at 1/32. I prefer 1/16th but again, these are comfort colors... 

Typically, on the sim process, we are using other garments and we get one stroke out of it. We are already using thin thread, stretched on roller frames at a good tension. 230's relaxed and work harden at about 30 newtons. 305's at about 25N.  The 180's and 156's are even higher.
When I talk to the ink Co's, they say drop the pressure down lower if you need to print two times, so it's not 50lb and 50lb.  Makes sense. They do show me on press,  that the one stroke of 50lb is not enough to clear the screen fully. The 2nd stroke does for sure. So there has to be a better missing ingredient.

[JBLUE]

Dan a 230 is not a thin thread mesh. Did you mean a 225-S? Its a big difference in deposit.

[Dottonedan]

Dan a 230 is not a thin thread mesh. Did you mean a 225-S? Its a big difference in deposit.

No,  There are thin thread 230's.  I tried the S mesh and am not fond of it.  More ink defeats my purpose.

[alan802]

Dan a 230 is not a thin thread mesh. Did you mean a 225-S? Its a big difference in deposit.

No,  There are thin thread 230's.  I tried the S mesh and am not fond of it.  More ink defeats my purpose.

You tried the thin thread 225-230 and didn't like it or you tried various thin thread mesh and didn't like it?

[Dottonedan]

I tried the Murakami 225S and a few other mesh counts. Didn't like the ink lay down and dot detail for what we intend to use it for.


People say, Oh, you can use higher LPI.  Well, yea, I guess you can (if) you always know that your art does not have anything less than X %. I feel,  why worry and have to try to remember where your percentages are...and jump up mesh level when you need to hold.  What if, I want good coverage (and hold small dots).  Maybe I'm a little different in how I approach the separations and much of our work takes advantage of those dots below 10%.



My original intent for getting Murakami S mesh was to test out if I can really get higher lPI like some of the people have said here.  I guess I take the term (holding a 60lpi) on a 225S thread more literally than many do, I suppose. I didn't want to take a chance on the (previous screen room where I worked) using a 225S to get coverage (and then I lose my dots under 5%) at 55lpi. Sparse, or (spread out more across the board),but still losing them. When you use a darker colored ink on a lighter colored background (white base), these missed dots show up as a peppered mesh pattern. At the same time, when I want to blend for sim process, I get better blends from other mesh (for me).  I truly understand that people do different things and get good results in their shop. I support ya. For us, we'd have to go up to that Murakami 310 super duper sensitive mesh as a standard and in our shop today, we don't want to go that way.


Nawh, Murakami has a strong place and apparently works best for many shops. Just not to my personal liking and from what I gather, Tony's not fond of it either.

[alan802]

I've never personally tested whether or not you can "hold higher detail on thin thread versus standard mesh" although literally every expert in this field says it's true.  I don't think Joe has ever told me that directly but I do believe he stated it in his M&R Textile Bible.  What I've tried to go by instead of the 4.5 rule, is with thin thread using more like a 4.0 rule when it comes to lpi.  I wouldn't expect to hold a 5% dot at 60 lpi on anything under a 270/34 and a 225S wouldn't hold the detail well enough for my tastes either using your standard.  At the moment, 270/34 is the highest mesh count I'm using, and it's working very well.  It's not considered a thin thread mesh, but it has a higher % mesh opening than a 225/40 and everything near it on the spec sheet, at 41%.  To give you an idea of what that means, comparably, it's a higher open area than a 156/64.  I can even print some of the nasty blue colors through it with one stroke and I've printed regular white without altering it through the 270.  I don't ask my artist to use 60 as the standard lpi for our high end process work, and I think he stays in the 50's for the most part since I've not seen any type of moire pattern in quite some time.

Not to keep this argument going for any longer than it needs to, but I'll finish with this:  Do you ever do any spot color, normal 3-4 color jobs on dark garments not requiring 55-60 lpi work?  I can understand bypassing what thin thread has to offer in some aspects and using what's best for a specific application which is what it sounds like you're doing, but if you're doing any type of work that most shops are full of, like I asked about above, it would benefit you to at the very least use the best mesh count for those jobs as well.  But if you don't do anything like that then I envy you.  I'd love to do nothing but sim/spot process jobs every day.  This year we've done more of those types than the last 10 years put together and they usually turn out great, without much effort as long as the screens were burned correctly.  And the art has to be decent, which is usually the only thing I have to worry about.  But we are strictly thin thread regardless of lpi and halftone needs.  When people say they would quit the industry if they lost their CTS and had to go back to film (I could convince them otherwise in an hour or two in our shop but that's not the point here), if I had to use standard mesh counts I wouldn't just quit, I'd burn this sum bitch down to the ground and walk away happy.  That might sound hyperbolic, and of course, it is, but seriously, and I don't want anyone to take this the wrong way, but if there is anyone out there that has printed a 150/48 beside a 156/64, or a 120/54 next to a 110/81 and didn't see the benefits of thin thread, then I would say that that person does not know what they're doing with a squeegee and plastisol ink.  Now I'm not saying that if you don't use thin thread then you have no credibility with me, I can see the logic in many shops not using it for many other reasons, I'm just saying if you can't use it and get better results than standard mesh, pretty much across the board, then the problem isn't with the mesh.  There are plenty of good reason TO NOT USE thin thread, for example If you're a WB or otherwise anti-plastisol shop.  And if you can't trust your crew to handle thin thread then you also don't have much of a choice.  And if you don't have a way to stretch it properly, again, you're kind of screwed with thin thread.  And I would also say that with thin thread, it's not near as important to retention/maintain the tension on your screens as it is with standard mesh since, for example, a 150/48 might slip down to 20 newtons in tension yet still perform really well, especially compared to a 156/64 stretched to 40 newtons and maintained to a high standard. 

And if anyone is offended, then read my post again, I'm not "implying" anything or trying to say something cryptically, read it as if you had written it yourself.  And most of what I said is as true as saying the world is round, and of course there are plenty of exceptions to the rules but I have to speak in general/average terms as to not turn a few sentences into a 15,000 word post trying to cover all of the exceptions and what not.  And ALL of what I said really only applies to exclusive plastisol shops.