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| honky |
 Posted: Mon Apr 07, 2003 10:58 pm |
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Joined: 23 Mar 2003
Posts: 14
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I know this forum/thread is based around the screening of decks but I was wondering if anyone with more screenprinting experience than myself could help me. I post here first as there some people on this list that know there shit & dont front up with attitude that seems to plague newbies on other printing forums. if it matters yes I do skate & have a 25th anniversary Cab deck running indies etc.
I have started printing my own T-shirts [will move on to decks later] I have worked out a good method to getting my screens all nice & acurate. The biggest problem I have now is that when I print shirts the ink doesnt seem to be coming through 'thick' enough. I have been printing white ink on black shirts & the ink is coming out quite thin across the fabric. kinda like a well printed shirt that has been washed 1000 times. I was wondering if anyone could shed some light on this
I will go into a bit more detail regarding my setup as I dont know if this is a 'technical' issue or simply a 'your not squeeging right fool' issue. And these are the things I think may be an issue
1. this Ink itself is [admittedly] a cheaper [I think] brand Derivan fabric paint in white. Bought from an art supply store so I dont know if this could be a factor.
2.I am using 44TT [or something like that] weave screen I was curious as to whether going down to a 30ish/looser weave would 'let more ink through' so to speak. it also allows for metallic inks to pass as well which would be sweet.
3. I was wondering if the height the screen is suspended above the printing medium has any effect on the 'thickness' of the printed ink. I have the screen about 8mm off the shirts would raising [or lowering?] this be liable to help?
I suppose if it isnt any of these [or they are not liable to help] then it comes down to my squeegee style. I am putting what I think is heaps of ink on the edge of the screen & pulling across with a fair bit of angle & downward pressure & only doing 1 pass [I have found double or triple passes make the screen move slightly & hence make everything slighlty off & look sh*t, so would prefer not to rely on multiple passes].
well this is a hellishly long post & I thank anyone who took the time to read it
any feedback would be really appreciated & any help would be fantastic. Obviously I am going to try & work this out on my own but if anyone can verify any of these points as possible causes that would save me stacks of time.
Thanks
Honky
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| ohio |
| Posted: Mon Apr 07, 2003 11:41 pm |
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Joined: 14 Nov 2002
Posts: 104
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shit this is easy shit to answer.
first of the t- shirts are printed with an ink that is called PLASTISOL. All shirts are printed this ink. first get plastisol ink at a local SCREEN PRINTERS supply store not a art store! If you are printing white on black shirts you will need to do one coat then flash it. Flashin it is done with a flash cure unit, it is a heatin element that dryes the ink i a few seconds so that you can do another coat the more coats the more opacity there will be this mean it will be solid white. next, off contact distance which is how far the screen is from the shirt should be about 1/8 of and inch you obviously are from europe so i dont know what that is its not much. angle of the squeege os abpit half way between horizontal and vertical. screens are measure in mesh counts, this means you will see screen suppliers that sell screens with 100, 150 ,200 all the way up to 400 mesh . this means that there are lets say for the 200, 200 little square that the ink can pass thru per inch, got it! fuck!!!!!
anyhow you have alot to learn but look up flash cure units, manual screen printers such as a 4 color unit, and conveyor dyyers. yourre luck i just got home from skating and i finally learned backside board slides on the falt bar over the pyramid. and i wouldnt go as far as saying there is no attitude in this forum and people dont tell all because there is a shit load of that going on here because i know alot of people email me privately about shit and i can believe the shit i hear, such as " i didnt want to post this on the forum because i didnt want people that live near me to start screening there own boards i want to make money off it" funny eh. suck a cock i will tell all and post all and show all i dont care because some day youre gonna blink youre eyes and wake up and its all gonna be over you gonna be like 60 and say shit that was fun. so dont be gay. |
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| honky |
| Posted: Mon Apr 07, 2003 11:51 pm |
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Joined: 23 Mar 2003
Posts: 14
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haha.
man you sound like you are buzzing off your head on that boardslide. Top work.
Not from Europe, Australia, better country but still metric. None the less I will work out what 1/8 inch is in metric & set up according to that. plastisol huh..am going to have to talk to my supplier guy & see what he has to say about this.
Goddamn another step in the process this shit never ends does it
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| honky |
| Posted: Tue Apr 08, 2003 1:03 am |
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Joined: 23 Mar 2003
Posts: 14
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ps. if anyone else wants to offer opinions on this please feel free.
the more response the better as far as I am concerned
cheers |
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| honky |
| Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2003 11:04 pm |
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Joined: 23 Mar 2003
Posts: 14
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Well on a followup [yeah I know, to my own post, bit l4m3] I called up my super helpful screening guy & he said that Plastisol inks SHOULDN'T be needed to get good quality on dark shirts [however 2 coats is better, [tried it misaligned & fucked it, of course]]. & that a looser weave 32TT [assume this is a metric standard so not sure how it stacks up with the US numbers] will also help.
SHould get my new ink & screen soon. hope it works as I couldnt handle Plastisol inks all that 300degree heat fixing... blah too much work.
Anyway thanks Ohio your help was appreciated |
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| Drunk Engine |
| Posted: Wed May 07, 2003 4:47 am |
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Joined: 11 Jul 2002
Posts: 765
Location: New Jersey!!
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| @Honkey, are you using any spraytack or spray adheasive on your shirt pallot? it is recomended as it fixtates the shirt so that it doesn't move when you lift the screen off the shirt on your squeegee passes. White ink on a dark color is near impossable to do on one pass, it will require 2 passes to be opaque. If you are being ghetto about your process you have 2 getto options to choose from 1 use a hight wattage flood light and use this to flash dry the first pass or option 2 is to use a hair dryer to flash dry with, if you are using waterbased inks the process may not work at all or in a timely fassion. |
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| honky |
| Posted: Wed May 07, 2003 6:19 pm |
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Joined: 23 Mar 2003
Posts: 14
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No I am not using spray adhesive to secure the screen to the shirt. I never even thought of it, I suppose that means you have to wash the shirts etc before you sell em. [understandably I assume you dont use a shitload of adhesive]
but in answer to your other question, yeah I am being pretty ghetto about this. I am not planning on becoming a screenprinting house. I am a designer/artist/cheapass that wants to have his own shirts out there & see how they go before I commit to a professional printer etc.
yeah I have since decided that I definatly need to do 2 hits on dark shirts, there is no way it can work in 1 hit huh.
so the ink really has to be dry first before you do another coat? I am gonna do a bunch of tests over the weekend to see what I can work out for this
once again thanks for your help
keep em comin.
this is all really good |
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| Drunk Engine |
| Posted: Wed May 07, 2003 6:59 pm |
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Joined: 11 Jul 2002
Posts: 765
Location: New Jersey!!
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@Honkey
You have misunderstood my advice. You do not spray adheasive the screen to the shirt. The Shirt Pallot/Platon is the item of which you slide the shirt onto, it goes onto the inside of the shirt, so basically the shirt is all the way around it. If you do not understand what I'm talking about here is a picture of a cheap press displaying the station/pallot/platon, it is the object on the right on the press.
you would spray tack the pallot and it hold the shirt in place so that when you set the screen back ontop of it for the second pass, the shirt doesn't move. Spraytack sticks to the pallot and usually never leaves residue to the shirt.
[ This Message was edited by: Drunk Engine on 2003-05-07 20:02 ] |
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| honky |
| Posted: Wed May 07, 2003 7:02 pm |
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Joined: 23 Mar 2003
Posts: 14
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ahhh OK
I see what you mean..
so the pallete is the $2 piece of chipboard I bulldog clip the shirt onto
awesome
Thanks
Drunk Engine |
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| The Green Monkey |
| Posted: Thu May 08, 2003 12:34 am |
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ORDER OF THE SKULL
Joined: 15 Jun 2002
Posts: 14107
Location: Fucking a giant scorpion, duh.
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Drunk--Did you buy that thing from the dentist in Marathon Man? It looks like some kind of wild torture device.
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