I've been practicing screen printing for the past five days now. I'm getting better, but I'm not getting the results I really want.
I was wondering how many strokes other people normally due?
With black ink, I have gotten to a point where I can make it look pretty good on a dark shirt with one stroke. With a light colored or white shirts, I have to do at least two strokes to get it to look good. On paper or a pellon I can make it look awesome with one stroke, but not of the shirt.
Re: How many strokes do you normally do per color?
All depends on the screen used. Doing a # on a 80 only requires one stroke cause more ink is getting through. If you have a detailed piece on a 275 then your looking at more pressure and 2 strokes to push that ink through the mesh on the screen.
Re: How many strokes do you normally do per color?
For me, I generally do 2 strokes with an opaque or white ink or with discharge, anything on a dark really, and often just 1 stroke if it's dark ink on light. Like Jerry said, it can depend on the mesh count too. I'll sometimes do 2 strokes of a dark on a light if it's a large stencil with big open areas through a high mesh, like 200 or 230+.
Re: How many strokes do you normally do per color?
When you flood do you spread ink lightly over the print area where you left looking at ink. Or do you apply enough pressure to squeegee the ink across the screen, leaving ink in the stencil, but the print area around the stencil clean?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Solmu
One, maybe two. If you're needing excessive strokes I'd check off-contact, and ask whether or not you're flooding the screen before printing.
Re: How many strokes do you normally do per color?
Quote:
Originally Posted by kylerogers
I've been practicing screen printing for the past five days now. I'm getting better, but I'm not getting the results I really want.
I was wondering how many strokes other people normally due?
With black ink, I have gotten to a point where I can make it look pretty good on a dark shirt with one stroke. With a light colored or white shirts, I have to do at least two strokes to get it to look good. On paper or a pellon I can make it look awesome with one stroke, but not of the shirt.
I can normally get one good stroke on light shirts. On dark, depends on how thick the ink, but I would normally go 2 strokes.
Re: How many strokes do you normally do per color?
Quote:
Originally Posted by kylerogers
When you flood do you spread ink lightly over the print area where you left looking at ink. Or do you apply enough pressure to squeegee the ink across the screen, leaving ink in the stencil, but the print area around the stencil clean?
The second. Keep the screen off the substrate, and print into thin air as if you were printing. This will fill the mesh with ink ready to print, making your print stroke just deposit ink onto the substrate and not have to do the dual job of getting ink in the mesh and putting it onto the shirt.
Re: How many strokes do you normally do per color?
Does lowering the off contact increase the amount of ink that is deposited? I thought it was the other way around. I thought the higher the screen the more ink.
How many strokes do you normally do per color? 
