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Trying to figure out how professional prints are so thin

1K views 6 replies 7 participants last post by  NoXid 
#1 ·
Ive been screen printing for about 9 months using plastisol ink only. Unfortunately, I’ve had some complaints about the thickness of my prints on some of the larger designs. I have this problem even when I only hit the underbase once.

I visited a few stores to take a look at some professionally printed shirts and every single one is definitely thinner than mine. For example, a large rectangular design, with the whole rectangle filled with ink (underbase and overprint) felt way thinner than all of my prints.

Could these thin prints just be waterbased inks? From the comments I’ve seen on here, I assumed waterbased inks have no hand. Or is there something I could be doing wrong? All I can say is I use Wilflex white ink and Union color inks.
 
#3 ·
A lot of 'new' printers start with a very low mesh count leading to laying down a lot of ink. Are you using 110t ( 43t/cm) mesh? You need to have the confidence to increase it to somewhere between 160 - 200t as your standard mesh count.



Thin your inks accordingly, but mix well first. Plastisol is 'thixotropic', meaning it becomes more fluid when stirred. Stick a wooden spoon into the chuck of a cordless drill and whizz the nuts out of your ink.
 
#5 ·
I went to pick up at my local store for running equipment for my self. I ordered online, but they are local so I pick stuff cause I am cheap and I save for shipping that way.


When I was waiting for my stuff i seen 2 nike hoodies with Celtics logo on it.


Hoodie was exactly like this one except inside of that logo, there were many small white dots to fill the space inside. They were quite a part from each other.




I spend 3 minutes for inspecting that hoodie. Design was quite thick and the weird part was, that inside of that logo,where lots of tiny dots were ''printed'', all that empty space around dots felt like it's something on that hoodie. It felt very unbreathable. I was thinking if maybe that's a vinyl on that hoodie... But that green inside of that logo was covered with something...
 
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