[Kime]

I have been having trouble printing with supercover white. I have used the supercover yellow and mixed regular colors with supercover white and I don't have so much trouble with those, but the white is a real challenge to use.

It sticks to the squeegee like thick cake frosting, making it hard to flood the screen. I have tried all kinds of squeegee angles and nothing seems to help this so if you have not used SW please don't tell me that the problem is the sqeegee angle because this ink has a texture different than other inks. If you have used SW and the squeegee angle helps, please tell me what angle you use.

Which squeegee works best? Should I use a rounded edge? I am having trouble clearing the screen and the ink dries in the screen very quickly, even though I flood after each stoke. Does the retarder help? I have ordered some, but it hasn't arrived yet.

I have been using 156 screen mesh, but I have had the same problems with 110. It is supposed to be good to use for higher mesh and not just for low mesh screens.

 

[kushclothing]

We print exclusively with Permaset inks....I know the problem you describe and we have the same! The best I can suggest is:
- Use retarder (we use speedball as its all we can get hold of in the UK), we use 25% retarder to ink ratio and it makes a huge difference!
- We have to use a spatula to clean the ink off the squeege every few prints so that we can still flood the screen,
- Keep a spray bottle of water near the press so that if you have to leave for any reason you can apply a light film into the atmosphere directly above the screen to keep the area moist....
Finally you will struggle to do large numbers of prints in each run. We can do about 50 shirts before we need to stop and wash the screen. We also print a blank tee every few runs with really heavy strokes to make sure the stencil stays free and open.....

 

[Kime]

Thank you. I just received the Permaset retarder a couple of days ago, and it does help a lot.

Does anyone use Permaset inks with an automatic? We don't have one, but we might get one in the future and I was wondering if it was easier with an automatic because the screen would be stroked more frequently.