[Tamashii]

Hi.

Question to screen printers out there. What's the best parchment to print negatives on? We use UV Ultra II Translucent paper, but we're having problems lining up the art (the paper shrinks a bit for heavy art). We have a laserjet printer. I know people recommended Inkjet, but it's not cost effective.

Advice appreciated. Thanks.

 

[Uncle John]

Tama, try Velum paper. John

 

[Celtic]

Also, be sure to print them out as positives, not negatives.
I believe there's also a spray you can use after you print your vellums through your laser printer that will make the vellum more transparent. I know I've read that here before.
I use an inkjet, so I'm not too familiar with the lasers.

Good luck to you. You'll find a good combination.

 

[PositiveDave]

Laser printers cure the ink by passing through heated rollers, shrinkage is a fact of life. Use bigger traps.

 

[justin3db]

Save yourself a boatload of time and headaches. Buy an Epson 1400 or better and a rip program. I got a whole "Black Max" set up from Ryonet for around $500. My positives are BLACK, BLACK, BLACK. Crisp and clear prints with excellent exposure results. This piece of equipment/software pais for itself. In fact, I have even been adding to my my bottom line by simply printing positives for other shops in town. They're happy, I'm happy. Make yourself happy and get the right tool for the job.

Cheers and have fun!

 

[clubfred]

we use better than vellum very good product and no shrinkage

 

[CNClark]

Here's an old trick we used when we we're running a laserjet years ago. Pull up illy, and print off a blank page, run all the vellum you intend to use through the printer before running the actual films...this will get alot of the shrinkage out. Basically, you are preshrinking the vellum. Another thing you can do is allow the printer to cool in between films..If you are running films one after another, the last film will shrink more than the one before because the heating elements are warmer from use.

But as was said...vellum shrinks, its just the nature of how laserjets work...ROI on a epson 1400 is a couple weeks when you consider how much time you will save setting up jobs. You would be wise to get into an Epson ASAP.

 

[Tamashii]

Thanks all for the advice. We do use vellum yes. My employers are Chinese, and I can't always find the correct translation.