[squidbearstudios]

I'm very new to screen printing and I'm having some issues with printing.

The ink is seeping the the mesh and blotching onto the shirt

When I flood the screen with no pressure the ink still seems to be seeping through in some areas. I've tried many times to lessen the pressure but it still seems to get through sometimes and I would have to rewash the mesh again. I've probably washed the screen 10 times from the blotching on two different screens. It's very tiring and really hindering my actual printing.


The ink also seems to be very runny.

Does anyone have a simple solution to make it a little more solid?
Would it help if I got a higher mesh count?
( the mesh is 160 now)
Anyone know some tips or tricks to keep the ink on the mesh from blotching through in certain areas?

 

[red514]

a higher mesh can help control the ink deposit.

i'm wondering what ink you are using, do you know the brand and type?

 

[red514]

another option is to not flood. I know it's fairly common to flood but if the ink is very runny, you may not need to. when i was printing 4c process, we did not flood.

 

[squidbearstudios]

a higher mesh can help control the ink deposit.

i'm wondering what ink you are using, do you know the brand and type?

Thanks for the info!

I was actually looking at higher meshes right after I posted

The brand is: R2O Water Based Black Ink

I hope that helps. The white seems to be thicker so it works better but the black is kind of runny.

I've talked with ryonet about ink retarder but I don't want to really try it yet because that may cause more problems for me from my lack of skills, plus they said that I probably shouldn't use it anyways but the lady seemed unsure.

Does the color of the mesh matter with anything? The new one's im looking at with the higher mesh are yellow. I've been using white.

Thanks again!

 

[red514]

water based ink is fairly runny. i do not have allot of experience with water based inks but there should be a tech sheet for that ink and it would have recommended mesh counts. i believe we used 200 or 280 for water based inks.
hopefully someone that has more experience with waterbased inks will chime in

 

[squidbearstudios]

water based ink is fairly runny. i do not have allot of experience with water based inks but there should be a tech sheet for that ink and it would have recommended mesh counts. i believe we used 200 or 280 for water based inks.
hopefully someone that has more experience with waterbased inks will chime in

Great thanks, I'll probably try out what you did before with the 200 to 280 mesh

BTW does the mesh color effect anything like exposure or ink color or emulsion?

 

[red514]

mesh colour effects exposure. the yellow mesh is ideal (less light refraction, an issue when exposing fine details) and is usually available with 280s and up (i believe you can get some lower counts as well depending on the company).
mesh colour will not effect the ink or the properties of emulsion (just the exposure time)

 

[professaurus]

when you use yellow mesh you expose it at 1.5 times the current time

 

[squidbearstudios]

Cool Thanks for the info guys!

my old time was 13min so i guess it's 13.5 now

 

[professaurus]

More like 19.5 min

 

[dudefor20]

Use a hard squeege with light pressure.also on the black you may want to up the meshcount so you don't over flood the image and blurr the lines. Sounds like a pressure and mesh count issue though.

 

[squidbearstudios]

More like 19.5 min

damn my bad yea 19.5. Someone else told me to do 13.5 on ebay where im buying it from. is 19.5 a normal amount of time for yellow mesh? I'm also using a glass cover to press on top of the film when I expose.

Does you by chance know what the standard yellow mesh exposure time is?

Thanks for all the help!

 

[sben763]

Don't adjust your time. Try it with the time your using first. Most dyed mesh is high mesh to stop the fiber optic effect thus controlling under cutting . The openings still allow full penetration of the UV light. So you may have to bump it up a little but another 6 min you will likely not be able to wash out. The higher the mesh the lower you time will be also. So if your using a 156 and jump to a 280 your time will be lower. 1 280 is a thinner thread so you EOM (emulsion over mesh) will be less. Or simply a thinner coat of emulsion. The second reason is thread transport or the know as the fiber optic effect. Even yellow mesh will have a slight thread transport.

The retarder is just so that the ink doesn't dry as fast thus helping printing especially multi color jobs.