I am a brand new screen printer. During my first two attempts i’ve experienced a few problems. The first attempt I had no problem with applying the emulsion. I had it shirt side faving down with a fan directed in it to dry and I left it for 12 hours. I then exposed my image with a UV light for 3 minutes and went to go wash it out. The washout started fine but i increased the pressure of the water and it all of the sudden the entire image was breaking apart and emulsion was washing completely away. I believed the problem was that I didn’t let the emulsion dry long enough. So i washed the screen and reapplied the emulsion and left it to dry in the same position (shirt side down) for 24 hours now. When the 24 hours was up I noticed bumps on the shirt side of my screen from the emulsion drying as it was dripping down. Again i tried to salvage and expose the screen anyway. And same as last time when I attempted to wash out my image the emulsion began to completely wash away. Im I doing anything wrong? Or is it possible the materials I have are just cheap and I need better stuff.
Problem with washing out my design
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Those "bumps" are from putting the emulsion on too thick. In both cases, your screen was way under exposed.
See the link in my sig for how to test many exposure times with one screen.
What is your UV light exactly? Regular UV lights, like for black light posters, filter out the most useful wavelengths (because they are harmful to your eyes). These tubes/bulbs look dark, dark blue when turned off. Unfiltered UV lights look whitish when turned off, because they don't have that blue filter layer.
A weak light source and too thick emulsion ... it is pretty much where we all start
. Note, if you are unhappy with the evenness or thickness of the coat you just put on, scrape it off and try again. Repeat until it looks decent. This is also called practice. No need to waste time, and emulsion, when you can just start over while it is still wet.
See the link in my sig for how to test many exposure times with one screen.
What is your UV light exactly? Regular UV lights, like for black light posters, filter out the most useful wavelengths (because they are harmful to your eyes). These tubes/bulbs look dark, dark blue when turned off. Unfiltered UV lights look whitish when turned off, because they don't have that blue filter layer.
A weak light source and too thick emulsion ... it is pretty much where we all start
. Note, if you are unhappy with the evenness or thickness of the coat you just put on, scrape it off and try again. Repeat until it looks decent. This is also called practice. No need to waste time, and emulsion, when you can just start over while it is still wet.
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