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389 Posts
Well, I'm just getting started and I've been practicing for the past four days. My prints on actual t-shirts are extremely inconsistent. The more I think about how to hold the squeegee the worse it comes out. lol. My best prints are when I just drank a beer and just do whatever feels natural and don't think about. Then I'll have ten screwed up prints after that trying to recreate my good print.
I've taken to just printing on 11"x17" sheets of paper. That way I can rapidly practice for very minimal cost. Then I'll take a big shirt and print like ten prints all over it.
All the printed materials I have all say to hold the squeegee at 45-60 degrees. All the online materials, and some of the posts on this forum, say 80 degrees. (or 10 degrees for the people who view straight up and down as 0 instead of 90).
If I hold the squeegee between 70 and 90 (straight up and down). I get very unpredictable, messy, and uneven prints. I also can not get the squeegee to clear the ink at those angles. Meaning the stencil area is still covered in a thin layer of ink after the pass.
The only way I can clear the ink good is with angles between 40 and 60. I get a shearing noise with a bit of a pop at the end (a load pop if the screen is really high).
I use a push stroke. It just feels more natural to me. I scrape the ink towards my body with the screen up. Then lower, place the squeegee behind the ink clump, and print until I get several inches past the bottom of the stencil.
Since it seems like a lot of people use really high angle, like 75 and 80 from what I've read in other posts. I just wondered if there is some factor I'm not seeing. My prints at that angle turn out bad.
I've read some other posts about getting the pop at the end. Do you make a shearing noise when you print also?
I've taken to just printing on 11"x17" sheets of paper. That way I can rapidly practice for very minimal cost. Then I'll take a big shirt and print like ten prints all over it.
All the printed materials I have all say to hold the squeegee at 45-60 degrees. All the online materials, and some of the posts on this forum, say 80 degrees. (or 10 degrees for the people who view straight up and down as 0 instead of 90).
If I hold the squeegee between 70 and 90 (straight up and down). I get very unpredictable, messy, and uneven prints. I also can not get the squeegee to clear the ink at those angles. Meaning the stencil area is still covered in a thin layer of ink after the pass.
The only way I can clear the ink good is with angles between 40 and 60. I get a shearing noise with a bit of a pop at the end (a load pop if the screen is really high).
I use a push stroke. It just feels more natural to me. I scrape the ink towards my body with the screen up. Then lower, place the squeegee behind the ink clump, and print until I get several inches past the bottom of the stencil.
Since it seems like a lot of people use really high angle, like 75 and 80 from what I've read in other posts. I just wondered if there is some factor I'm not seeing. My prints at that angle turn out bad.
I've read some other posts about getting the pop at the end. Do you make a shearing noise when you print also?