One of the most important steps in screen printing pre-production involves creating artwork for making a stencil. After you have created your design, what do you output your artwork onto for making your film positives? The most popular media for […]
Much of your time in the screen printing process will be devoted to screen making. This includes cleaning, washing out (after exposure), reclaiming and coating screens.
Many people want to build their own exposure unit for screen printing and the key component of any exposure unit is the light source. So the question always comes up, what kind of light should I use in my exposure unit?
There are a number of techniques to becoming a good screen printer (especially if you use manual printing equipment) and knowing how to use a squeegee properly is foremost among them.
To be able to screen print photographic or grayscale images, an image must be converted into what is known as “halftones”. A halftone image consists of many small dots that make up the grayscale portion of that image. Screen printing halftones can present certain challenges.
The last step in the screen printing process is the curing of the print. Plastisol ink must reach a temperature of 320 degrees to be considered “fully cured.” Although it would seem natural to use the term “dryed,” it would be a misnomer as the ink film on a product may feel “dry” to the touch, but not be fully cured throughout the entire ink deposit. The print surface may seem “dry,” but the inner portion of the ink film may not be.
As a screen printer, you make screens on a regular basis. For your stencil making, we’d like to know if you coat your screens with emulsion, capillary film, or use both on a regular basis.
Creating a halftone image for screen printing is easy if you have the right program. The halftone conversion that we will do in this tutorial will produce a halftone image of approximately 35 lines per inch. 35 l.p.i. dots are fairly large. However, these “big dots” produce an image that is an easy to print film positive and an easy to expose screen.
When it comes to buying used equipment, if you are an experienced screen printer and have purchased new equipment over the years, you will definitely have an advantage over someone who has never printed before.
Once the squeegee is pulled across the mesh, off-contact immediately lifts the screen mesh away from the substrate as the squeegee is moved the across the stencil, resulting in a good print. If you have a press with an “off-contact” adjustment, it is a simple matter to set it precisely at the height that you want. Just turn the knob and watch the screen raise or lower. You can “feel” the amount of off-contact by pressing down on the mesh.
