ImagesMagUK_August_20

www.images-magazine.com AUGUST 2020 images 79 TIPS & TECHNIQUES The excuses start to flow like water with reduced opacity. When selecting mesh counts (which is still a skill, despite the many automation routines currently employed in even the smallest of shops), try to reduce the count to as low as you dare go. My default is still a 43t – but now we are in the realms of banana and salad cream again! Next we come to the emulsion- coating technique. This is the one thing I find most shops neglect. Coating technique The application of emulsion is not solely to block the holes in the mesh that you do not want the ink to pass through. It also creates a well for the ink to sit in. This well of ink is filled in the flood stroke and emptied on the print stroke. If you have a small well that can only be filled with a small amount of ink then you can only transfer a small amount of ink onto the shirt (see figures 1 and 2). Coating a 43t screen with a 2:1 technique, taking five seconds on each stroke, and drying the screen with the shirt side down in the drying cabinet, will create a stencil that will leave an optimum well when a design is burned onto it. The perfect thickness of stencil is again in the banana and salad cream area of discussion, but in the absence of a digital micrometer (the only accurate, but expensive, way of testing emulsion thickness) I would use the fingernail test: run a fingernail across the exposed stencil on the shirt side and a physical ledge should be prominent. It is important that this thickness is on the shirt side; the ink side should still feel smooth. When you show this newly burned screen to Jonny, he’ll eye it with suspicion. “It won’t work with this ink and in this humidity,” he protests as you slide your new screen into the press and reduce the pressure by ten clicks. Good old Jonny scoffs and says it will never work because the ink is rubbish. The resulting print stroke has minimum pressure, a slow speed, is white, opaque and crisp and clean. Of course, master printer Jonny insists that he has sorted it for you, and he told you that ink was good... Printing is mainly about controlling the variables in the process, and if you can control the thickness of the emulsion then you can start to introduce routines on the press that you know will work. When you have unknown variables like tension, EOM (emulsion over mesh), and mesh counts, you need to constantly adapt the application techniques until you achieve a good or acceptable result. Tony Palmer has been in the garment decoration industry for over 30 years and is now an independent print consultant working closely with print shops to get the most from existing processes and techniques. Tony is passionate about keeping and enhancing production skill levels within the industry. He is the owner and consultant at Palmprint Consultants, offering practical help and assistance to garment decorators all over the globe. www.palmprintuk.com Control the process to print first class whites on any fabric Place the screen in the drying cabinet with the shirt side down An auto-coater ensures consistent screen coating When you have the process under control, you can control the process.