Silk Screening

I've been silk screening for 1 1/2 years now and wondered if anyone else has had a job at a silk screening shop or ever have done it at home and what your thoughts on it are.

I'm currently a silk screening tech (art work, output, silk screeing) at a small shop
and think its one of the coolest things but also one of the most tedious things I have EVER done.

I am now getting into Heat Transfers(Hot-split, Cold peel)
AND HOLY LORD that crap is hard.
You have to put it through the dryer and register after every color...woo is that annoying...o0o0o and the paper shrinks and expands REALLY quickly so you have to be lightning fast with printing that stuff or else you can't register it right

well yeah um...would like to talk silk screening. Maybe learn some more tricks of the trade.




modedit~wr/11/23/04

I've yet to get into the acrylic side of silk screening. So far only plastisol.

The problem with acrylics is that the ink drys so fast. Plastisol doesn't really ever dry unless its heated to about 350F or so, so when you're screening a BIG job...If you don't finish that day you don't have to clean up EVERYTHING that has ink on it like you do with acrylics but to each his/her own.

The good thing about acrylics is that you don't need a $1000 - $20,000 dryer like you do with plastisol or a flashing machine which only really gels the ink but you can turn it up and flash a couple of times to cure the ink(flashing is for making multi strokes so you can lay other colors around a really thin ink or make a color more opaque without smearing).

Heat Transfers are EVIL!...EVIL EVIL EVIL EVIL...did I say EVIL!?...or more to the point MULTI color transfers are evil. Say you have about a 200 piece job and its 3-4 colors.

First when you burn the screen you have to put the film on the screen "wrong reading" which is upside down so when you are ready to apply the transfer to a shirt the image is not backwards because the part that is showing on the shirt is actually the part that was sticking to the paper.

Second you have to count out a few pieces of paper and put them through the dryer or else the paper will be out of registration when you put it through the dryer after the first color (because the paper shrinks with heat) and you can't just put all 200 in at one time cause by the time you get to about 25-50 the paper is back to almost its original size.
(YOU CAN'T FLASH THEM or you will smear the ink...after everycolor you have to put it through the dryer)

Third you need to register them in a 3 - point registration system which is 2 folded correctly pieces of cardboard paper on the top and 1 on the side so you can slide the paper in and lock them in place so every color goes down right(don't use alot of spray tack or when you take the paper up you will end up with a useless rolled up piece of paper)

Thats pretty much it...unless I forgot somtihng HA...

You have 2 kinds of Heat Transfer paper.
Hot Split and Cold Peel.

Hot split is the best to use on normal shirts because it splits the ink when applied so it gives the shirt a "Silk Screened" look and feel.

Cold peel is the old style heat transfer which applys all of the ink onto the shirt and gives it a raised look and feel and also needs a adhesive powder applied on the last color or before the last color so that it "sticks" to the shirt better, hot split actually melts into the shirt's threads...kind of how silk screened inks soak into the shirts threads.

Multi color heat transfers are hard to work with because of trying to get them perfectly registered...pain in the butt.

Woo! that was a good amount of Brain picking...

Photoshop, Illustrator, Fastrip(for halftones) , and an Epson 3000 for outputing

I would definitely like to talk about silk screening with him.

I've never had a problem with plastisol drying...unless its in the open air for like a week without any movment .

Mrshedgehog Sally is right...With the mesh being loose like 10 newtons(mesh tightness measurement) you will get all sorts of mess. If he uses a glued/stapled woodscreen then it could also be warped.
He might want to buy a retensionable(rollerframe) screen which won't warp and can get much higher newton count like about 30 or so which is REALLY tight, i've also heard of people getting about 40-50 newtons.

and for inks like WHITE you should use a mesh count of 83 to like 156 if its not TOO detailed of an image. Metalic inks need 110s or so. The more detailed the image the higher mesh count required(156-320).

o0o0o silk screening is a ******

I don't know much about acrylics but I'm pretty sure those inks dry SUPER quick.

Plastisol in the buckets will seperate when left alone/open for awhile and it will dry when left alone completly open to the air but only really because the oil seperates and it needs stiring/mixing but this is with only 1 1/2 experience here HAHA .

Plastisol GETS EVERYWHERE...mmmmm plastisol.

I can't use gloves...they will get all plastisoly real quick and gunk up the shirts
and then you have to use the blow-out gun...fun fun

I just don't want to get my head stuck in the cameo press(auto transfer machine) LOL!