screen printing > General Screen Printing

Sweatshirt and Fleece Printing Tips and Tricks

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zanegun08:
Truth is we suck at printing sweatshirts.  It's embarrassing, but I'd like to change that.

We are having problems with roughness, fibrillation, registration, shrinkage, color opacity, mottling, you name it we have it.

Can anyone provide some tricks and tips to printing fleece, and what you do differently than printing tees?

im_mcguire:
For us, we started running all fleece through the dryer to get out moisture from the garment.
Next we just recently got a tip of using a ink clean up card to move around the web adhesive to give a better overall cover to the platen.
We always go well beyond the image on our stroke to make sure the screen snaps off of the garment rather than the table lowering, or the print head lifting off of the image.
We started running slower on our stroke, and with the combination of the above, it has really helped.
We always run a 150 s mesh for our base pin these as well.  This has really helped us tremendously.

Those are just a couple of things we have done to help with our fleece.  But we can always improve more as well.

RICK STEFANICK:
-off contact is important and different than tees
- proper tack is important
- squeegie selection and print speed. the screen must sheer the garment
- we tend to run lower mesh on fleece
- double stroking pulls up the fibers.doesn't mat them down as some may think
- flash times are usually less
- run a lint screen to mat out the garment is a option

Northland:
A 10 second hit on the heat press (at 300 degrees) will smooth out a rough print.
Use a sheet of craft-paper (between the garment and the top element) to prevent the ink from getting glossy.
Use a Teflon sheet if you're going for a glossy ink look.

I seem to use a full can of web mist for every 50 hoodies.

If you have a bad print.... give it a try, until you get the other variables worked out.

Sbrem:
Other than re-tacking more often, and slightly higher off contact, lower, slower flashing, we don't have any issues. As mentioned, a heat press can flatten out the occasional mountain range if it happens.

Steve

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