BTW, we still suck at coating screens
I'm a big fan of capillary film. Ulano EZ films work real nice and have a good price point ($1.47/sheet).
Damn, is it that cheap per sheet now? What size sheet are that cheap? We have some screens with $1.50 worth of direct emulsion on them so cap film at that price would be a time saver. I like cap film but they weren't close in price back when I was looking into it, might have to revisit this.
EZ Film always has been that cheap. I think Richard or maybe someone else explained that it was the backer material partially that drove the cost of cap film up previously. It sounds like they were just making all the cap film for very tight applications and most of the measures taken were actually unnecessary for us lowly shirt printers. So they savvied up and made a product just from garment printer. Chromaline's Magnacure was similar in approach though not quite as affordable and a DC not a PP. Still have some of that lying around, 38µ, it's like five years old and still shoots somehow. Back then I made up a screwball custom size for our film so it was always super fresh.
We used the big sheets of EZ and it's cheaper or = to direct emulsion costs for Aquasol HVP, bought 4 gallons at a go. I think our cost per stencil for direct, counting the occasional glitter and shimmer screens and normal waste comes out to about $2 per screen on average. But you won't be getting the kind of eom out of EZ cap film that you are getting from the direct emulsion.
I still keep some around for when we're in a pinch on press, need screens and we don't have 'em. About an hour and we're back at it.
Ulano needs to get on the horse and make some that's about 2x as thick as what they are doing with the EZ. I presume the bulk of the cost of cap film is in the carrier sheet and process itself, not the actual emulsion.
Kevin, try some out, you won't be losing any money v. direct emulsion and the stuff excels in bad screen environments.
