What have you printed lately?

[cleveprint]

I have to admit that the job Alan posted with all those colors butting up against each other wet on wet 1 revolution around the press is damn impressive. I know 100% in my shop that job would go around the press twice so I have to give major props to him for that. Imo it's more challenging doing a 8 color butt registration spot color job on black shirts then any sim process printing, but just my opinion there.

Agreed. What print order did you use. Not that you want to give away your secrets, but Im always sending jobs similar to that around twice.

[Dottonedan]

Lizards print capabilities is more of a well keep secret to forums. I met him a few years back and again, just saw these prints at a show. Gotta say, he's holding out on us here because he cant show the best of them. He's got a couple that are twice this good. Just perfect, beautiful prins.

Danny's stuff is a testament to what happens when you use an excellent creative artist (with an excellent production artist) combined with an excellent printer. The artist Danny uses is probably one of the top screen printed tee shirt artist in today's time. He's got both of the two key features you want in an artist. That's creative skill and also production skill. He is exceptional in both areas.  With that tho, comes a shiny price for that artist. As a result, sales and production increase as well as profits. You can become more "efficient" in your normal average run. If you can ever aford an artist of this caliber full time, or lock them into an exclusive contract,  these are the benefits.

[alan802]

I have to admit that the job Alan posted with all those colors butting up against each other wet on wet 1 revolution around the press is damn impressive. I know 100% in my shop that job would go around the press twice so I have to give major props to him for that. Imo it's more challenging doing a 8 color butt registration spot color job on black shirts then any sim process printing, but just my opinion there.

Agreed. What print order did you use. Not that you want to give away your secrets, but Im always sending jobs similar to that around twice.

Let me pull the job file and get you the print settings/info, I'll find it in a bit.  Normally we go from smallest image area to largest (after the underbase obviously), with a large image area in a design like that right before the second flash unit, then back to smallest to largest after every flash unit you have.  By doing it that way you can actually print directly after flash units most of the time if the print area is small.  There were halftones in the original but we changed up the art and added a spot color with the darker red in the flag shadows.  Another technique we use often is if there was a color that wasn't on top of the underbase (think black ink on a royal shirt) we will print that color right before the underbase screen and give us another color to print wet on wet somewhere else in the print sequence.  So we'd print black, underbase, then flash, then other top colors.  With the right inks and mesh count selection, you can do 3 colors wet on wet easily, and sometimes up to 5 if you've got really good inks. 

I really like doing the process jobs over the spot color jobs, not because one is really that much harder than the other but because I feel like you have a little more freedom and room for error with print sequence with the process jobs than an 8 color, all spots.  I agree with Danny in that the artwork is very important but if you've got the art right, and you know what you're doing on press, you can hit homeruns like Danny has on all of his prints.  There have been many jobs where we got the screens to press and the art was bad, you have to go backwards and fix whatever the problem was and most likely there is nothing or nobody that can fix a big art problem on press.  We have been able to make up for weak art with on-press techniques but it's not easy.  Those artists that can get it right the first time paired with printers who understand all those parameters make for a great team.  It's like the old saying, "work harder, not smarter", look what you can do if you work hard and smart.

[ebscreen]

Ditto what Alan said on print order. I'm glad we're not just shooting in the dark on that one.

I will add that once you know your ink system fairly well, you start to learn the colors that will stand being stepped
on without too much grief. Most of our greys, reds, oranges, browns are okay to put earlier. Royal, purples and yellows not
so much.

I will also occasionally put the top white earlier in print sequence, right before a flash, because it flashes so fast that you can
usually print directly after it. Design dependent, like everything.

We DCUB whenever possible as that makes it about like printing on white shirts, but for some reason all of our high spot color
work tends to be on fleece or non-dischargeable colors. Ugh.

[Dottonedan]

Knowing your ink is a good point.

Many shops doing a lot of sim process (with a couple did ink brands or even just one will print some blend charts so they artist knows what % of X ink brand laid over Y ( at various %) will give you Z color tone.

That said, you can also the. Change up the sequence to get varying desired shades as well. This is a part of "fine tuning" or streamlining the art process. Helps in knowing what you will get before its printed.

[DannyGruninger]

I will share that my shop is 100% exclusive to WM Plastics Inks...... We are on a program with Joe @ WM Plastics where we do testing for them, we create our own inks that they make for us, etc. But for all the simulated prints that I post on the forum, they are printed with nothing but WM inks. 99% of the jobs I post I mix colors out of the pms system and we go to press without modifying them much at all.... We have a couple additives that we use on the press after the first few shirts are printed to dial the colors in a bit more to our liking but for the most part we mix colors and print.

[ZooCity]

Danny is that WM system RFU or PC? 

[alan802]

Another bugger we did last week.  7 color on navy.  That gray ink was a problem and was not cooperating, popping badly on the next screen.  Since it was 48 shirts I didn't want to spend 15 minutes trying to get the ink perfect so we ran this one with two revolutions and finished it in 10 minutes.  The ink is usually the only thing that keeps us from doing everything in one revolution.  This ink might be 15 years old since there are so many buckets on the ink shelf that came from another shop that we bought out years ago.  I've been thinking about craigslisting all that ink.  A shop that isn't as particular about their ink and doesn't try to print so much wet on wet would make that ink go a long way but I'm just getting too picky.  I'd like to sell it all for whatever it would cost to get a decent mixing system in here.  But then I'll be the ink jockey for the next few months until I trusted one of my guys to do it, which may never happen.

[alan802]

And I got my new phone figured out so I can shoot pics straight to photobucket now and post pics within minutes of taking them.  I think I'm gonna make it without the iphone after all.  The android stuff is pretty robust.

[GraphicDisorder]

And I got my new phone figured out so I can shoot pics straight to photobucket now and post pics within minutes of taking them.  I think I'm gonna make it without the iphone after all.  The android stuff is pretty robust.

I just got the Note 3.  Love it in some ways, total trash in others.  One app or another crashes nearly daily for me.  It's fast though, ill give it that. 

[alan802]

And I got my new phone figured out so I can shoot pics straight to photobucket now and post pics within minutes of taking them.  I think I'm gonna make it without the iphone after all.  The android stuff is pretty robust.

I just got the Note 3.  Love it in some ways, total trash in others.  One app or another crashes nearly daily for me.  It's fast though, ill give it that. 

Galaxy S4.  No complaints on anything other than just not being able to figure things out since I've only known the iphone for 4 years or so.  It's fast, but it's not quite as user friendly for me but it can do a lot of stuff.  I think once I learn it all I will like it more.

[mk162]

7 years ago today that Jobs introduced us to the iPhone.  crazy

[3Deep]

Just got my son the Galaxy S4 pretty neat phone, I was watching TV the other night and the channel kept changing, I'm like what the hell and he is standing down the hallway with his phone flipping my channels.

Darryl

[GraphicDisorder]

And I got my new phone figured out so I can shoot pics straight to photobucket now and post pics within minutes of taking them.  I think I'm gonna make it without the iphone after all.  The android stuff is pretty robust.

I just got the Note 3.  Love it in some ways, total trash in others.  One app or another crashes nearly daily for me.  It's fast though, ill give it that. 

Galaxy S4.  No complaints on anything other than just not being able to figure things out since I've only known the iphone for 4 years or so.  It's fast, but it's not quite as user friendly for me but it can do a lot of stuff.  I think once I learn it all I will like it more.

I almost did the S4, the big screen on the Note 3 though was awesome.  Its a little big no doubt.  But Ive got used to it.  I am happy with it over all, dont love it though but my iPhone 5 was a joke.  Too small, too slow, too outdated.  5s wasn't a big enough leap forward for me. 

[DannyGruninger]

Danny is that WM system RFU or PC?

We use the RFU system that is WM's house system. They have a mirror Rutland m3 system and a mirror wilflex mx system but we are using their house mixing system. Sometimes I wish we had a PC style system but the guys at wm have treated me very well re formulating inks that print for us. We have had better results with this mixing system then any others that I have tried but we never did run the wilflex pc system so I cannot compare to that. All in all the WM PIM system(thats what it's called) is a very nice system for us. Inks are translucent enough for nice blending for process prints but the primary shade colors like purple, blue, etc that I always had problems with getting to cover a white base with other systems I have not had that with this system. When we ran the wilflex mx system we were revolving blue and purples all the time because they were so transparent. This system has eliminated that problem for us and still allow us to print nice blends for process. We've been working with WM on their whites and have made some nice improvements.