TSB
General => General Discussion and ??? => Topic started by: Printficient on June 23, 2015, 09:59:01 AM
-
I continue to see posts on certain methods being touted over other methods. The question I have is is there a true understanding of what is trying to be accomplished and what is actually being accomplished? I guess this has been on my mind for all of my career in this industry. Product "X" works great for me. No Product "X" sucks for me. OK if I give you that premise that the same product works differently for 2 different people then my question is do they know why in either instance. I have always felt that this industry has lacked education from vender to printer.
A couple of good examples of this are "S" thread mesh and "One Hit" whites. Also the myriad of coating methods that are out there.
Is there a true benefit to one method over the other? If so, what is it? I have coated every way mentioned and some not mentioned. I have run 5K pieces on a screen with one pass coat on the substrate side with no breakdown or pinholes. Would I recommend this method? Probably not. It would depend on the knowledge base of the end user.
Sidebar: When I say knowledge base I mean scientifically repeatable results with an understanding of the whole process of what is trying to be accomplished.
I have printed remarkable 4 color process on wood frames as well as roller frames. On a Precision Oval as well as an MHM 4000.
I guess my point to this is I wish the industry would do a better job of educating to the "why" It was the way I learned from the gurus I was lucky enough to have available to me.
-
I grew up with a similar complaint about "mechanics". The older they were, the more they tended to understand "cars" and internal combustion in general rather than merely the type they were mostly fixing. They understood more basic principles, and weren't thrown for a complete loss when something new popped up.
I still find that printers who started with the basics on a manual press usually have a better grasp of the entire printing process later on an automatic, and can usually much better troubleshoot a problem.
-
I don't think it's worth trying to figure out. My opinion is there are multiple ways to achieve a desired result. If you can print a one hit white and the customer is happy then so be it. I say stick to what makes you money in the least amount of time with the least amount of headaches and call it a day. That is why no 2 shops have the same results; we all do things differently and it's not worth trying to figure out other methods of madness when the one you currently use has made you successful.
-
as far as products, to me - a lot of it comes from salesmen tooting the horn of a product they themselves have never/ don't know how to use - or worse yet, a salesman that has never printed a single shirt or pulled a squeegie....hey young printer, struggling with getting ink to sheer? try a 110 mesh and see what happens...WOW sales guy, you know everything! thank you, sell me 20 more of these screens! and there you have an uneducated salesman molding a new print shop into a path that may not be the proper route...instead of trying to help solve the problem, they put a band aid on it....soon enough, this young print shop will develop their own ways of coating too- round edge, 10 over 12, round edge, flip the screen 6 times, dry it twice then do the humpty-hump, bamn screens are coated....properly? prolly not, but screens are coated.
not directed at you sonny..I know you can print, sort of. :P
-
If you want to be a different kind of sales person you certainly have that opportunity. You could set up a YouTube Channel and demo your X vs Y and explain why "you" think one is better than the other.
Trouble with most sales guys is they just want to get you on the phone and or come into your shop and pressure their way into a sale. You have the option to be different....
-
Reading this post everyone is right and wrong in what they are saying, the right is it works in your shop for your customers, the wrong is telling some one else it will work in there shop with there customers. We all try our best I'm sure to keep up with the forever changing technology in our industry spending lots of money on items that we didn't need long time ago and don't need now but just have to have it. Sonny ask for the WHY? here is a simple answer to the why we do what we do, we see a very nice print from another shop and the first thing we all ask is how did you do that, what emulsion you use, what duro squeegee, what press,screen mesh, rollers/statics, inks, did you stand on one leg, did you hold your nuts in your left or right hand while you lined up screens etc because we all want our prints to look as best they can... that is your WHY in a nut shell ;)
darryl
-
I've brought this up before and am pretty confident here's what's going on.
If testing under the lab conditions, there is an absolute best method to get things done. This is a fact, not an opinion as it is so by definition. . .
Now the problem is, we are not running under the lab conditions so we have to deviate and will thus have a different best method. Think of it as a foundation. If it's slightly crooked, you'll have to adjust everything going on top of it to make the building straight. Taller you go, more chances of having problems.
Unfortunately many of us are not in ideal conditions so we jimmy and rig stuff to make it work. Great example is cold winter environment. Ppl find inks that work for them, they use coarser mesh and so on. These are workarounds that create a crooked foundation. Proper way is to get as close as possible to lab conditions which is what the inks are designed for. So if the ink description sheet says print at 72 degrees, warm up the platens and the ink so it is at the right temperature before printing. If it's too hot, find a way to keep the temp down. Yes I know this is expensive, but it's what the ink is designed to work at. If it's 120 in the shop and you are flashing, the ink temp might be 180 and it will gel in the screens and print different from what it's supposed to do. Controlling all the needed parameters is not cheap or easy, but for anybody putting in the effort to do so will find that once the foundation is right, adding pieces becomes much easier.
pierre
-
I agree with the basic idea of this thread, but I have to disagree about there not being a best way to do something or objectively better tools to help you do it. Sometimes some products really are objectively better in certain ways when the pros outweigh the cons. I know as a manual printer S mesh is objectively better at getting ink through the screen with less effort (pressure etc) vs equivalent mesh counts of standard thickness mesh meaning I can print more detailed prints with less physical effort meaning I can print longer and get less tired and make more money. The only con would be the relative fragility of the mesh, but that is something I can control for and the pros far outweigh this con.
I would say similar things about techniques and products like using a dip tank and a post exposure dunk tank and Glisten method coating and push stroke vs pull stroke and a host of other things. I don't say these things because I randomly think they are better without having tried alternatives or considering that there may be multiple ways to skin a cat. Objectively, their pros simply outweigh their cons based on my own testing and based on the conversations I have seen on this forum and others. I think the "why" in these cases is obvious to anyone who has cared to look into them.
I also disagree wholly with what Ross said. I think it is almost always worth the effort to become better at what you do, whether that means increasing efficiency or producing a better product. If I was still printing the way I did even two years ago I would have quit simply due to the frustrations of being relatively shitty and slow at it. Joining this forum and literally constantly testing out new methods has made both my process and final product MUCH better, and it is much more enjoyable to do as well, both because it is more efficient and because I have more pride in the final results. I can see how someone who just buys all the fancy toys right out of the gate and gets workable results might not care much to improve for a while, but that isn't really a formula for success and I can't imagine how frustrating it would be to run a business that way when you would constantly be troubleshooting problems you didn't understand and having customers who were barely satisfied with whatever bandaided crap you sell them...
-
In short, I'll give an example. No manufacturer would suggest that 1 exposure time for all mesh coated all the same (1 side only), is "the best way" by far. But I have seen people do it and they have built a business up for over 15 years. It works for them and it's a streamlined process. There are many reason not to do that, but those don't apply to these shops.
Some suppliers suggest you got to do x to get it to the optimum. But the (optimum needed) is based on something most don't do, such as 10-50,000 prints of one order/design in one production run. Negating the need for optimum or " proper".
-
the exposure time questions always makes me roll my eyes. I see answers like "2 minutes" as the whole response to that question ALL THE TIME on other forums. I always try to post about the stouffer hard 7 exposure test and link to the strips: http://www.stouffer.net/using21step.htm. (http://www.stouffer.net/using21step.htm.)
-
These are all great responses. Please note I am not asking about method but if the understanding of why what happened happened. "S" thread to take an example is a good start. "S" thread used as Mimosa uses it ie. high detail on a lower mesh count for ease of print (taking into account the emulsion's ability to bridge the open area and hold an edge) works due to the fact that the ink is deposited on the garment and detail opacity is easier to achieve. The same "S" thread used on a lower mesh count to get a "one hit white" defeats the purpose as it allows too much ink down and what is thought to be none opacity is in actuality ink in the shirt not on the shirt. Big areas of ink are hard to get opaque as the eye has more printed area to compare.
All I am saying is know the why something works in your shop.
-
These are all great responses. Please note I am not asking about method but if the understanding of why what happened happened. "S" thread to take an example is a good start. "S" thread used as Mimosa uses it ie. high detail on a lower mesh count for ease of print (taking into account the emulsion's ability to bridge the open area and hold an edge) works due to the fact that the ink is deposited on the garment and detail opacity is easier to achieve. The same "S" thread used on a lower mesh count to get a "one hit white" defeats the purpose as it allows too much ink down and what is thought to be none opacity is in actuality ink in the shirt not on the shirt. Big areas of ink are hard to get opaque as the eye has more printed area to compare.
All I am saying is know the why something works in your shop.
and the next question is, "How are you measuring that?"
pierre
-
These are all great responses. Please note I am not asking about method but if the understanding of why what happened happened. "S" thread to take an example is a good start. "S" thread used as Mimosa uses it ie. high detail on a lower mesh count for ease of print (taking into account the emulsion's ability to bridge the open area and hold an edge) works due to the fact that the ink is deposited on the garment and detail opacity is easier to achieve. The same "S" thread used on a lower mesh count to get a "one hit white" defeats the purpose as it allows too much ink down and what is thought to be none opacity is in actuality ink in the shirt not on the shirt. Big areas of ink are hard to get opaque as the eye has more printed area to compare.
All I am saying is know the why something works in your shop.
and the next question is, "How are you measuring that?"
pierre
Exactly! Another question is "What" are you measuring? Also, once again, "why" are you measuring?
-
Keep an eye open for an upcoming article by Joe Clarke. Much of it is overkill (I think he agrees with me on this) but some good info on HOW to measure some things.
-
Keep an eye open for an upcoming article by Joe Clarke. Much of it is overkill (I think he agrees with me on this) but some good info on HOW to measure some things.
Great to hear.
-
Most in this thread are talking about the tools materials and supplies used to do the job.
Pierre touched on what the act of screen printing factually is- a technical process based on science and physics.
If we are able to understand and use measured- named properties of each element in the process, the we won't be just speaking in terms of raise tension (why?) use the thin or thick side of scoop coater (why? but what about the properties of the emulsion? and the fact that all scoop coaters have be manufacturerd with varing thicknesses?)
The way we approach the screen printing process is nurtured by our suppliers and manufacturers. We don't need a lab, we need the measured results.
Almost all products, would work well in all shops if we understood all the properties that tie the actual print process together. The variables- that crap means little if we are just scratching the surface of why and how.
Why a particular mesh, squeegee angle and speed important to the print process or really the ink? "Look and see" if the ink is clearing or climbing and adjust accordingly Instead of the ink behavior is due to xyz properties of the ink, so let's coat the correctly stretched screen by this amount being fully aware that it will cause that specific ink to flow and create the desired opacity and choose these specific blades and run it at this speed.
Sent using Tapatalk
-
Why a particular mesh, squeegee angle and speed important to the print process or really the ink? "Look and see" if the ink is clearing or climbing and adjust accordingly Instead of the ink behavior is due to xyz properties of the ink, so let's coat the correctly stretched screen by this amount being fully aware that it will cause that specific ink to flow and create the desired opacity and choose these specific blades and run it at this speed.
Sent using Tapatalk
Ding! Ding! Ding!
-
Products are like cars, they have different specs, some work better than others. Translating the lab numbers to real world performance measures the ability of the printer, but some products do have capability that offer a competitive advantage. Better prints done faster allows for competitive advantages. I will totally agree that how well any products are used is subjective. What works for a shop in one part of the industry may be different elsewhere.
-
Products are like cars, they have different specs, some work better than others. Translating the lab numbers to real world performance measures the ability of the printer, but some products do have capability that offer a competitive advantage. Better prints done faster allows for competitive advantages. I will totally agree that how well any products are used is subjective. What works for a shop in one part of the industry may be different elsewhere.
Translating the lab numbers to named properties, gives us tolerances that can be applied as a variables we can work with as a whole.. Why a product behaves swimmingly or undesirablly in the process should be identified by it's properties and not it's location.
If we appreciate the thermal properties of any given ink, we would know if it's best for my specific zone or should other variable in the process, be adjusted accordingly to work with it.
Sent using Tapatalk
-
Products are like cars, they have different specs, some work better than others. Translating the lab numbers to real world performance measures the ability of the printer, but some products do have capability that offer a competitive advantage. Better prints done faster allows for competitive advantages. I will totally agree that how well any products are used is subjective. What works for a shop in one part of the industry may be different elsewhere.
Translating the lab numbers to named properties, gives us tolerances that can be applied as a variables we can work with as a whole.. Why a product behaves swimmingly or undesirablly in the process should be identified by it's properties and not it's location.
If we appreciate the thermal properties of any given ink, we would know if it's best for my specific zone or should other variable in the process, be adjusted accordingly to work with it.
Sent using Tapatalk
And this right here is a major complaint of mine with the suppliers in this industry.
As a general rule it's very hard to get real numbers etc out of them.
Ie my simple question a few months back about uv sensitivity of emulsion and the spectrum of led units. While I did eventually get my answers, I felt like I was getting top secret info.
-
Part of the reason manufacturers may simplify or recommend procedures without the 'science' behind it is due to the many variables in screen printing. Bill Hood has some interesting info on the many variables in the print process, but for most textile screen printers we simply don't have the tools to measure a lot of the variables in our shops. Just take the squeegee, angle, speed, mesh tension, durometer, thickness, edge quality, mesh opening, ink viscosity, etc., etc. measurements. If you print electronic circuitry with gold ink, these and many, many more measurements do make sense as well as all the physics that goes along with it, but most of us aren't physics majors. So much easier to show a product that works and apply it to their shop and develop a recipe for that shop to make money and good prints. There is rarely a one type product that fits all customers. What works for one, may not appeal to another company, so we develop products that can create good repeatable results with a variety of products that appeal to the end user's needs. After all we are printing on a fuzzy very unflat surface where the main key is will the customer buy it and what is the best production method to reproduce it? Textile printing is very subjective on what our eye likes. Yet medical devices, Photo Voltaic, and fine circuitry require knowing the numbers, very precisely.
-
Lets throw one more wrench into this great discussion.....
How many of you would look at your direct competitors and say they produce quality prints? Remember, they are still in business and have been for years.....
How many of you are printing for pennies and trying to turn product faster and cheaper to increase your razor thin margins? Is the garment you sell your customer top notch? Or "good enough" and that's all your printing ever needs to be?
I know almost all of you actually strive to be top notch. Please let me be clear there :)
But there are A LOT of shops out there who just need to be "good enough". And who do not want to spend time and money making things better and possibly more efficient because it aint broke yet/the customer is perfectly happy with what they have been getting/their cash flow is not taking a hit/insert reason to resist getting better here...
Jvanick: When it comes to ink and "Real Numbers", what you are able to achieve in your shop, is not what another shop will get. Because of the variables in shop components (screens, eom, squeegee, etc).
When I was in my lab at QCM, I would do all my testing with everything dialed in as close to the same as possible between inks. Temp/eom/squeegee hardness and sharpness/etc. Even then I could not tell you with Precise Empirical Data what results you would get in your shop.
I could give you the results of our leneta card draw downs at specific ink thickness between all of our inks. That would give you an Empirical Opacity for that ink. But how would you be printing that ink? Will you be able to keep all the ink up on top of the ink fibers? How much of that ink would be pushed into the garment thus reducing its effective opacity?
I can give you 2 different white inks. Both with the exact same opacity results when tested on a leneta card. One is a thicker bodied ink, one is very creamy. Which one will win in your shop? I can tell you each will fail horrendously in a bunch of shops... but I will also sell a ton of each.
The real Variable in our line of work is not our equipment, our inks, our chemicals....
It is our shop mindset. It is who ever the driving force of the business is. That is our real variable.
-
Colin, thanks! That's a very accurate statement.
As an example, similar to a good product, let's take seps. One can provide great seps and get 13 different results from 15 different shops. Some can butcher the job and think the seps were horrible. That's not to say that you can't get provided a bad set of seps, but the you have to do your part too, and not expect that just paying a good separator is going to make your print turn out great on its own. You can get good suggestions from a supplier but you have to do your part. Luckily, I have good customers that are also good printers. ;)
-
Lets throw one more wrench into this great discussion.....
I could give you the results of our leneta card draw downs at specific ink thickness between all of our inks. That would give you an Empirical Opacity for that ink. But how would you be printing that ink? Will you be able to keep all the ink up on top of the ink fibers? How much of that ink would be pushed into the garment thus reducing its effective opacity?
I can give you 2 different white inks. Both with the exact same opacity results when tested on a leneta card. One is a thicker bodied ink, one is very creamy. Which one will win in your shop? I can tell you each will fail horrendously in a bunch of shops... but I will also sell a ton of each.
The real Variable in our line of work is not our equipment, our inks, our chemicals....
It is our shop mindset. It is who ever the driving force of the business is. That is our real variable.
that's where you explain the difference between the two inks and explain why the shop is not getting the results they are after. This is the empirical data they lack and the knowledge that will impact their printing ability. Yes, as Colin mentions here, not everybody will care, but I would venture to guess that most would or will at least appreciate the knowledge that can get them better results. . .
science does matter in my opinion (and we all know that opinions are like . . .)
pierre
-
I truly wish it was that simple. Where it gets hard to convince someone that the "science" matters, are for those who have been doing this their way for 10-20 years and are profiting with 5 mil in sales when a Co doings everything right according to the screen print "science", yet they can be found to not have ever made over half that as another who's never measured eom and has never held below 7% in their art and have never completed a soft hand print.
I don't argue that the science is good for you, "science" seems to be used too loosely, but however we term it, the industry is notorious for being able to do well in it, yet half ass quality and THAT is what makes it so hard.
-
Pierre,I agree with you. Most of us on this forum agree with you.
Unfortunately, Dan is correct about what most of the print shops are like.
I am sure he can tell many stories about shops he has done installs at that have close to zero eom on their screens....
I have heard tales from my distributor here in Portland about shops asking about a better white ink.... he walks in and checks their screens.... no stencil thickness.... He tries to steer them in the right direction of starting with creating a proper eom for better white prints....they say "well lets get the ink on press first and see how it does"...
..... Some thing about a horse and water goes through my head about now.
-
I have always felt that this industry has lacked education from vender to printer.
This is true, but I don't think it is strictly the fault of the vendors. In recent months rather than having vendors come in and just talk about their new products, I have offered to have them come in and work. I have told them that previous people in my position have spent years talking and rubbing elbows, but all they were doing is making smoke, because the second the vendor leave sthey go back to the same process. If they aren't willing to come work for a day, and show us how, and why their product will work better, then I just ask that they don't come at all.
I have pinpointed some things that I have wanted to work on, and have had people from Rutland come do a bang up job. We did an awesome discharge under base print, with soft hand plastisol and foil resist + foil, possibly one of the nicest discharge prints we have ever done. We learned more in that 4 hours, than the 40 that were spent just talking about things. We also started a check list for what we would work on the next time they came out.
Even if you take nothing away, at least you can see some new techniques, or get some eye opening revelations about process, or even see that you like the way you are currently doing things. The vendors are here to help, they want us to succeed with their products not just to make the sale, but to then tell the next guy. It is what you ask of them, rather than just spending time talk, ask them to start showing and doing.
-
Part of the reason manufacturers may simplify or recommend procedures without the 'science' behind it is due to the many variables in screen printing. Bill Hood has some interesting info on the many variables in the print process, but for most textile screen printers we simply don't have the tools to measure a lot of the variables in our shops. Just take the squeegee, angle, speed, mesh tension, durometer, thickness, edge quality, mesh opening, ink viscosity, etc., etc. measurements. If you print electronic circuitry with gold ink, these and many, many more measurements do make sense as well as all the physics that goes along with it, but most of us aren't physics majors. So much easier to show a product that works and apply it to their shop and develop a recipe for that shop to make money and good prints. There is rarely a one type product that fits all customers. What works for one, may not appeal to another company, so we develop products that can create good repeatable results with a variety of products that appeal to the end user's needs. After all we are printing on a fuzzy very unflat surface where the main key is will the customer buy it and what is the best production method to reproduce it? Textile printing is very subjective on what our eye likes. Yet medical devices, Photo Voltaic, and fine circuitry require knowing the numbers, very precisely.
Interdependant variables. That's why. There are thousands of them in our industry. And the more there are in any custom manufacturing modules, the more Chaos Theory comes into play. In the end, we have goals and deadlines to achieve and most must balance the ideal model of putting everything under a microscope and the reality of getting good products out the door and on time.
-
Couple of thoughts here
first off uneducated consumers create an environment that grows bad sales people. Here is an example you all will get.....
Screenprinter; I can't print white ink that looks good on a black shirt
Salesnman: we have a super opaque short bodied ink that will not climb your squeegee, works great as a fast flash so you can use it as an under base or finish white. it goes down like a lead filled balloon and best of all you can use it on a 230 mesh screen first thing in the morning here in NY before your shop even comes up to 50 degrees because it shears 1/4 inch in front of the squeegee blade :P
second this screen printing thing is at times a science and at other times an art. The problem is it switches from science to art at will. Here is an example......there is a BUNCH of science that defines how to get white ink through a screen and onto a shirt with good results...it is however an art if you can actually achieve good results on every black shirt on every job on any given day of the week. If you can hold hands with the science and dance with the art you have a pretty good chance of success!
I am not sure I agree with the why question, a smart salesperson can always create a why situation that is uniquely solved by a product that they just happen to have ! Again this comes down to the best customer is an educated customer.
mooseman
-
All great responses. Here is the simple truth. ANY product can be made to work in ANY shop. Conversely ANY product can be made to NOT work in ANY shop. The trick is in knowing Why.
-
I think part of the print result that falls outside the numbers is screen printing is very much a hands on process. Press operators know their own little tricks to get a print to work that involves a quick pressure adjustment, a slight drop in speed due to too viscous an ink, a drop of clear base to bring out transparency in a sim process job. The numbers get even more important on reprints. We loved discharge printing, but to reset up a Disney job and get it to match to the sample required documentation. So to me there are two sets of measurements or numbers. First is the science to prove the product made it through lab tests and help on ussage, then the documentation of the print recipe. Discharge and transparent waterbase can need specific squeegee info, speed, angle, pressure, duro, sequece, ink mix etc. But in the end it really does come down to the guy holding the squeegee or in charge of his press. The process of creating 'art' can fall outside the numbers. Electronics? A whole nother world of physics that blows me away. I attended an IDEX conference on printed electronics, wow, this is pure science in math and physics that requires PHD's. Yet I will bet you that a lot of great printers on this forum have tricks that would baffle these guys. The separations we do are another form of art on top of the original graphic, our ink mixes sometimes voodoo concoctions of bases and flow agents and a little blowing agent to matte it out. Great question here, lots of need for more detailed data to make better prints. Good enough is a never ending progression to better than good enough, it's why we like screen printing, so many things to tweak and make better prints.