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screen printing => Ink and Chemicals => Topic started by: ericheartsu on May 28, 2013, 02:39:05 PM
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we just went through 1 5 gallon pail of white ink on 2200 red tote bags, with a 10x10 square image. We were using a 272 screen, but having to double pass it, as it looks way bolder.
I'm actually pretty shocked that we had to use that much ink. We still have another 1100 to go too!
anything we could have done to have used less ink?
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we just went through 1 5 gallon pail of white ink on 2200 red tote bags, with a 10x10 square image. We were using a 272 screen, but having to double pass it, as it looks way bolder.
I'm actually pretty shocked that we had to use that much ink. We still have another 1100 to go too!
anything we could have done to have used less ink?
what kind of material? if you had to do two hits, my guess is it is porous and it will take ink to cover it up. About the only option you'd have there is to put less pressure on the squeegee and try to keep it on the top of the material.
finer mesh and P/F/P maybe?
that's all I can think of . . .
pierre
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it's one of these 100% cotton totes similiar to the wasatch/qtees bags.
i think we have our pressure pretty low, and we are using a smiling jack squeegee and a smiling jack flood
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soft squeegee = more ink
less pressure = more ink
smiling jack = more ink
This will sound funny but try reducer or soft hand to break down the thickness of the ink. It will make it go farther but still cover well with 2 hits. Then use a harder squeegee and a harder stroke. You have to balance all of this to still get a good print. Those cotton totes should print easy when you get it right.
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I usually look at thread diameter.
Thinner the thread, the less ink I lay down.
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soft squeegee = more ink
less pressure = more ink
smiling jack = more ink
This will sound funny but try reducer or soft hand to break down the thickness of the ink. It will make it go farther but still cover well with 2 hits. Then use a harder squeegee and a harder stroke. You have to balance all of this to still get a good print. Those cotton totes should print easy when you get it right.
whe nwe went with more pressure, it was laying down so much ink through the bags, onto the platten
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soft squeegee = more ink
less pressure = more ink
smiling jack = more ink
This will sound funny but try reducer or soft hand to break down the thickness of the ink. It will make it go farther but still cover well with 2 hits. Then use a harder squeegee and a harder stroke. You have to balance all of this to still get a good print. Those cotton totes should print easy when you get it right.
whe nwe went with more pressure, it was laying down so much ink through the bags, onto the platten
that was my thinking on a porous material like that. . .
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Ok this may be stupid, but have you tried discharging them? You said they are 100% cotton right? I would try a nice white discharge and see what happens. Even if you did a discharge UB it would cut your costs down some...
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Like TCT said DC is a good idea but i bet they are royal or some color like that. I have printed some of these. They print really easy when they are set right. I don't know your setup and ink or anything. But the smiley is made to dump ink on the shirt so I would change that out asap. That is your number one problem of using to much ink in my opinion. Use a 60/90/60 or a 70 and then play with the angle and pressure and speed to get the print looking good. On a 272 screen you shouldn't been laying down too much ink, that is what is making me think your ink is the problem? Too thin? does not cover worth a crap? What ink are you using?
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Ok this may be stupid, but have you tried discharging them? You said they are 100% cotton right? I would try a nice white discharge and see what happens. Even if you did a discharge UB it would cut your costs down some...
no ub on these at all, printing it with one screen. we've never had good luck with DC on these.
we are using a rutland white, i think street fighter maybe. on a 156, it was laying down WAYYYY to much ink, so we upped the mesh. to lay down less.
with a 70 duro, it wasn't getting great opaque coverage.
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And this is with a Newman isn't it?
Seems crazy, but I've never paid attention to how much ink we are laying down. I'm sure it's more than I think... Heck we print so little I get excited when we get to the bottom of the 1 gallon bucket of white. LOL
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And this is with a Newman isn't it?
Seems crazy, but I've never paid attention to how much ink we are laying down. I'm sure it's more than I think... Heck we print so little I get excited when we get to the bottom of the 1 gallon bucket of white. LOL
yep! 272 with 36n
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While it can be surprising the amount of ink used on large jobs, if you are concerned with the cost
of ink for a large order you didn't quote it right. The worst thing to do is to cut corners to save $100 on ink.
Maybe start looking at 30 gal. barrels. I like the Streetfighter enough that I think we'll start doing that.
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we just went through 1 5 gallon pail of white ink on 2200 red tote bags, with a 10x10 square image. We were using a 272 screen, but having to double pass it, as it looks way bolder.
I'm actually pretty shocked that we had to use that much ink. We still have another 1100 to go too!
anything we could have done to have used less ink?
10” x 10” x 2200 prints, divided by 144 to convert to total square feet printed, then divide by 5 = ~ 510 square feet coverage per gallon for an image that’s being double stroked. The ink cost per image would therefore be Price Per Gallon $XX.XX divided by 510 x 0.7 (based on 100 Square inches coverage per print) In this example if your ink price was $50.00 per gallon the ink cost would be just under $0.07 per image. There’s a lot of factors that can impact ink mileage and the intensity of the printed image that include:
Screen tension and stencil profile. A loose screen and / or low EOM makes it difficult to get a solid base plate that is laying the ink on top of the substrate, versus driving it down into the fabric.
Double stroking wet-on-wet will generally consume more ink than a Print-Flash-Print set up using a set-up with optimized mesh selections and press set-ups for the first-down and overprint white screens
The weight per gallon of a white plastisol screen-print ink can range anywhere between 9.5 lbs. to almost 14 lbs. per gallon. You better believe that you’ll use a whole lot more of a lighter weight ink to achieve the same level opacity and intensity of color than you will with a heavier white ink. What’s interesting to me is that the United States is one of the few markets in the world where ink is sold by the liquid gallon versus being sold by weight.
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The smiling jack can be adjusted and flipped to provide just about an endless ink deposit so I would disagree that the SJ is the problem here. The SJ is a more versatile blade than any other blade on the market and if a thicker ink deposit is the goal, use the beveled edge and adjust your angle, if you want a thinner deposit, flip it around to the sharp side and again, adjust angle to achieve the desired deposit. You can do that with any blade really but the SJ is two blade profiles in one that allow for way more versatility than a double, triple, beveled, any profile blade. We've run the SJ's on every job you could think of, thick deposits on canvas bags to sim process through 330's and it works perfectly, you can't get that with any other type or style of squeegee blade.
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Am I the only one that thinks a 272 is too high for white? Meaning, the pressure it takes to pass the ink through the mesh is so great that it will undoubtedly be driven into the base garment? If I were going for a one hit I'd use a 150 or 135 with a 2/3 or 2/4 stencil, fast stroke with either a V blade or almost straight-up regular squeegee.
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Canvas is odd in that the fabric itself is not absorbent like a regular t-shirt material, but depending
on the weave of the fabric, can require quite a bit of ink and pressure to fill in the valleys.
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Am I the only one that thinks a 272 is too high for white? Meaning, the pressure it takes to pass the ink through the mesh is so great that it will undoubtedly be driven into the base garment? If I were going for a one hit I'd use a 150 or 135 with a 2/3 or 2/4 stencil, fast stroke with either a V blade or almost straight-up regular squeegee.
we tried a 156, but it laid down such a thick amount of ink, and still wasn't clearing in one pass. For the screen i had it coated 1/1 with the round edge, but we use the xenon nova emulsion and it's thick as it is, so that was just a precaution.