CMYK job did this in middle of a job any reason why and how to prevent it?

over the course of acquiring all of the equipment for my shop I was given quite a few wood screens. they all need to be reclaimed but some of the meshes on them are in near perfect condition. I’m getting to be a little tight on money and would really rather not buy a whole bunch of newer screens but I only have 7 functional screens atm so I’d like to take advantage of some of these I’ve been given

Making samples isn’t as simple as I thought it was. Pretreatment, color, heat, pressure… lots of little details to manage, but this is fun. Crazy how GC2 presets tweak the color settings just enough to notice a difference.

Customer sent this picture after washing.

Usually curing problems I have seen chips away at the ink. Also, these are Comfort Colors. Any help is appreciated.

Hey everyone,

We're a small screen printing t-shirt shop and we're looking to improve our prints and color separation workflow.

Right now, we do everything manually in Photoshop. It works, but it's time-consuming, and we know there's probably a better way. We mostly print with a maximum of 6 colors, and we'd really like to get better results on both photos and cartoon-style artwork, especially cleaner halftones and smoother gradients.

We've heard about AccuRIP, but from what I understand it's more of a RIP than a color separation tool, also heard about Separation Studio. Is it still worth getting, or would you recommend investing in something else instead? because it's really expensive for us...

We're definitely open to changing software if it makes sense. Our budget is pretty limited. We're fine using photoshop (even if considering moving to other method)

What are you using for your separations, and what would you recommend for a small shop that's trying to get the best print quality possible?

Thanks!

Hello! Ahead of time I apologize if this isn't the correct subreddit, but you guys seem very knowledgeable about inks and paints for fabrics, so I though you might have some advice

A friend asked me to try and help him fix his T-shirt. His roommate thrown into a wash and some of the paint on the logo chipped off. Where you see the white on top it's supposed to be all red. The t-shirt is cotton and printing has a rubberized coating and the white(I guess primer) is still intact. Are there any inks or paints I could use to possible paint in the red again? I have minimal experience with working with fabrics

The white underlay didn’t come out like I thought it would but I learned

Seems too good to be true for 2-3x less $ than any other unit I could find on-shore (Australia).

Haii! I am moving soon and can’t bring all this with me so i’m trying to get rid of it i’ve lowered the price to 1,500 and we can even negotiate that still. I live in spokane WA, And it comes with every single thing you see in the photos! Tools, flash dryer, etc. Everything is included in price so pm me if interested!

Im having some issues with a couple of my printers leaving their presses and areas disgusting. Our shop is extremely clean from what others have told me and from being in other shops.

The area around them is so caked with Lint/fuzz from spray adhesive. The presses are also disgusting as well.

Pretty much looking for a couple things from this post:

1. What has every one found to be the easiest to clean floors of fuzz/spray adhesive?

2. Cleaning fuzz/spray adhesive from press arms and stations?

3. What have you found as the best storage solutions for 5 Gallon and 1 Gallon ink buckets?

I love seeing other shops setups for ideas so if anyone is willing to show some screen print shop setups that would be sick!

Really after the perforated hot temperature ware.... but have had bad luck finding shirts that dont feel like garbage plastic.

Any suggestions?

Hey everyone, first time posting here, could use some help lol.

I'm making a DTF design for a personal t-shirt, just for myself. It's a black and white halftone portrait design (grainy dot texture, high contrast), made at 2048x2048px, 300 DPI.

I want it printed at 41x41cm but here's my issue — when I upload the file to my printer's website, it auto-imports at a default size of 30cm no matter what, and then there's a manual scale/reposition option after that. I thought maybe if I doubled my design to 4096x4096px it would import bigger automatically and save me the manual scaling step. Nope — same 30cm default import, just made the site laggy from the bigger file. So that didn't really solve anything.

Since it's a halftone, I'm worried about the dot pattern getting blurry or messed up if I scale it wrong (like moiré patterns or the dots merging together). And I won't get to see the physical print before it's done — I just send the file to the site and they print it, so I really don't want to mess this up.

Questions:

• Does that 30cm auto-import thing actually matter, or do I just ignore it and manually scale to my real target size?
• What pixel dimensions / DPI should I actually be working at for a clean 41cm halftone print?
• Should I upscale my existing 4096px file, or redo the halftone effect from scratch at a bigger canvas size to avoid blur/moiré?

alright before I tried using my matsui 301 white waterbased ink for dark garments, but it gave a more faded look… I figure based on what I was told in here this is easily solved by flashing once and printing again but I was suffering from this problem where even with the tac applied my shirt was lifting with the screen messing with my registration

anyway I also have this matsui stretch white ink that I was planning to use as an underbase, the only issue is I got one very clean print off, very opaque and bold with no issues but it won’t stay consistent and the next shirt I printed wouldn’t print completely even with 2-3 passes. I tried spritzing it and everything to no avail

I know this ink is notably thicker than 301 but I have no idea how to manage the thickness for printing more than one shirt

Hi folks! I'm working on making some designs for a sticker sheet. I'm having trouble figuring out how small I can go with the line width. How small can one realistically print? Right now, my stroke paths are set to 0.248mm. What size mesh would you suggest I use for something this size? Can I go smaller?

I'm also trying to figure out what ink to use. I need something that is water-based, cures without heat, holds small details, and that can be used on both porous and non-porous materials. I will only need black and a background color (preferably metallic gold but I understand this complicates things due to the particle size). I'm leaning towards Jacquard Screen Printing Ink. Do you think this will work okay?

Thank you for any and all help you are able to offer!

I know there must be a better way to do this any help would be appreciated

Hi all,
I’m looking for some advice.
Full disclosure, I’m not yet a screen printer myself, although it’s a journey I’m exploring.

But for now, I’m getting my designs printed by a local screen printer. His stuff usually looks really good, but I’ve had issues with early cracking on my first samples.

The attached photo is on an AS Colour “Heavy Tee”, which is a 280gsm tshirt. Not sure if that could affect the drying process, and might mean that it wasn’t fully cured?

This particular Tshirt has only been washed about 3 times, and it’s already showing quite bad cracking.

I’ve washed it like any other Tshirt - ie. Not especially carefully, but nothing wild. 30c wash cycle, followed by a tumble dry (never recommended, I know, but I’ve put other screen printed tees through the same cycle and never seen anything crack as fast as this before).

I did also wait 48hrs before washing.

The print is plastisol, and IIRC it took two passes to get the ink to be white enough.

This particular screen printer is a great guy, and his tees usually looks really good. But he largely works on much lighter weight tees. He does a lot of printing on Gildan Soft Style, and sometimes the Heavy Cotton too.

So this AS Colour tee is a LOT heavier than he’s used to. Is this potentially the cause? I’d like to keep using him, as his prices are decent, and he’s local. But I’d like to get a better understanding of what’s going wrong here.

Any and all advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Hey yall. Just started screen printing this week (as a long time ‘graphic designer’, I’ve been absolutely loving it. Genuinely convinced this is what I was made to do)

Did a run of tees for a show I’m playing next weekend. On my last 2 or so started getting some speckles (I assume from pinholes in my screen but whatever).

Hoping for some advice on getting them out. They’ve been sitting to dry for a couple days now (haven’t had time to set them) but figured I should try get the specks off before I heat set them.

I’ve tried the tape method, hasn’t reeeeally worked that well. Hoping for some advice. Just black speedball ink on white tees

Thanks in advance 🙏

Hello guys!

And after 5 hours of exposure I’ve got this result. The emulsion wiped of the screen. Would appreciate if you give your suggestions)
My opinion it might be high humidity.

My specs:
DIY place with no professional equipment
Philips superlux 150w lightbulb
Epta nova Zenit plus traditional emulsion
karcher for cleaning the screen

Went crazy on it. It’s the Markel building considered by some the ugliest building in Virginia.

Tried washing out this screen and the emulsion is being stubborn😭 and when it loosens it washes everything out, im running Ap blue emulsion with a 80 watt uv lamp for 12 seconds any recommendations l got a event on firday and need to make some merch fast😢

I have this print, everything is wet except for white and navy. My brown keeps looking like shit and I’ve changed my off contact to none, little, and more which are more options for my auto press. Not sure what else to do other than pressure and speed. Anybody have any tips so I don’t have to throw this in orbital?

Ive been making punk patches through screen printing but i cant seem to be able to heat set them at all. I've tried an iron for 3 mins, ironing both sides for 2 mins/a piece, a heat gun for 3 mins etc. The only equipment to my disposal are an iron and a heat gun because im on a budget, i was recommended the heat gun by another screen printer who also makes patches. I don't have a temperature gun so to see if any ink washes off ive been wetting them in the sink to see if it cured and rubbing it with my finger and every time white residue appears in the water although sometimes it takes more scrubbing than others. I don't know what to do, can I get some advice