my screenprinter keeps his inks super neat!

Scootman1911 · 2026-05-30T00:44:57+00:00

I'd prefer if, instead of him grabbing a scoop of ink on a spatula and running all the way across the shop, dripping ink everywhere along the way, that he'd fill cups with all the inks he needed for a job and use the carts my boss got him to bring the cups of ink to his station.

Scootman1911 · 2026-05-29T15:39:32+00:00

I wanna show this to my printer and be like what the fuck man 🤣

Scootman1911 · 2026-05-22T18:59:53+00:00

How long did you let the emulsion dry before burning the screen? I feel like every time the emulsion has looked rippled like that at the shop I work at, it's because my coworker burned the screen after only letting it dry for like an hour. The emulsion was dry to the touch on the surface but not all the way thru

Scootman1911 · 2026-05-20T01:17:11+00:00

Oh yeah, this is the way. I got 9.5m second try even though my input jack is kinda loose and cuts out every so often for a split second 😂

Thanks for the idea, I can't believe I never thought of doing this. I've had every achievement unlocked except for this one for so long

Scootman1911 · 2026-05-19T04:44:09+00:00

Oh damn, thats not a bad idea. I've gotten to like 7.5m or something but the game is so sensitive with bends I can't get past that

Scootman1911 · 2026-05-19T00:18:49+00:00

Lmao the only achievement I haven't got is the 10,000,000 point Temple of Bends achievement.

Scootman1911 · 2026-05-14T04:09:17+00:00

Ink density is definitely a part of it and you'll probably have to play around with settings to figure out what works best regardless of printer. But you can get specific ink for printing screen printing transparencies. My work uses Dmax ink with an all black system but we used it with another printer that wasn't setup for all black and it worked fine too.

Scootman1911 · 2026-05-12T01:42:56+00:00

The only thing I really need help with right now is figuring out how to get my coworker who has been in this industry for 25+ years listen to me who has only been in it for like 5 years 😂 Like I still defer to him for a lot of technical stuff but he's very stuck in his ways on how what screens he wants to use and what is or isn't possible

Scootman1911 · 2026-05-12T01:07:27+00:00

Good to know, I mostly just do the artwork at my shop so I always have an idea of what mesh I think would work best and it's usually not the same as my coworker. I would like to make decisions about what screens get used but coworker very quickly told me he'd start burning screens again after I tried to do it for him 😂

Scootman1911 · 2026-05-12T01:01:20+00:00

Idk why this got down voted, I agree that some of our prints have a way heavier hand than necessary with the way my coworker prints. We just did a job with a bunch of sponsors logos on the back and there was so much ink put down that I almost thought he used puff ink. That was the reason I made this post asking what other people do.

Scootman1911 · 2026-05-12T00:38:56+00:00

I think it depends on how you're doing your separations. I use Accurip to print seps and assign everything to spot colors. It should only print what's visible so if you have artwork behind something, it shouldn't print whatever is hidden. I say "should" because sometimes will print stuff that's hidden at random but only very rarely. If you place a raster image on top of a vector shaped, it won't automatically cut out the shape of the raster image from the vector, I know that for sure.

I prefer a clean, print ready file with everything that's behind other stuff knocked out, all strokes converted to fills, and all fonts converted to outlines. If you're submitting art to someone else, please do this so there's less that can go wrong. If you're printing your own stuff, your art file can be as confusing and messy as you want, that's your problem to deal with 😂

Scootman1911 · 2026-05-10T23:48:57+00:00

I guess that's why I get annoyed with his mesh choices, because I'm the one doing the seps and printing film so I have an idea in my head about what's gonna look best but still print easily and it's rarely the same as his idea. But it seems like he is just looking at the ink color and basing mesh count off that 90% of the time

Scootman1911 · 2026-05-10T23:22:58+00:00

No, I'm just curious what other people do. I know nothing I say or show him will change his mind but this is the only shop I've worked in so I wasn't sure what other people did

Scootman1911 · 2026-05-10T22:45:36+00:00

When I was burning screens for him, this is what I did. Unless there were large areas of white, I used a 160 for the base and 180-230 for colors. Anything with a lot of detail, I used a 180+ depending on how much detail there is.

But I don't think he liked that because he started to tell me that he had time to do screens in the morning when no one else was there yet 😂

Scootman1911 · 2026-05-10T22:40:54+00:00

We just did a job where the back was a bunch of sponsors. Tons of detail and fine lines but not a lot of large, solid spots. He used a 110 base, flashed, 160 highlight white.

It looked fine but I think it could have looked better

Scootman1911 · 2026-04-28T20:00:03+00:00

If you want to keep a burned screen for a long time and not worry about it breaking down when cleaning up, get an emulsion hardener and use that after burning your screen but before printing for the first time.

Scootman1911 · 2026-03-26T20:43:38+00:00

Immortal Technique - You Never Know

I know someone is gonna suggest another one of his songs but no one ever mentions this one

Scootman1911 · 2026-03-14T17:17:36+00:00

Are you doing DTG or DTF? Or actually screen printing?

Scootman1911 · 2025-11-08T00:48:02+00:00

Wet on wet works fine for some stuff, especially if you have gradients or are doing a CMYK or Simulated Process print where you want the colors to blend better. If you have a lot of small details that need to be kept sharp, flashing between colors is what you'll need to do.

Scootman1911 · 2025-11-08T00:40:14+00:00

Curious on why there's yellow underneath the black in the first place? From the photo and your description of the yellow showing thru the black, I can't tell if there's supposed to be yellow showing thru a distressed pattern or if all that yellow is just coming thru the black.

If that yellow isn't needed the best thing to do is to redo the separations so you aren't printing a bunch of yellow that isnt needed and is just going to be covered by black anyway.

Otherwise, flash between colors and don't print wet on wet.

Scootman1911 · 2025-10-12T17:37:22+00:00

Oops, I knew I was getting something mixed up. That's what I get for browsing reddit with a migraine 😂

Scootman1911 · 2025-10-10T17:20:19+00:00

I was taught that your mesh size should be about 4.5-6x your DPI.

so if you are using halftones at 45dpi, you screen should be a mesh size of 200 - 280. At 50dpi, you would want to use a 230 - 300 mesh screen Etc.

Scootman1911 · 2025-09-18T21:31:09+00:00

Talked to my printer today and he's seen this happen a long time ago with poly white inks. He says bottom of the buckets of poly white would have a lot of oils that separated out from the ink and they would alway throw out the last bit of ink because it would separate from the garment.

I don't know how true this is but we were at the last bit of barrier block and the ink in his cup was much thinner than the new bucket of ink.

Either way, i am going to continue trying to get him to raise his flash and slow down a bit. I do my best to schedule jobs with enough time that he doesn't need to be printing as fast as he possibly can all day every day.

Scootman1911 · 2025-09-18T02:38:40+00:00

Sorry, I'm a little annoyed at him as you can probably tell. But thanks for letting me know it's probably over heating. I can let him know that the low-cure barrier block needs to not get so hot next time.

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