Using Excessive Ink

Most screen printers fail to realize the impact that ink costs or more important, savings, can have on their bottom line. Optimal tensioned frames allow for the proper clearing and pass through of ink to the garment. This will save multiple passes, multiple flashes as well as other time consuming processes during the print run.

In a third-party cost savings study, it was shown that on a single 10,000 print, 2-color job, the savings could be as much as $1,500. Factor that over 100,000 prints a year and your savings would top $15,000.

Ghosting And Haze

Low and unstable screen tension can contribute to high degrees of ghost haze. Low-tension screens require excessive off-contact on press in order to achieve proper peel/snap-off during printing. High off-contact is how one achieves the proper tension necessary to effectively transfer the ink to the substrate when working with improperly tensioned screens. Unfortunately, excessive off-contact causes inordinate mesh elongation as the squeegee stretches the screen while dropping into printing position. At this point, the ink transfers through the mesh and much of its pigment particles get trapped in the knuckles of the mesh when the screen relaxes to its resting position.

Poor Screen Tension

If your screens are very loose, get them restretched as soon as possible. Your local dealer can help you with this. In the meantime, order a few new screens of your favorite mesh counts. Simply put, printing is much easier with tight screens. Registration and off-contact magically become less of a problem as well. Just be sure that all the screens being used for a particular print have the same — or similar — tension values. For example, if a five-color job’s registration is off, check to see if all the screens are in the same tension range. If one is lower than the others, it is probably that screen that’s causing the registration issue.