A 3color this week and weird exposure problem
22 November, 2008 – 2:27 pm
I did 20 of those this week. Black 2001 American Apparel with a red-pigmented discharge through a 180, discharge-white through a 160 and a grey mixed from Matsui 301 trans white, opaque white, and spot black through a 160. The red started to misbehave and not lay down cleanly towards the end. The customer is going to order more, and I’ll do it through a 160 next time, which may keep it from misbehaving but could also lead to bleeding in the time that the other colors are being printed. At first I was doing red then white, flash, then grey/flash/grey, but did most of it it red, spin, white, flash, grey/flash/grey.
They came out fine, and the customer was very happy, which is the most important thing. This print illustrates some problem I’m having with burning low mesh screens that have to butt register. See the grey and the white, such as the “OH” in the text? They don’t butt register perfectly, but the films do. There is something going on during the burning process that is making the designs burn a tiny bit smaller than the films, which prevented this from butting properly, leaving a thin gap where none should be. Monday I need to do some test burns and try to figure out what the problem is. Dennis at Westix who sold me my exposure unit, a HIX tt180 table top vacuum unit, said my burn time was probably too long and light was sneaking around the black of the film, so I reduced burn time from 6 minutes to 4 minutes for white mesh and I will lower it even further during my experiments.
This week I also did about 475 discharge-white prints. Next week I need to do a tight 4color on white shirts, so I need to resolve any burning issues ASAP.
