Athletic multi-color print on Dark tees & fleece

Post your questions, suggestions, ideas and advice to issues you have run into in your screen printing shop.

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Darrendino
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Athletic multi-color print on Dark tees & fleece

Post by Darrendino »

I have been printing for a few years and I can "fake" my way through this but there has got to be an easier way.
We can print photo realistic pretty easily due to the fact that the dot gain does not kill the design BUT when we have more than 2 or 3 colors on a simple block design we are having to flash multiple times and it takes forever.

Situation:
Printing white underbase (110 - 156 mesh) / 2 coats of white ink slightly thined / reduced.
2nd color print (230 mesh) / One coat or layer of ink... prints great
3rd color print (230 mesh) / One coat or layer of ink... This color will print great but the "2nd color" smears horribly. Sometimes we're able to get away with a little bit of dot gain or colors running into each other but for the most part it produces an awful print
4th color print ... forget it, we can barely make a 3 color look good.

One method we have been using to "fake" our way through:
Print white normally
Print other colors (Red / Green / Blue / Purple / etc..) with it's own underbase...Meaning, not printing a white underbase.. just printing the color / flash / print again... Work OK but takes forever.

Again, the issue is not "photo realistic" but athletic simple block designs with hard / defined lines. We have been having to sub out 5 & 6 color designs because it's completely unfeasible to print in house.

Any tips would be appreciated.
thanks..
The Dino ("Deen-Yo")
locus
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Dark garment

Post by locus »

Try underbase/flash/color/flash etc. -
UpNorthMatt
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Post by UpNorthMatt »

I think one thing you could look into is the order your printing your overprint colors in. This is one thing you get good at with auto printing since you can't flash in between every color efficiently. I have several ways I determin print order, from least ink to most ink, from darkest to lightest and from the inner protion of the design to the outer part. Sometimes there are certain colors that you can't get away with printing without flashing in between, but your mesh choices sound good so I would just experiment with your print order.
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