Screen Printing Forum

Hi there,

I am trying to print on metal front panels for electronics. I'm using a lacquer based ink from CRS and a 305 res. screen. I got one really nice looking print, then the screen clogs up and I can't get anything to work without cleaning it completely with thinner. Does anyone have experience with this? Is the screen to fine for this? I am at a loss.

Thanks for any help...

Mark

Depending on the detial of your image, the 305 should be ok, but you may be able to get bye with a 200.
When I have printed things such as this, as your doing, I always add a little thinner to my ink to slow down the drying process. I also use what they call a flood coat which simply mean that after each print you make, go back over the image on the screen with your squeegee and cover the image with ink. this keeps it from drying so fast and you should be able to get more prints out before you need to clean your screen. It takes a little practice though.

Not thinner, that can just speed up the drying process.

You need to get some retarder specifically for that line of ink.
Follow the mfg. suggestions for how much and tweak it from there.

Every day an ink can act differently.
Temp and humidity can cause all kinds of trouble.

-Rob

I did the printing today. Flooding really helped. We still had to clean the screen out a bunch of times.

I'm using the manufacturer's recommended "slow thinner," are you saying that may be making things worse?

Slow thinner is just retarder and thinner together. If you still have a problem with drying in screen, add a little more to the mix. If you put in too much, you'll be waiting forever for it to dry so be as precise as you can. If still a problem, get retarder by itself with no thinner.

When I wrote thinner before, what i meant was retarder. im glad your having a better go at it with our advise.