We recently had a client come to us asking to print a 10 color job with a huge amount of ink coverage. The artwork consisted of mostly solid colors butt registered, which included some small details. Ohhh…. and its just a few thousand prints.These types of prints require a little extra thought from the art dept and production manager. We typically put gutters into our underbases in order to give ink a place to go when colors are butt registered. “Gutters” are just a stroke of negative space in the underbase where the top colors meet. This job had so much ink coverage in the top colors that we used a halftone underbase as well. The halftone underbase gives the top colors a little extra adhesion. This prevents colors from lifting up onto other screens. This also allows your underbase to dry a lot faster. This particular halftone underbases was around 85%, but we did make some adjustments where darker colors were laying down. Just make sure your pallets are hot(always) but especially when starting a job like this.
would be interesting to know, how many flash units and cool down stations you guys have been using on this job and on which press this was printed ? mesh counts ?
thank you for this very interesting article,especially the thing with ink traps and halftone base!
best fron berlin
Jörg
This was printed on a 10 color / 14 station Roq. We only used 1 flash and no cool downs.
What mesh did you use for the tinted underbase, and at what DPI for the dot?
We used 230 mesh with a 55 lpi dot.
What mesh and dpi did you use for the tinted underbase?
Looks great guys. Why did you not try using discharge for this? Prints like this end of heavy and bulletproof. We did a similar print that was 6 colors and full coverage 10 inches wide by at least 12 – 13 tall. Discharged all the colors and it turned out amazing. I personally would not enjoy wearing our shirt if printed in plastisol. You could have tried plasticharge. Both should have worked decent on that teal color. Great job otherwise.