The Ink Kitchen

Danny Gruninger, of Denver Print House, discusses the joys and headaches of water-based print production…

Pinholes Pinholes piss off customers when you send shirts out without you having found them and removed them from your prints. They waste time and money and brain cells with shooting them out with dry cleaning fluid. They make you ruin most garment-dyed shirts (not Comfort Wash or most SanMar) because they can’t be shot…

Usually Tom and I relay a story of our own mistakes, which folks seem to enjoy hearing about. Today it is a mix of my woes and someone else’s. On a Facebook group this morning a fellow traveler in the world of screenprinting was having trouble with screens that would not wash out. What can…

Having talked shop with quite a few people at ISS Long Beach I have detected quite a bit of wishful thinking going on out there about screens. With some shops there seems to be a bit of a move away from Newman Roller Frames and in my opinion most of that thinking is not thorough…

Last week we ran a big Ink Kitchen list of reasons why you might not hold detail in your prints. My pals at Saati had a little more feedback. It is their usual type of feedback, helpful and practical. “First, make sure to run an exposure (cure) test and at least get into the range…

This question comes up often with screenprinters: why can we not hold detail? The answer is an idea  similar to the art department concept of problems with source artwork where we say “garbage in, garbage out.” We are now are transferring that idea to print production.  Basically, if you have a crappy stencil you have no chance…

We recently visited Anderson Studios in Nashville, TN. He has won more screenprinting awards than all of you readers put together. For printing the proof is not measuring dots or holding some line screen, the proof is what the prints look like. Andy Anderson’s prints are phenomenal and we’ll get into that in future posts.…

Question: Our printing doesn’t seem to be getting better, what are the best ways to go about improving our printing abilities?   Answer: My two cents? Stop being penny wise and pound foolish. Saving twenty dollars and buying a gallon of inexpensive but inferior emulsion is a terrible idea. Inferior emulsions don’t have the resolution…

That green leaf in the photo isn’t arty, it is wrong. It is out of registration. Why are things out of register on your prints? Oh, let me count the possible ways… It wasn’t registered properly by the press operator. Start with the obvious, believe me I have seen folks do crazy stuff when all…

If you hang out with any emulsion company, you will hear them talk about the importance of each step of the reclaim process. EVERY STEP. I have seen so many forum posts about how degreasing is a waste of time.  C’mon people! The screen is the most important part of screen printing, let’s treat it…