How to clean up water based screen printing ink

Each screen printer knows that demand has increased for soft-hand prints and also for more subtle-looking prints. The addition of water-based screen printing to your shop will help you draw and catch customers who want to look and feel water-based inks softer. Here are ten tips to proceed with water based screen printing if you have never used water-based inks.

Concept of wet-on-wet printed artwork

Many printers plan on a lot of flash curing while printing with plastisol inks and also plan on overlapping colors to improve their design opacity. Since water-based inks do not cure, water evaporates, leaving pigments to link to the fabric — it is not possible to use multiple flash cures. It takes some time for the water to evaporate under a flash cure device. If you plan a water-based printed artwork, carefully separate the artwork so that no overlaps are present in the ink to prevent color mixture without flash treatment. Visit this link for more information about PRINTABLE PRESS now.

Use higher mesh-count displays.

Water-based inks are much thinner than their counterparts in plastisol. If your screens flow too quickly, your picture can bleed. Using higher mesh-count screens to slow down the flow. Water-based inks are typically printed with mesh numbers between 156 and 200 counts, with higher mesh numbers for more detailed prints and lower mesh counts for high-cover prints.

Plan your screens correctly

Proper screen preparation is always important, but water based preparation is even more important. The smaller design of water-based inks helps the ink to find its way even more easily through pinholes or imperfections. Remove the haz, clean the screens, degrade the screens and allow the screens to fully dry when preparing for printing using water-based inks.

Use emulsion waterproof

Although most emulsions are to some extent waterproof, emulsions used to print plastisol usually do not accept the constant water-based printing moisture exposure. To avoid a breakdown of your stencil in water-based work, it is a good idea to use a water-resistant emulsion for water-based ink printing.

Improve your stencils with more hardening

Stencil breakdown can occur even with water-proof emulsion during water-based printing. You should take action to improve your stencil. After cleaning, you can re-harden any parts of the emulsion that have softened again with your stencil. You may also use a chemical hardener on shore stencils. The hardeners are sprayed on the stencil and are allowed to dry 24 hours afterwards.

If possible, use ink additives

Like plastisol inks, there are a variety of tin additives which can help you achieve the output from water-based inks which you want. Retarder slows down on screens drying the ink. Saturate acts as a weathering agent that lets water-based tinctures get deeper into the substrate. The thickener increases the viscosity of your water-based ink if it flows less quickly.

Cross linker helps to treat water-based inks at lower temperatures more easily. The binding booster makes pigments keep textiles faster and lightens your water-based printing. Stretching additive is used to stretch the print without cracking.