Impressions - September 2014 - 33

Your print quality is sometimes
only as good as your shirt loader. Getting
the shirt straight and in the correct position
on the platen is a basic step in printing,
and often is overlooked. Photo courtesy of
Press Press Merch, Roanoke, Va.

other as a set. You usually just need to use
your micros to dial them in. If your platens
are not perfectly centered on your press
arms, you could have registration and offcenter issues, so watch how you lock in
your platens.
If you are having problems registering
an image on screen, the best method for
determining the cause of the problem is
to review each screen individually. Only
change one thing at a time. I've seen too
many operators get frustrated after adjusting two or three screens at a time and then
reviewing the result. If you do it that way,
it's like trying to hit a moving target, as there
are too many variables. It's actually quicker
if you slow down and use your brain.

COLOR MATCHING

Also, there are plenty of longstanding,
on-press registration tricks you can use.
Some printers will print the black or underbase screen on a junk shirt, platen or a
clear tape-coated platen and quickly ﬂash
cure the print. They then will use this to
register the other colors.
Using advanced screen-preparation
tools, such as a computer-to-screen (CTS)
imaging system, Tri-Loc pin-registration
systems or other devices will help reduce
your registration time, as the screens will
be imaged perfectly registered to each
impressionsmag.com

These days, most jobs have ink colors
speciﬁed with a vast array of Pantone
colors called out. Smaller shops may just
offer a stock set of colors, but even they
occasionally will be asked to match a particular PMS color. There is an ongoing
debate for charging for a PMS match, as
larger shops see it as simply a task that has
to be accomplished and have built the infrastructure to handle it.
Smaller shops with manual screen
printing presses, however, aren't set up
for such requests and usually charge a fee.
These smaller shops are the ones that have
"a guy" that has a certain eye for mixing
color and don't see the need to change. To
me, that's foolish, as you want to make the
task as easy as possible, and remove this
step from a particular person and progress

toward being a standardized function of
your shop that can be trainable.
To build your ink room setup for quick
and easy color matching, you only need
a few tools, primarily a really good scale
that measures to .01 and can be zeroed
out. Get one that is stainless steel for easy
cleaning.
Most ink companies have an ink system
that allows you to build your Pantone color
by using a base plus an assortment of pigments. To mix a color, type in a PMS number into a computer workstation in your
ink room and the list of ingredients will
appear. Enter the quantity of ink you want
in the bucket and the system will tell you
exactly how much of each ingredient to
add by weight. Place an empty bucket on
the scale and zero it out. Then, add the base
per the requested weight and zero it out.
Then, each required pigment is added, and
the scale is zeroed out each time. Mix the
ink when ﬁnished and it will exactly match
the required PMS color in the volume of
ink you need for the job. Average time to
mix usually is about four minutes for a
batch of one gallon or less.

INK COVERAGE
Believe it or not, your ink coverage
mostly is dependent on a combination of
the mesh selected for the job and the thickness of the emulsion on the screen, rather
than how much squeegee pressure you use.
Using so much pressure that your squeegee
bends like the letter "L" doesn't add much
more ink to the situation. It actually could
start contributing to other problems.
September 2014 | Impressions

http://www.impressionsmag.com

Impressions - September 2014

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