Images Magazine Digital Edition February 2019

STEP-BY-STEP: HIGH BUILD PRINT 9 Finish by putting through a dryer at the manufacturer’s recommended settings; we used a Tesoma dryer at 170°C for 1min 30sec. The finished print on a 100% organic cotton Leads T-shirt from Stanley/Stella 11 10 12 Flash again until touch dry Set up the high build screen with almost no off-contact Print the second high build screen using the same settings, but this time with a high off-contact distance Print the high density ink using a triple blade that will reduce the amount of flex in the squeegee. A slow print stroke with high pressure will yield the best results TIPS & TECHNIQUES www.images-magazine.com 68 images FEBRUARY 2019 7 8 used to stick the film on with. Gentle rinsing is the best method as we need to wash away the unexposed emulsion from the image one layer at a time rather than trying to power blast through the image and risk damaging the soft edges. Time to print We used a water-based white from Magna Colours – Aquaflex White V2 – as this gives a softer feel than traditional plastisol and it has a good, stable, open time in the mesh. The goal is to create a solid layer of white for our HD to sit on. This was printed on an MHM S-Type Xtreme 10/12 automatic press through a high tension 43t mesh using a 65 durometer, 65 shore sharp blade at 15° angle at low speed, double print. It was flashed for two seconds on pre-heated boards and then hit again using the same settings, this gave us a good opaque base. The key is not to push too much ink through the fabric, we want to sit our second coat on top of our first coat to give good visual strength. The HD ink we used was Wilflex Sculpture base and normal white mixed at 50/50 ratio. It was applied to the flashed base using very low off-contact because we wanted to allow the ink to shear out of the deep emulsion hole we made in our high build screen. Using a triple blade durometer 65/90/65 squeegee reduced the bend over in the blade as we were using very thick inks. A second screen was used to apply a further coat using the same settings, but this time the off-contact was raised to ensure the second ink layer sat on top of the first layer. If we hadn’t used this progressive off-contact method, the first print would have sat perfectly in the hole of emulsion of our second screen and the height of the build would have been lost. The T-shirt was sent through our Tesoma Drylight dryer, set at 170°C for 1min 30sec. www.essentialworkwear.com