Aluminum Vs. Wood Screen Printing Frames: How To Select The Right Screen Printing Mesh Size
The advantage of an aluminum screenprinting frame is the durability and longevity it retains. Unlike wood silk screen printing frames when exposing frames to water in a dip tank or washout sink aluminum frames will not warp. This will insure a flat framethrough thousands of prints to come. Aluminum frames can also be stretched and restretched many times. The mesh and glue are simply removed from the frameusing a professional tool that doesn’t damage the aluminum. Once cleaned the frames can then be restretched which will give you the ability to use that frame for years of hard work in your shop.Aluminum frames are also light weight which makes shippingless expensive and saves you money in the long run. If you’re looking to maximize performance in your shop aluminum frames are a great item to add toyour screen printing equipment. More about screen printing mesh size: Different mesh sizes are used for differentapplications in the screen printing process. Mesh size is measured by how many threads of mesh there are crossing per square inch. For instance a 110 meshscreen has 110 threads crossing per square inch. The higher the mesh count the finer the threads and holes are in the screen. The size of the mesh has a lot todo with how detailed your image is and how thick the ink you are using is. Ifyou have an image with extremely high detail a lower mesh screen won’t hold thehigh detail. The fine lines or dots in the image will simply fall through theholes in the mesh not giving you a correct representation of what your imageshould be. Also if you are using a thinner ink the ink will also flood throughthe larger holes and soak onto your shirt or substrate making your image blurryas the ink bleeds. On the other hand if you are trying to print a thicker inksuch as white through to high of a mesh screen barely any ink will printthrough the mesh. You will notice that different companies have different sizesavailable. If the mesh count is fairly close such as the difference between155 vs. 156 196 vs. 200 or 81 vs. 86 the difference is so negligible andsmall that it will not matter in your final results.Since there are many variables involved in silk screen printing wecan’t tell you exactly what mesh sizes are used for what applications. Howeverwe can give you a general outline of what sizes to use for certain types ofprinting. Your basic and most standard mesh sizes are 110 and 156. 110 meshlays a fairly thick layer of ink down. It’s great for block text letters andlarger spot color designs. It’s also a recommended mesh for white flash platesbecause many times you will only have to make one print impression which speedsup production time. 156 mesh also lays down a little thicker layer of screenprinting ink but offers you some higher detail ability in your image due tothe finer mesh. Also if you are printing with a little thinner viscosity colorsof inks you may want to use the 156 mesh so not too much ink is passed throughyour screen. Lower mesh counts like 4086 are used for shimmer and glitterinks. These inks have particles in them that will not pass through the typicalmesh sizes. Therefore you need a lower mesh count with large holes in order forall the particles to pass through properly. Shimmer plastisol inks have finer particles in them so you could probably use an 86 mesh while glitter inks have much larger particles so it would be recommended to use a 40 or 60 mesh screen. 200 and 230 mesh are used for finer detailed images and thinner inks. These mesh sizes can hold larger half tone dots but are notrecommended for four color process prints or fine detail half tone printing.Also graphic and solvent based silk screening inks that are much thinner should be used with these mesh sizes. Also if you would like a softer feel to the ink on your shirts you canprint through these higher mesh counts which will let less ink through thescreen giving you a much softer feel on the shirt. This can get tricky howevermany times a duller distressed look is wanted for the artwork but if brightvibrant colors are desired especially white you will have a hard time gettingthe opacity thick enough using these higher meshes. 305 mesh is used forextremely high detail textile printing and fine halftone four color process andsimulated process prints. Learn more about process printing here. Fine halftone dots need high fine detail mesh in order to hold and expose on. Highermeshes such as 355 380 and 400 are used mainly for graphic printing with UVinks. UV inks are extremely thin and many times are used for high detailprinting on signs banners or CD’s. Using a higher mesh allows the automaticprinters used in UV printing to regulate the amount of ink passed through thescreen.Exposure Notes: Different mesh sizes hold differentamounts of emulsion due to how big the holes in the mesh are. For instance a110 mesh screen will hold much more emulsion then a 305 mesh screen. While thedifference isn’t extreme you will have to vary your exposure times slightly fordifferent mesh sizes. A finer mesh screen that holds less emulsion will exposefaster then a lower mesh screen that holds more emulsion. However thedifference is small so you may have to only vary as slightly as 510 in eitherdirection and depending on mesh size in order to get maximum exposureperformance.
About the writer:nbsp;nbsp;Ryan Moor founded the Ryonet
Corporation a prominent online screen printing supply company. Ryan has dedicated much time to teaching and explaining screen printing processes. Find more information on
silk screen printing and screen printing equipment. Visit http://www.silkscreeningsupplies.com
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