Screen Printing Squeegees- Strokes

Just one of the tools that makes a screen print t shirt what it is, is the squeegee. Without the squeegee, your custom t shirt will not match the quality and longevity that it should if you bought one from a store at a discount.

Screen printing squeegees are important to ensure that the inks are spread across the screen to make sure that the design is properly printed on the material.

There are actually two different types of strokes that screen printing squeegees do.

The flood stroke spreads the ink across the screen in preparation for the print stroke. The screen printing squeegees are pre- loading the mesh openings with ink so that it takes less time and effort for the print stroke to transfer the ink onto the surface.

Many printers actually do not count the flood stroke as a type of stroke performed by the screen printing squeegees, but just a pure preparation for the actually printing.

The screen printing squeegees then do a print stroke, which is the second type of stroke you will seen done by the screen printing squeegees.

The print stroke is a simple, single movement across the screen that does three separate things.

1. The print stroke pushes down the mess onto the surface, which closes any off- contact distance. This in tern, adds tension to the mesh, which is what actually makes the off- contact print work. 2. The print stroke sweeps across the screen and pushes ink ahead of it, which pushes the ink through the screen and onto the material. 3. The print stroke, cuts away any excess ink that will remain on top of the screen and carries it to the other end of the screen, which will be redeposited with the next flood stroke.

The print stroke performed by the screen printing squeegees is probably the more important of the two types of strokes because the single movement actually produces a sharp, crisp imprint on the surface of the material.

If by some chance the first print is not perfect, typically caused by the screen printing squeegees drifting off target, missing a part of the image, the printers may consider a double stroke.

Double stroking is not actually a type of stroke performed by the screen printing squeegees, but it's when there are two print strokes- one right after the other- that builds a thick ink deposit. (This is generally performed, regardless of the image quality with black t shirts and other darker t shirt colors.)

The screen printing squeegees may remind you of the squeegees that you use to clean off your car windows in the winter, but they do much more than simply wipe off excess ice on your windows. The screen printing squeegees are probably the most important piece of equipment in t shirt printing.

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