feb17_images_digital

KB

TIPS & TECHNIQUES

“The only thing to consider is the alignment, because of course if you’ve got a colour offset from the white then it’s not going to look good. The way to align it is, initially you print the image with the registration marks on to a white T-shirt on the Texjet. You then remove it from the printer on its board, so it’s still on the platen, put it onto the press, bring down the screen and align it to that image. You’ve got micro-adjust on the manual stations, so you can get everything perfect. “Once that’s done, you put your first black or coloured garment on, screen print the white, flash cure it, then it comes off the screen print press, clips on to the printer and full CMYK is printed over the top.”

printing a white underbase and printing a full-colour design on top using the Texjet DTG printer. “To get an opaque white base you’ve got to put quite a bit of white ink down where DTG is concerned and that takes time. By creating one screen and using a discharge white screen ink that part of it gets done very quickly, and cheaply,” explains Julian. “What Polyprint has developed is an interchangeable table system that fits to the screen print press for printing the white underbase, then clicks out of that system and clicks into the Texjet printer, which puts the full CMYK print over the top. There is a bracket on the base of the printer that is identical to the one fitted to the screen print press, so the boards can switch between the two.

HYBRID PRINTING STEP-BY-STEP

Creating the white mask layer in Photoshop for the screen

The finished screen created using the artwork from step 1

The colour design is then loaded and positioned within the DTG Rip Software

The design is printed onto a white garment, including the registration marks

Printer bracket [l] and Screen arm bracket [r]: the platen system uses a custom screen print arm bracket to replicate the printer arm

The platen holding the white printed garment is then attached to the screen print arm bracket

FEBRUARY 2017 images 55

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