Impressions - April/May 2013 - (Page 63)

Screen Printing Production talking SHOP How to Become More Efﬁcient Increase your screen print shop’s productivity by paying close attention to these 10 areas to improve upon. By James Ortolani, Contributing Writer f rom time to time, it is important to take a close look at each area in your screen printing shop and research what is needed to make your business more productive and efﬁcient. Sometimes we’re too close to the problems that need to be ﬁxed, so we just keep doing things the same way since it seems to work. I’ve taken 10 areas in a typical shop to focus on and make suggested improvements. Keep in mind that it’s better to make gradual improvements along the way, instead of overhauling the entire shop all at once because you don’t want to compromise daily production output. 1 Start with the art. The old saying, “Garbage in, garbage out,” is especially true when it comes to preparing art for textile screen printing. A garment printer must expose artwork onto a piece of fabric then force ink through this fabric onto another piece of fabric. The artwork degrades a little with each step of this process, so it’s important to start with as much detail in your design as possible. In many shops, it’s time to take advantage of updated versions of Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop or CorelDRAW to keep up with customers’ art. It’s also important to have raster image processing (RIP) software for producing highresolution graphics from photos or drawings. 2 Image setting. What good is having high-end graphic software if the ﬁlm output device is substandard? Many small- to mid-sized shops print their ﬁlm positives with either a laser or inkjet digital printer. Frosted vellum is used in the laser printer and a special clear polyester ﬁlm is used with the inkjet printer to produce ﬁlm positives. For the high-volume shops that push hundreds of screens through the operation every day, a computer-to-screen (CTS) impressionsmag.com Today’s screen-cleaning chemicals are more biodegradable and user-friendly than ever. For ink removal from the screen, we have gone from using harsh solvents with low ﬂash points to soy- and citrus-based chemicals with very high ﬂash points. system provides a great solution to keep up with the volume of work. Shops that have converted to CTS imaging systems are taking a step in the right direction toward being green by eliminating the use of polyester ﬁlm altogether. 3 Screen making. Mesh selection plays a big part in reducing the degradation of the original art to be reproduced. I always thought it was interesting that there are more than 40 different meshes commercially available to screen printers, yet April/May 2013 | Impressions 63 http://www.impressionsmag.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Impressions - April/May 2013

Impressions - April/May 2013
Contents
First Impressions
From the Show Director
FYI
Product Gallery
ISS Conferences
Game On!
There’s a Cap for That
Should You Start a Preprint Line? Part 2
How to Maximize Your Resources
Setting Up a Mobile Garment Decoration Business
Shop Spotlight
Embroidery Design & Digitizing
Embroidery Production
Screen Printing Graphics & Design
Screen Printing Production
Online Directory
Digital Decorating
Classifieds
Ad Index

Impressions - April/May 2013