Anyone who’s done any screen printing knows how messy the platen can get after just a few shirts. You start with a clean surface, then coat it in spray adhesive, put shirts on top of that, and then ink on the shirts. After 10 shirts you have a sticky mess of cotton fuzz-balls, ink, and other particles. This of course needs to be cleaned periodically as it will begin to affect the quality of your prints.
Now, I’m going to show two options for making this problem easier to deal with – saving you time, money, and sanity.
The first option is Newman Pallet Tape – This is essentially a wide roll of heat-resistant masking tape (only much stronger), that covers the platen. When the shirt fibers and inks have built up enough that the platen needs to be cleaned, simply pull up the tape and put down a fresh strip. No time-wasting chemical cleanup needed!
Ryan makes it look cool.
The second option is one of my own design – a direct result of my misguided belief that I’m clever, combined with a few extra rolls of blue painter’s tape that I had laying around. The idea was simply to cover the platen with strips of tape, effectively creating a barrier similar to the Newman Pallet Tape.
Notice the tiny gap on the left side and the slight overlap on the right.
There were two problems with this strategy. For one, it’s incredibly difficult to get each strip to line up perfectly. As I learned upon testing this trick, the smallest gap or overlap of the tape strips causes the print to reflect the imperfections onto the shirt. Another problem is that painter’s tape is relatively expensive, and the cost of this (money-saving, I thought) trick ends up costing more in the long run.
The moral of the story – if you’re into that kind of thing – is that most screen printers should have a roll of this Newman Pallet Tape right next to their press.
Oh, and as long as you’re here…please take a second to vote for our blooper video.
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Ethan
Team MOYA
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