In today's tutorial will show you how to use a flattening screen to get that
oh so smooth white fashionable print coming up what is up gang Matt with
Mikey Designs here let's dive right into that tutorial okay the first thing
you're going to need is a screen that is exposed with no image in it and this one
as you can see it's got a lot of stains in it it just quite won't reclaim these
days and it has a little piece of tape here that makes it extra special so
we're gonna take this bad boy and set it up on press right next to what will be
our white print okay we got our flattening screen all set up it really
does not matter where it goes as long as it's just over the print area because
there's really nothing to line up just toss it on the press now what I like to
use you're going to need put a little something in your screen and what I like
to use is just a touch of our Platts olive oil adhesive because that's fairly
transparent it's just a glue stuff does not dry up so I can just leave it in
there and then go back to my screen pick it up and just keep pushing on so let's
go ahead and toss them this in there
okay what we're going to use is a 80 durometer squeegee it's a pretty hard
squeegee and that's really just because this is the only one I currently have
clean at the moment Plus this will actually flatten the fibers a little
better you can use a 60 70 80 the hard squeegee the the more you're gonna press
down those fibers so let's go ahead and work with this bad boy the next two
items you're gonna need to use a flattening screen are some paper towels
and most importantly some silicone spray and all these a link down the
description as to where we got the silicone spray works really well so what
you're going to want to do is take your silicone spray and give the underside of
it a good spray and you might want to do this in between your stations that way
you're not getting silicone spray on to your pellets next we're going to take
our paper towels and they're just a wipe off the excess that way you're not
printing silicone onto your ink so nothing ends up washing out of your prep
I guess that's the easiest way to explain it and I'll show you what the
silicone spray does here at the moment no I did not use them leave my forehead
okay gang we're using a next-level t-shirt as our test
I would even say it's a test subject but these are the shirts that we will be
using for this order and we're all nice and inked up we did a little bit of a
test print doing a video which you may find on doing a review on fusion 180 ink
now this is not the fusion 180 ink this is what I like to use which is a will
flex epic amazing bright white okay so using our flattening screen what we're
gonna go ahead and do is we're gonna do a couple passes just to clear the screen
and get a nice bright foundation really pressing that ink down into the fibers
and then we'll show you what the next step is let me go ahead and flood this
again like I'll say we're using that that T's in 1:18 and you'll have to
check out the review on that okay now we have a nice bright print down as you can
see there's a little bit of marbling we're using a 195 mesh with the 195 mish
you're not putting down as much ink which is absolutely fine now I'm gonna
send this thing over to the flash okay while this is over at the flash the idea
is to once it's flashed I'm gonna give it about eight seconds and I'm gonna
swing it back over we want a hot hot hot you're gonna swing your press in reverse
order whenever you're doing a flattening screen so it's nice and hot and that
silicone spray what it's gonna do is keep the screen from sticking so I'm
gonna give it two to three good firm presses I might do one more
and so now what that did is it really flattened down the fibers and you have
to do it while it's hot and now at this point I can't even fill the fibers as
we've really pressed that print down now we have our fibers nice and matted down
it's cooled down a little bit I'm gonna go ahead and do my over friend I'm just
gonna give it one nice fully firm print because we're already printing ink on
top of ink you can see and you can see it's a nice bright friend I'm going to
go ahead and take this off and throw the conveyor dryer
you
okay our shirts nice and cured and it has a softer print that's for sure
thanks for tuning in I really appreciate it
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myself and everybody that twos it until next time guys we'll see you later