Films for screen printing.

[aqazi81]

With the demise of CTF devices, just curious to know how you guys are getting films for your screen printing jobs?

 

[Macmann]

We still have a 90's Barco Megasetter Plus with an Esko front end. The quality is hard to beat after all these years.

 

[Martin Mueller]

Take an Epson SureColor SC-P inkjet printer, a high-quality transparency inkfilm and a suitable Rip software and off you go with your screen film production.

 

[tastar]

An Epson T3270sr printer is excellent for screen printing - 24 inches wide, excellent film density with Epson Photo Black ink, Epson has great screen positive film, and works well with the Cadlink Filmmaker RIP. You can get clear ink for the other channels if you are only using it for film output, but, it does a great job for signage if you leave the color inks in it.

Tony

 

[Macmann]

We do industrial graphics-automotive, appliances, etc... The Epson doesn't have the quality we require-might be fine for t-shirts?

 

[Magnus59]

There is still a demand for high resolution film, for foiling, embossing, and I assume the printed circuit board industry, so I can't see CTF devices becoming totally obsolete for some time yet.

 

[aqazi81]

Thank you all for your response, a friend of mine is doing graphics for the automobile industry as a vendor and currently, they are sourcing films from an old film bureau. They want to do these films in-house now so he's looking for a better alternative.
This thread will surely help.

 

[DuaneBryant]

Thank you all for your response, a friend of mine is doing graphics for the automobile industry as a vendor and currently, they are sourcing films from an old film bureau. They want to do these films in-house now so he's looking for a better alternative.
This thread will surely help.

We tested a WIDE array of inkjet solutions and NONE had the repeatable registration/size-variation that we need. Consecutive films do not fit to each other. We ended up buying a older used Esko CDI Spark 4835, that has been a fantastic solution that produces very repeatably tight tolerances when comparing subsequent films.

We provide finishing-to-the-trade, and apply various types of spot UV to the printed sheets that printers primarily from NC/SC/VA/TN send to us. We output a film, and carefully measure the difference between the film and the printed sheet, do a custom scale calculation, and output a custom-matched film that we make our screens with. The inkjet solutions varied so much that we could not possibly output one film, compare against the printed sheet, then output a custom-fit film, because both the first and second film varied randomly, and in random places around the film, not just overall. To put a fine point on it, for the inkjets we regularly found image-size differences of 7 to 13 thousandths. Sometimes more, sometimes less, sometimes perfect across the film but horrible along the film. No way to adequately match our customer's printed images without obvious misregister.

On the CDI, we are experiencing MAXIMUM +-.0025 for a total of .005”/5-thousandths (usually less): this we can live with to provide excellent images that consistently extremely closely match our customer's printed images.