2 Steps for Longer Screen Printing Stencil Life

18 January 2024: Unitech India’s blog offers useful tips to educate printers on how they should make a good screen to make a good print.

There are a lot of factors, which affect the final quality of screen printing and screen mesh is one of them. It is of utmost importance to follow proper methods to maintain the screen mesh. It will not only increase the life of the screen printing stencil but also improves quality of printing and avoids breakdowns.

The following are the quick two steps to follow for achieving longer life of screen printing stencil:

Step 1: Degreasing screen mesh
When you skip this step, you invite the possibility of “fisheyes”, pinholes and even stencil breakdown during a press run. You must degrease your screens to ensure that you have a clean surface to which the emulsion can bond. New mesh or used mesh from production tends to be greasy due to manufacturing process or ink and solvents used while screen printing process. Most of screen printing stencil systems are water based so it is necessary to remove the contamination to enable the stencil to stick to the mesh. Mesh degreasing is necessary every time prior to putting the stencil on the mesh.

Step 2: Abrading screen mesh
When you use stretched mesh for first time or you are using capillary film, HD film or direct indirect film, abrading the mesh before degreasing is also a must. No matter which stencil system you choose it is essential that the mesh material is prepared thoroughly to maximize stencil adhesion. Meshes made from synthetic fibres are very smooth when they are produced.

Polyester is chemically inert so most of the adhesion is physical. To increase this physical adhesion the mesh must be roughened to increase the surface area available for adhesion. Stainless steel mesh should not be roughened but thorough degreasing is necessary. After every 4-5 screen striping process abrasion is recommended.

An absolute necessity
It is just not an important process but the basic ground rule for making quality screen stencils leads to high quality printing. Failure to pretreat mesh can lead to costly breakdown in production which can easily be avoided by taking theses few extra and inexpensive steps at the very beginning.

Origins and development
Duratech Automation earlier known as Universal Technologies was founded by Sandesh Tere in 2006, and has established by brand name UniTech as a professional supplier of screen printing equipment. Coupled with a best-in-class R&D setup, they manufacture and market various types of screen printing machines across the world. UniTech specialises in screen printing machines, pre-press machines, screen printing conveyor dryers and accessories associated with it. They offer value engineering, utmost customer satisfaction, exceptional coordination with customer to improve production by providing the most competitive products. Over the years, they have developed and launched various new products and emerged as competitive supplier for their esteemed customers.

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