Glue
by dirged on Jul.06, 2009, under Tips and Tricks
Like any project where you are working on a particular piece, holding the object you are manipulating is key. For screen printers, there are times when you may not use an adhesive to hold your fabric down, but more often than not, you’ll want to. In fact, when Gary is teaching, he just tell his students to always glue it down. Later, when their skill improves, they can learn to break the rules.
We had the camera rolling during this discussion about adhesive, and we thought it would be kind of neat to let you see what we’re talking about. Basically, Gary mentions that there are different ways to hold your shirt to the platen when you work.
- spray adhesive, which is very common
- sticky paper –not so common
- non-aerosol glue –an excellent alternative
There’s more than just 3, but those are the ones we talk about in this video.
When you are doing multicolor prints, holding your fabric to the platen is essential. One common problem with glues is that certain kinds tend to break down with heat. When you are printing wet ink on top of wet ink (aka. wet-on-wet) that doesn’t really come into play, but when you are drying colors in-between ink layers (aka. flash curing) the problem can eat a lot of production time.
