# What is meant by off contact and flooding the screen



## money911 (Aug 28, 2008)

I know that these are newbie questions and i hope that everyone here can help me out. But the questions are the ones listed as the title.

thanks


----------



## spankthafunk (Apr 9, 2007)

On-Contact is when you have the screen touching the substrate (the t-shirt). Off-Contact is when you leave space between the screen and the substrate. You ALWAYS want to use Off-Contact.

Flooding the screen is pushing the ink with the squeegee through the screen before doing an actual print. It gets the ink lined up in the screen for you to print, and can keep your ink from drying in the screen if you are using waterbased ink. Hope this helps.


----------



## Rico Menor (Mar 22, 2007)

spankthafunk said:


> On-Contact is when you have the screen touching the substrate (the t-shirt). Off-Contact is when you leave space between the screen and the substrate. *You ALWAYS want to use Off-Contact.*
> 
> Flooding the screen is pushing the ink with the squeegee through the screen before doing an actual print. It gets the ink lined up in the screen for you to print, and can keep your ink from drying in the screen if you are using waterbased ink. Hope this helps.


 Why do you ALWAYS want to use off contact, and at what spacing do you use for this method?


----------



## spankthafunk (Apr 9, 2007)

all you need is about 1/16"-1/8" for a shirt I believe. The reason is that you won't have the screen snapping off the t-shirt when you print. The screen will deflect when you print on it. If you use proper off-contract with high tensioned screens, then the ink will lay down uniformly onto the top of the garment. This means that you are not driving ink into the garment, causing the color of the garment to show through the inks.


----------



## money911 (Aug 28, 2008)

i guess im am still a bit confused about flooding the screen to me it would seem like if you push ink into the screen before you print you will smear or smudge the ink when you apply it to the shirt..... any help?


----------



## spankthafunk (Apr 9, 2007)

From my experience (and I'm no professional), you don't have this type of problem. I use plastisol ink, which is PVC based. Though you want it to be creamy, when you flood the screen, it stays. You don't want to drive the ink through the screen, but rather just lay the ink on top of the emulsion.

If you were to lay ink on your screen and start printing, you'd probaly get spots of the shirt that don't have a good amount of ink layed down. When you give an initial flood stroke, you are sort of prepping the screen with ink. Since you have off-contract, there is never ink touching the shirt, and it doesn't drip through the screen or anything like that (I guess unless you were using a very low mesh like 60 or somethin). 

I did a quick google search and found this link that provides a little more information:

Screen Printing Squeegees: How To Pull Prints


----------



## pauley11 (Aug 6, 2008)

where do you put this off contact?


----------



## brent (Nov 3, 2006)

Do not push ink through the screen with a flood stroke. The idea is to *cover* the open mesh of the stencil area with ink. If you push ink through, you are likely to have bleeding with the next print.


----------



## kmapparel (Jul 15, 2008)

pauley11 said:


> where do you put this off contact?


Many times I will tape one or two quarters to the bottom of my screen at the top end -- the end of the screen right in front of you. That will keep a consistent off contact every time.


----------



## pauley11 (Aug 6, 2008)

cool thanks, i getcha =]


----------



## leetheartist (Sep 30, 2008)

I usually tape a piece of 1/8 in. cardboard to my screen at the topmost contact point. This provides space, but also a little give.


----------

