# HELP!!! Almost All of Screen Washing Out



## RandaKing84 (Dec 16, 2012)

Ok, I'm on a huge time crunch & I've spent the last 3 days trying to get my screens exposed right. I think I'm almost there. (I did emulsion & drying inside this time due to humidity).

Almost all of my screen washes out great except for one little spot. (It's an & sign & the letter A that needs to be washed out). 

I'm giving it a break from washing it out, but can anyone give me any advice? I can't afford the time to waste another screen! TIA


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## Printor (Apr 16, 2015)

Endless variables there. sounds like your saying every thing is sweet but the & and the A aren't rinsing out? Without getting into every detail of you process, If you have to get it right now, get a fine tip sharpy and go darken up the spots in question by hand on the film and burn again. maybe drop 5sec. of your exposure time


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## Greatzky (Jan 28, 2009)

where is the "&" and "A" in your design that is the issue? Is it near the center? Near the outside of the design? etc?
are you coating your screens evenly or are you leaving a thicker deposit on your screens in the middle because of bad pressure and/or very low tension screens?
What do you mean that you are doing the emulsion and drying inside? What part of the emulsion process do you normally do outside? Do you mean exposure and then drying after washout?


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## lilsuz (Oct 16, 2007)

Randa,

Okay, be sure that your screen is totally dry before doing what I'm going to suggest, which is to do a little touch up on your screen.

First, you can use a hair dryer to dry the screen, if that helps speed the process for you, or if you have too much moisture in the air to have it dry at a reasonable rate. If you don't have a drying cabinet, you should build one, or buy one. I made one myself with an old baker's proofing rack I found FREE at a garage sale. Looks just like an aluminum screen drying rack and works great! It needed a wheel replaced and it was leaning like the leaning tower of pisa. But I did not see it as a POS, I saw it as a screen drying rack. After fixing the wheel and adding some reinforcements to it to get it to stand up straight again, I wrapped it with a thick plastic on all sides, then took the fan from an old food dehydrator and installed it in the bottom of the rack to dry my screens, and it works well for a consistent heat (not too hot) inside the drying rack/cabinet. I think I spent $3.00 on the food dehydrator, the rack was free as mentioned, and the plastic I had already from the last house painting project. I can load it up with more than 20 screens at a time and roll it all around my shop. Wow! Wish I had thought of that 30 years ago, would have saved me a lot of time in making screens. Oh well! Live and learn.

Okay, now here is Touch UP, Part 1:
Mix a little emulsion remover with water 50/50 mix. I use Franmar brand. use a fine paintbrush to paint the emulsion remover onto the areas of the emulsion you want to remove. Let it sit a couple minutes. Then get some q-tips and wipe the emulsion out of the screen that you would like to remove. Do both sides of the screen. Be gentle so you don't take out any more areas than necessary. Then go over the area with more q-tips dipped in 100% water to clean away any excess emulsion remover that you had painted on. 

Touch up Part 2:
Now you want to paint in any small areas of emulsion that may be missing. The emulsion areas are the areas that block the ink from going through the screen, but you knew that!  Get yourself another fine paintbrush, a clean one. Now take your emulsion (assuming you are using liquid emulsion) and mix it with water 50/50 so that you can apply it smoothly, with no bubbles or thick spots. Okay, mix it up with a popsickle stick, or something clean. Toothpicks also make good mixing sticks, or even wooden chopsticks that you had laying around, clean of course! Paint the emulsion back into the areas that may be missing emulsion, or that may have been removed for whatever reason. After painting the emulsion areas back in, blow dry the damp areas until the entire screen has no wet spots. Then expose your screen again to your light source and use the same exposure time (or longer if you had issues) to make that emulsion stay in the screen during future clean screenings.

You should not have to rinse it out again after exposing the screen the last time. You are now good to print, assuming you were successful in the "Touch UP" procedure.

Okay, now go get some printing done! Good Luck!


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## lilsuz (Oct 16, 2007)

Randa, one more thing:

I forgot to mention, if you had dry ink or something else in your screen that you didn't fully remove from the screen before coating with emulsion, exposing and washing out, then no amount of "Touch UP" is going to fix this. Please make certain that you are starting with a very clean screen. Even grease from your fingers can cause you grief when you are processing screens. So only handle the outside of the frame, not the mesh areas when processing. Also be careful not to let any dust, water or fluid, or anything to land on your screen while processing.

You may need to use a pressure washer to blow out anything stubborn, if the screen was re-claimed or previously used.

Franmar has a good product called "Greenway" that takes out most old ink residue, adhesives from tapes, all sorts of stuff! They also have a product to remove Ghosting, forget what it is called but it works! Both are excellent products that I use regularly. I no longer pressure wash my screens, unless I have a really stubborn area that really needs the high pressure to remove it from my screen. Franmar is that great!

Again, good luck!


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## Printor (Apr 16, 2015)

Did ya get it?


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## Printor (Apr 16, 2015)

I just read your post again. by''(I did emulsion & drying inside this time due to humidity). do you mean you are coating & drying your screens in the light instead of the dark?


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## RandaKing84 (Dec 16, 2012)

Thanks everyone! I got it fixed! I think the emulsion wasn't fully dry. I just went ahead & made a new screen.


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## RandaKing84 (Dec 16, 2012)

No. I have a drying rack in the garage, but I thought the humidity may have been affecting the screens, so I did emulsion inside, as well as drying in a closet inside.


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