How To Clean Screen Printing Screens (Reclaim A Screen)

Cleaning the screen of screen printing is the basic process for screen printing. The screen needs to be re-used after it has been thoroughly washed and cleaned.

Using of emulsion degrading solution and scrab it from the screen will give you the best result of cleanness of the screen. Press wash plays a crucial role to remove all the ink and pigment obstacles from the screen frame.

Using a screen multiple times increases productivity. Also, the screen we use for our screen printing should be selected in such a way that it can be used multiple times.

Many users are quite confused about what to pay for re-use of screen printing. Since the screens have been used so many colors and pressures they can have a lot of permanent color stains or stains inside.

If you have any such problem today, in this article we will explain in detail how to clean your screen-printing mesh and also discuss in detail how to use it for later use after drying.

How To Clean Screen Printing Screens

How to clean screen printing screens and reclaim it

Here are four simple steps you can take to begin the process of preparation to reclaim your screen for screen printing.

Step 1. Give a water wash to your screen

First of all, make sure your screen will get wet enough for washing with water. Sometimes, ink water could be used on the screen for printing, so water would be the first priority to remove extra ink from the screen.

Again, you can give a hand wash to your screen. There have several types of ink cleaner is available on the market which you can mix with water.

Basically, screens are made of synthetic or silk fibers fabric or screen transparent components. So, you have to give a warm water wash first to the screen. It could be the first screen wash to your mesh.

When you are working for full reuse of the screen, you have to soak and wait for 10-15 minutes with the solution of warm water with the screen mesh.

Step 2. Use ink degradation solution and ink cleaner

Ink degrader itself works for the next step. When your water treatment is done only the hard and reacted dyed chemical pigments will stay on the screen surface.

Those links are chemically stable and easy to dry. Use the ink degradation solution first, and then put it onto the fabric surface. Give some time (5-10 minutes) to react and break the stiffness of the dyed chemical with that solution. You can spray some water after that so that it could be washed.

Again, water based ink cleaner is another essential screen printing equipment to remove the rest of the marks or spots of ink on the screen surface.

In general, plastisol ink is used for screen printing above the mesh. While you are using water-based ink cleaner, that solution will discharge and degrade the chemical formation of the ink from the screen.

After using ink degradation solution as a water-based cleaner, it’s time to give a water bath to your screen again.

Note: Give the solution and rub the screen gently to remove it. Don’t let it fall for a long time to react, because in some cases, it may affect the on-screen surface as another layer of chemical reagent.

Step 3. Remove the emulsion from the screen by scrab and press wash

Now the most important part is to discharge or remove the emulsion for that screen printing screen.

We have to set different emulation for designing each screen printing so we can’t set new emotions if we have the previous emotions. So, it is very important to remove the emulsion permanently.

Before we use the screen-printing ink on the screen, we have to use emulsion to stabilize it.

To remove emulsion, you have to consider press wash which means giving pressure to the screen and erasing the emulsion.

Take a bottle of emulsion remover and spray it onto the screen. Rub your screen and slowly you will see, that your screen will get clearer than before. I would like to suggest you use stencil remover in this situation also. Stencil remover liquid solution will make the ink dilute and will help to clean the screen.

All we are doing is cleaning the print screen to clear the screen frame because only then it can be reused. The edge of screen printing also needs to be clear because it may carry some color.

Step 4. Dry your screen

The screen of your used screen printing is temperature tolerant as the screen printing may have been driven by a dryer several times while using it. Now the question is how to dry it after removing the chemical solution emulsion.

Dry it well!

Once it is well wiped, keep it at normal temperature so that it dries slowly. In this case, it is better not to hurry.

After stepping all of the above, when you dry your screen-printing screen, you can make your screen printing suitable for reuse.

screen drying

From the screen, it is not so easy to be completely merciful, so you have to spend time in each step and give it carefully. Make sure the extra pressure does not fall on top of any scratches.

Conclusion

The use of screen cream for printing is quite time-consuming but on the other hand profitable. screen printing is usually readily available so many people do not want to use screen printings screen but for the same design or only one- or two-color variations we re-use screen printing from screens.

In case you can use it, we need a little patience and know the steps to clean it carefully. It is often seen that different colors of the same design can be used for screen printing. To give different colors to the same design that you have already placed on top of the screen printing, you can re-use your screen. A retensionable screen is a good example for use the frame screen multiple times. Though this frame isn’t bear adhesive, so only emulsion removal might play the role of reusing the screen a couple of times.

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