Vinyl vs. Emulsion...

[Quinine]

Been quite a while since I posted on here. Hope everyone is well and keeping busy. I have been toying around w/ the idea of switching over to vinyl stencils in place of emulsion for my screens. It seems like it may have the potential to save a lot of time, shop space, and may be more affordable. Wondering if anyone on here has experience w/ using vinyl in place of emulsion for their screens. I have an American Eagle semi auto press and am wondering, specifically, how the vinyl might hold up under the pressure of the printing press. Thoughts?

[Quinine]

Also, I already skimmed through previous threads and didn't see anything that jumped out at me. Thanks, Guys.

[Thornysarus]

I've used an adhesive vinyl positive resist and emulsion to create stencils before. Printing with an adhesive vinyl negative should work in longish runs as long as long as your adhesive isn't broken down by the ink, but it wouldn't hold up like embedded emulsion.

Check out some old paper stencils the Japanese used hundreds of years ago. They were incredibly detailed with "floating" details being held in-place with a single human hair. If they can do that, I'm sure your adhesive vinyl shouldn't be a issue.

Hell... Figure it out and teach the rest of us a thing or two.

[Quinine]

Yeah, you're right. I will have to take the plunge at some point. I've seen some folks doing it on a smaller scale on the youtubes so, in theory, it should at least have some potential. Thanks for the response.

[gozo]

What kind of ink would you be using?

[johnny_on_the_spot]

I use vinyl sometimes. Just stick to oracal 751 if you're using it to print. Also, you can't have many pointy bits in the design. I also wet it down before the first pull. I only use it on really large prints, but it works fine once you tweak it to your setup.

[squeegeethree]

You aren't going to save money that's for sure. If there was money to be saved then every shop in the world would be doing this already.

[Thornysarus]

If the area isn't very detailed, like large, open areas, you can get away with using regular contact paper on the back of the screen for a stencil. I do it all the time.