Emulsion thickness and detail

[clockworkpictures]

I'm starting some experiments with halftones, trying to understand how far I can go with point size and such:

on one side I'm definitely switching to a vacuum bag because traditional weights approach seems not enough for some designs, but on the other side I've heard that detail is also influenced by emulsion thickness (i.e. give one emulsion standard pass, let dry and add another one)

any hint?
thanks! ^_^

[Andymac]

A lot depends on the mesh.

Low mesh counts sometimes need 2 and 2 (2 back, two front), then after it has dried, another coat on the bottom to build up the emulsion over mesh, so you have a smoother bottom.

Higher mesh counts, you can do 1 and 1. Real high you can do a single pass.

there is a test pattern you can coat on a screen, which will give you a range of coating combos, but I'been drinking and can't explain it without a diagram.

good luck.

[clockworkpictures]

increasing mesh count was what I would have done too.... but a local screenprinter who had done this job for 40 years gave me this hint (with no further details..): since he already gave me some pearls of knowledge, I was wondering if somebody else could confirm and explain this suggestion

I know about the coating tests.. I'll probably go for a test coating with a halftone pattern test transparency I've prepared and just see what happens

[squeegeethree]

Increasing the stencil thickness only gets a small bump in "resolution". Mesh count is the major factor as Andy said.

[clockworkpictures]

thanks ^_^