bottle screening help

Years ago I read an article in Zymurgy about making a rig to silk screen bottles. It is not too complicated and I am planning on building one in the near future. My issue is I do not know anything about making my screens or what ink to use on glass or any of that technical stuff.

Anybody out there able to point me in the right direction? Website or other information would be appreciated.

While I don't know about screening on bottles, I can provide some tips on screening in general. These are tips that are primarily geared towards fabric screen printing, and from my experiences.

• I buy polyester screen fabric from a local craft store. It was on sale and pink.
• I bought a fabric screening squeegee from an art supply store. A regular squeegee could work too I suppose, but the one I use is thick, soft natrual rubber and bi-directional (helpful in that I can pull ink in 2 directions).
• When making the screen frames, I use 2x2 lumber and fasten them together securely. I use pushpins (staples would work great) to hold the screen on tight. Drum tight. No slack or ripples can happen here.
• I also get a screen printing speicific photo-emulsion from the same art supply store I got the squeegee from. Speedball is the brand IIRC. It is a photo-reactive goo that when mixed needs to be brushed onto the screen entirely to saturate all the pores on the screen. The goal is to make the screen completely covered with an even layer of emulsion (the squeegee comes in handy here to help spread it around and to keep it even).
• Once the emulsion is completely painted on, set it in a completely dark space to dry. Once dry, it is similar to photo-paper in that it will produce an image when exposed to light.
• Generate your image in your favorite photo/design program. Even on shirts, I strive for simple screens without intricate detail, and without multiple colors as it is very challenging to do these. Once you have your image, you need to make it inverse- Anything that will be printed onto the shirt/bottle needs to be solid black in your final design for the screen. For instance, to make an image of the sun, if I started with a yellow sun, I would change all colors to black. The background must be transpartent or white.
• You must also make sure the image is sized so that when printed, it will be exactly the size you want on the bottle. Take the image to Kinkos and have them print a transparency of it.
• When you have your transparency, the light exposure will be something of a trial by fire sort of thing. You might want to have a spare piece of screen with dried emulsion on it to test out your exposure method. I use fluorescent lights on a table, approximately 12" above my screens for approximately 30 minutes. Some prefer to use natural sunlight: I always screen at night and don't have that available. Anyway, take your dried screens with emulsion on them, and put the transparency onto the screen. make sure you put the screen upside down (flush side facing up, frame down) and put the transparency in the right orientation (upside down/backwards).
• Ensure that the transparency is totally flush against the screen with a piece of flat glass if necessary to ensure the finished edges will be crisp and clean. Make sure the transparency does not ever move during the exposure.
• After 30-40 minutes or so of direct sunlight, or whatever you find works best from testing (I find that testing exposure times on a scrap piece of screen+emulsion with a coin is effective and easy), spray the screen with water under pressure. A hose is good and a shower will work, but you'll have to jump in with it unless you want to make a wicked mess. The sun/light exposed emulsion should be hard and will cling to the screen tightly. The stuff under your design is slightly softer and will slowly melt away under the water pressure. Keep spraying for a while until you start to see the image appearing. Once you've finished spraying, you should have a complete image visible through the screen of your design.
• Once the screen has dried from all the water, tape up any pinholes that may have opened up around your design, and boom, you're ready to paint.
• I don't know what kind of paint you'll want to use, but once you've found it, put some of it on the screen near your image. Find a way to secure the screen and bottle so they don't move at all, and gently pull the squeegee at a 45 degree angle across the screen while pulling the ink over the image. You can go back over once or twice if needed, depending on the ink. Have many paper towels/rags around to periodically clean the bottom of the screen so that it doesn't bleed ink around your design onto the bottles. You might also have to periodically clean the screen with water during the process if it becomes clogged with ink.

I'd love to see how things turn out if you do go down this road- it's a lot of fun, and totally messy!

WOW, this is great! Thank you very much. Huge amount of information and detail. I really appreciate it.

This has alot of tips for screenprinting:

http://www.gigposters.com/forums/screenprinting/

I was working on a bottle printer that screenprinted on bottles awhile back...got it mostly done but never got around to finishing it....

I'm a screen printer by trade, flat sheet though, and I've never had anything to do with glass or formed shape printing and not to shoot down nebben but...

I believe the ink they use is a 2 pot ink, and possibly kilned on as well. 2 pot ink is hella nasty, as soon as its mixed it starts to dry and will dry into your screen. As soon as your finished printing you'll wanna clean the hell out of your screen otherwise it's rendered useless.

Buy a pre-stretched screen opposed to stretching it yourself - it's easier and will save you a lot of dramas, you want a nice even tension across your screen, should only cost $20 or so for the prestretched frame, try and get an angled mesh at 45 or 22 degrees, it's a bit more expensive but gives a crisper image.

I think you'll need nylon instead of polyester as nylon stretches around the bottle shape better.

You'll also need to make sure you get the correct mesh count (threads per inch) and thread thickness. Too high of a mesh count means the openings are too small so you won't get a nice ink deposit and you'll have ink drying in your screen, too low - you'll get a crappy image and too high of an ink deposit.

You'll need to get the correct squeegee rubber - again soft rubber - too much ink, hard rubber - not enough, a fabric rubber would be too soft I would think.

Don't brush your emulsion on, use your squeegee to sort of 'scrape' it on, you want to push it through the threads but not too much pressure. Try and get a nice even layer, go from top to bottom of the screen with your squeegee in one even motion without stopping until you get to the top. Generally, and depending on mesh count, you'll want to coat the substrate side first and then turn the screen around do the squeegee side twice. There's a few vids on youtube of coating screens.

Like said above, stick to one colour, you'll have a hell of a time getting register on a bottle and especially on home set up. You could try two colours but make sure they're far enough apart that any misalignment isn't very noticable. Also in saying that I think to get any decent bright colours you'll have to lay down a white and print your colour on top, depends what the inks are like and the colours your going for and substrate colour.

Remember you can only print one colour at a time so either buy multiple screens or wash off and recoat for the second colour.

I wouldn't tape up pinholes, they can start to leak after a few impressions. You're better off using a paint brush and spotting them with emulsion, then dry it and re-expose it so that emulsion used for spotting hardens.

And just you know, it's not painting with paint, you're printing with ink ;-)

45deg squeegee angle is too much I reckon, 75ish is usually the norm, but it's all about experimentation. You really need to have a play with angles and pressures and all that to see what works.

You'll want a little offcontact distance between your substrate and screen mesh, again something of trial and error.

I wouldn't go over the image more than once, you'll be asking for a blurry/bleeding image, and I don't think your rig would be accurate enough to be able to lay down the second hit in the exact same place.

If your image is bleeding out around the underside of the screen you're using too much pressure and/or don't have enough emulsion over the mesh threads - the idea here is that the emulsion should create a gasket seal to the substrate. Printing is all about kiss impressions so be gentle with it.

Ink up your screen, take a light stroke over the image while the screen is lifted up, this is to fill the screen with ink (and also helps stop your ink drying in), then place your screen down and go over it again - a little more pressure than last time but only just enough to make it touch the substrate. You're not really trying to 'push' the ink through the mesh, more like a 'rolling transfer' of the image.

The ink will be solvent based too, not water based, so you'll need to have some turps or reccomended solvent handy.

You'll really need to pull out the yellow pages and look for a local industry-focused screen printing supply shop - I don't think art and craft stores will be much help. Go down and talk to those guys and ask for some advice. Printers are generally pissheads so a few beers won't go amiss

I'd love to see your rig and your final product.

Good luck.

I think denimglen hit it on the head. I've done a lot of screen printing also, although never at home. I did work with a machine once that would print on a round surface. It actually held the bottle or glass horizontal on rollers. The screen would pull across the surface, rotating the round media. I'm not sure how to pull this off at home.

I also advocate getting a pre stretched screen. If you find a screen printing shop, you might even be able to get a pre imaged screen. That would be best since they have the equipment to properly coat and expose a screen. Not that sunlight or a lamp won't work, but to get a good exposure, you also need a vacuum to keep the film against your emulsion.

Sorry if I'm rambling, I'm just a print nerd.

The jig I am building is as you suggest. The bottle is horizontal on rollers, the squeegee is stationary and the screen moves along a horizontal track, causing the bottle to rotate. I am right with you on having somebody else make the screen!

Curious to see how this progresses...keep us posted!

Brewpastor said:

The jig I am building is as you suggest. The bottle is horizontal on rollers, the squeegee is stationary and the screen moves along a horizontal track, causing the bottle to rotate. I am right with you on having somebody else make the screen!

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The jig I had worked on was just as you described, I was using old rollerblade wheels for the rollers.

Here's screenprinting ink I've used on glass before:

http://www.nazdar.com/pdf/59000_LF_TDS_Rev_7_061218.pdf

It adheres pretty good, although I've never got around to printing on bottles. I've put volume markings on carboys with it, and it's stuck on and not flaked or scratched off.

It's not going to be as good as ceramic inks (kilned inks?), the nazdar 59000 inks may get scratched up after repeated cleaning of bottles. However, one advantage to the nazdar is that it doesn't need to be heat cured, it will air dry. I haven't soaked anything with the inks on it in pbw or star san, those chemicals may remove the ink.

If you looking at screenprinting on bottles to give away, the nazdar may work well. If you are looking for screenprinted bottles to reuse over and over, you may want to look at something different.

When I've used it in the past, its hecka thick, you'd definitely wanna get the reducer (thinning varnish).

+1 on buying a prestretched screen. Wooden frame screens are pretty cheap.

Thanks for the link and advice. I will keep folks posted on this.

Also, didn't I read about you in BYO? Great job.

iamjonsharp said:

The jig I had worked on was just as you described, I was using old rollerblade wheels for the rollers.

Here's screenprinting ink I've used on glass before:

http://www.nazdar.com/pdf/59000_LF_TDS_Rev_7_061218.pdf

It adheres pretty good, although I've never got around to printing on bottles. I've put volume markings on carboys with it, and it's stuck on and not flaked or scratched off.

It's not going to be as good as ceramic inks (kilned inks?), the nazdar 59000 inks may get scratched up after repeated cleaning of bottles. However, one advantage to the nazdar is that it doesn't need to be heat cured, it will air dry. I haven't soaked anything with the inks on it in pbw or star san, those chemicals may remove the ink.

If you looking at screenprinting on bottles to give away, the nazdar may work well. If you are looking for screenprinted bottles to reuse over and over, you may want to look at something different.

When I've used it in the past, its hecka thick, you'd definitely wanna get the reducer (thinning varnish).

+1 on buying a prestretched screen. Wooden frame screens are pretty cheap.

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