The reason is to allow puff ink to expand on the garments without merging in the printing process. However, letters that are compounds need to be considered to have enough space in the design.
2. Stencils
In this step, you can burn the stencil on a screen and set it to 110 mesh or lower. Stencils can easily swell up when you heat them so make sure to get enough ink.
Using enough inks helps you to produce a good puff print in the garments. However, fewer inks in the printing process will not have enough to puff up and out the design.
3. Ink Preparation
Puff prints are achieved by adding water-based or plastisol ink to a puff additive. You can choose any color of inks and add a specific percentage of additive with a 5% to 15% ratio as recommended for an optimum puff.
The amount of additive you add to the process affects how much the ink will rise. So, it’s important to measure the weight of paint and additives before you mix them.
The holes are more open when you set the screen with the lower mesh. It helps you to produce a more puffy print while depositing enough ink. However, the heat and ink will rise as they go through the dryer.
4. Cure Ink
You may need to set up the temperature in the curing process. The recommended temperature to cure puff ink is about 150⁰C or 310⁰F.
Curing ink at the proper temperature is important to make puff ink activate and expand effectively. On the other side, using a lower temperature will keep the ink easily puffing up and burning when you set it up too high.
5. Aftercare
After a whole process of screen printing, you should wash it inside out with cold water. It helps to maintain the quality of a puff or any other specialty print.