After a back injury forced mechanic Chris Moulds to retire, he embarked on a career in digital graphic media design and has since become an expert in high-density screen printing. In 2018, he and his wife started AshCo Design, selling vinyl and wood signs featuring inspirational sayings. As the business grew, Moulds purchased a four-color/two-station manual screen-printing press to mass-produce signs and expand into screen-printed shirts. However, it didn’t take long to recognize the limitations of his new equipment.
“The press never really registered, and it almost defeated me from the start,” Moulds says. “I used my mechanical background to weld steel piping onto the frame so it wouldn’t flex and bend so much.”
When he could afford an upgrade, Moulds moved up to a Vastex V-2000HD six-color/six-station press, purchased from Discovery Lancer, a national screen-printing distributor. After that came a Vastex LittleRed X2-30 infrared conveyor dryer. A year later, Moulds started dabbling in specialty printing.
“I was interested in high-density and lifted prints, so I started working with heat-transfer vinyl that was about 600 microns thick,” he says, “but after six months of repeated washings, the vinyl would start cracking, so I knew I had to find another way.”
High-density Screen Prints
Moulds, who prides himself on being a self-taught screen printer, spent the next year learning about high-density printing through social media groups and YouTube videos. After much trial and error, he perfected his technique using his V-2000HD system.
Applying a smooth, flat base layer of ink as a first step to creating a high-density raised print. Photo courtesy of Vastex
To prep the press for high-density prints, he lowers the print heads by turning the off-contact knobs as far as they will go. Once the screens are registered on press, he fine-tunes the micro-registration and turns the off-contact knobs to gradually raise the screens as he builds his high-density layers. Some of his highest stacks have consisted of as many as 12 layers––and he still has room to raise his screens some more.
In addition to tight registration, precise vertical travel of the press’s off-contact adjustment is critical for the vertical build-up of high-density layers in alignment with crisp, clean edges. This ensures the printhead and screen remain parallel to—and vertically aligned with—the pallet, from the lowest to the highest off-contact setting. Anti-backlash knobs further enable Moulds to accurately predetermine the degree of knob rotation–and corresponding off-contact adjustment–required to prevent the ink from mashing the previous layer.
“Being able to lift the print heads as I’m printing has helped tremendously, because it gives me a lot of room to stack prints,” he says. “Micro registration ensures the high-density ink doesn’t run down the side of an existing high-density layer or squirt out—similar to what happens when you put too much peanut butter and jelly on a sandwich and push the bread together. When this happens, the ink puckers and creates stiff peaks, which makes your print look unattractive.”
One of Moulds’ most ambitious projects to date is a series of hoodies for his children featuring a 9-by-7-inch high-density LEGO base plate. The process for creating these and other similar designs is time-consuming and requires patience; he has spent up to six hours working on a single shirt with printed stacks composed of layers 1,800 microns thick. However, the results can be nothing less than spectacular.
“I used a specialty high-density ink that hardens like plastic, so it allowed me to make a wearable LEGO,” he says. “Then we built a house out of LEGO, attached it to the shirt, and my son ran around while he was wearing it. When people saw it on social media my inbox blew up overnight.”
Rubber Pallets, High-temp Cures
According to Moulds, quality high-density prints begin with a smooth, flat base layer.
“If you have irregularities in your base layer, you’ll get peaks in the ink, and they’ll show up all the way through your high-density stack,” he explains. “By the time you get to the top of the stack, the whole print will be ruined.”
To maintain a flat, glass-like base layer, he uses a small handheld heat press to cure the ink while the shirt is on-press. The rubber pallets on the V-2000 press facilitate this process.
“The thick rubber on top of the steel pallets allows me to heat-press the shirt and achieve that smooth finish without weakening the shirt’s fibers,” he says. “In contrast, standard metal pallets can destroy the fibers because you’re pinching the fabric between two metal plates and applying high heat.”
After curing the base layer, Moulds cures the subsequent high-density layers using a flash dryer between stations. Next, he runs the finished shirts through the LittleRed X2 dryer, equipped with a 30-inch-wide, 66-inch-long conveyor belt. For standard prints, Moulds raises the heater height 2.5-inches. For high-density prints he raises it 4 to 5 inches to prevent the ink from boiling and forming bubbles on the print’s surface.
“I also raise the temperature from a usual 515°F for shirts and hoodies to 600°F for a high-density print and turn the belt speed down as low as it will go,” he says. “Dwell time is crucial to cure high-density prints, so I run it through the dryer two or three times, depending on how thick the ink is.”
Pushes the Boundaries of High-density Printing
Looking ahead, Moulds says he plans to invest in a larger dryer and flash-cure unit, and a 10-color/10-station press. He says he is also considering
AshCo’s raised designs can include as many as 12 high-density layers. Photo courtesy of Vastex
investing in an exposure unit to help him achieve fine lines and halftones and a drying cabinet to counteract the effects of the humidity in his basement where he does his printing.
Moulds says he is looking at adding an automatic press as well to see how far he can take his high-density printing, though he adds: “I have a feeling I won’t be able to do what I can do on a manual press. There’s something special about a hand-printed textile. When it comes down to it, what I do is wearable art.”
Today, more than 50 percent of Moulds’ business is high-density, with a variety of clients, including automobile dealerships, parks, and construction and roofing companies. His biggest high-density order to date has been for 160 tone-on-tone hoodies for a regional park. The hoodies were printed with six layers of high-density ink measuring 600 microns each and took four days to print.
To help promote the use of its specialty inks, Discovery Lancer invited Moulds to print some samples of his work for inclusion its trade show catalog. In the process, Moulds figured out a way to create a silicone high-density transfer that releases from carrier paper. The transfers are printed on the V-2000 press.
“Silicone direct-to-garment (DTG) ink sticks to the paper and never releases, so I created a high-density patch that does not collapse under heat and pressure,” he says. “No one else has been able to accomplish this yet. It’s a new product, and they’re floored with it.”
As for Moulds’ high-density prints, “It never fails,” he says. “People walk up to me all the time and say, ‘That’s the coolest shirt I’ve ever seen. How do you do that?’”
Mark Vasilantone is the president of Vastex International Inc., a leading supplier of screen-printing equipment, and direct-to-film (DTF) and direct-to-garment (DTG) equipment as well. The company also offers a host of workshops and classes for those apparel decorators looking to take their craft to the next level. For more information, go to vastex.com.
