Screen printing on wood

[Joe Hillmann]

A few years ago I bought a four head one platen screen printer with the intention of using it for adding detail to wooden toys/kits but never got around to it because I couldn't find a wood material that constantly worked.

Now that I have found a plywood that is perfect for laser cutting I want to pull out the screen printer and give it a try.

If anyone here has any experience with screen printing on wood, what type of paint/ ink do you use, how do you dry it and any other hints you can offer would be helpful.

[Paul Phillips]

Joe, we need a little more info, you say you want to silk screen on plywood, what type of finish will you have, are you talking about screening on unfinished wood or will it have some type of clear coat or paint on it? If it's coated I would think a standard Nazdar 5900 enamel would work fine, I'm not sure what would work over unfinished. Standard enamels take a few hours to dry depending on climate/temp or you if you have the proper equipment you can use UV ink that cures instantly under a UV lamp.
Paul

[Joe Hillmann]

I would like to print right on the unfinished wood. Some of the designs are multi colored so using uv or a heating element so I can print the second color without removing the part from the platen was what I had in mind. But I guess I didn't realize that no uv curing paints worked well with screen printing. Most of what I know about it come from reading about screen printing on fabric.

[Paul Phillips]

But I guess I didn't realize that no uv curing paints worked well with screen printing.

Joe, not sure what you mean, there are in fact UV inks that work well with silk screening apart from fabric ink. We used to have an automatic screen press with UV curing table that we used for signs, the problem I think you will have printing directly to raw wood is that it's porous and will tend to "bleed" around the edges and require more than one coat, I'm sure there must be a better method unless you can spray some kind of clear coat on the wood first.
Paul

[Michael Kowalczyk]

Joe,
We silkscreen on 6mm Baltic Birch often and use the Nazdar 5900 series . We let it dry overnight and can do a 2nd color if we need to, the next day. We use simple hinged jigs to line up for registration. We screen on the B side of our B/BB product but you have to wipe it 2-3 times depending on the grain. We do not sand any more than how it comes from the factory. You may get better results if you sand them. Certain ones require a crossgrain swipe and others are with the grain. All our stuff is air dry so can't say anything about the UV.

[Wes Reeve]

With experience in both fields, I can say that you're probably going to be better off masking, lasering and paint filling the engraving. Paul already mentioned the main issue which would be bleeding, you can stop it, but you'll have to finish the piece before printing. On top of that, you'll have to hunt down an ink that will pass through your available screen meshes.

I wish I could be of more help with the inks, but in my experience, I haven't run into anyone asking about printing on wood, so I haven't had to do the research. I'm sure it can be done, but I feel that if you have experience with laser engraving, it would probably be easiest for you to go that route, its easier on you physically, its more repeatable, and if you need to change something mid run, you won't have to remake a screen, you can do it all digitally. Also, If you make it a shallower engraving than you would normally, you can get almost the same look and feel as screen printing.

[Michael Kowalczyk]

This is a 2 color on 12mm BB/BB Baltic Birch. I zoomed in and the "M" is actually about 1 1/2" high, to give you some perspective. I use a 230 (yellow) screen. The gold is a metallic mix so the mesh is large enough for it but small enough to keep the edges fairly sharp. These are at floor level so it has about a 4-5 ft viewing distance. So screening is not a problem on wood.

[Paul Phillips]

Joe, there's your answer!
Michael, thanks for sharing your experience, now we all know the answer, I would not have thought it would work. That's what makes this website such an amazing and invaluable resource of collective knowledge and experience.

[Joe Hillmann]

Michael,
Do you have any close up photos? What I want to do will have much more detail and I would like to see a closer view of the edge of the paint if possible.

[Martin Boekers]

Joe have you thought about decals? I know you have a screen set up but decals may be the way to go.

Someone once told me, If you have a hammer everything is a nail. :)

[Joe Hillmann]

The reason I am interested in screen printing is because it is fast. Or fast once the screens are made. The only other method that is as fast is pad printing.

But to answer your question I haven't looked into decals, are they possible on wood?

[Martin Boekers]

The problem I see with multiple colors on screens is the ink drying between putting the next color down.

Waterslide would work, there may be printable vinyl to heat press Magic Touch may have a transfer material that will
work.

If you are doing quantities check with a decal company as they could tell of a process that may help.

It doesn't look like you have a cutter so I may be difficult to "perimeter cut"

Do you plan on sealing the wood after to put an image to it? That might be neccessary for water slide.

Let us know when you come up with a process that works as this may be something we all could use at some point.

[Paul Phillips]

Martin, the nice thing about UV ink is that is doesn't really dry out unless you "cure" it with the UV lamp so it leaves a lot of open time on your screens, it may actually be a good way to do multiple colors like that.
Paul

[Todd Burch]

I have silk screened several projects. I have used milk paint and silk screening paint and they both work fine. The tables are black milk paint screening over the red milk paint base coat. I just use spring clamps to hold my screen while I drag the paint.

The first pic is after screening and before the top coat (sprayed lacquer). I wasn't going for perfection, and the little bit of red that shows through suited me fine. Had I wanted it perfect, I would have spent more time making the red flatter prior to screening.

255566 255565

Todd

[Martin Boekers]

Paul,

So, if he is working with a 4 station screen press with UV inks won't he have to cure each color before he puts down the second color?

I have just a little experience with screen printing, not much. The shop I worked with was using air dry to start with. It was
always clogging screens, they used UV for a while, but then decided on heat cure. They have a pretty big press and oven.
The heat cure seems to work best for their process mostly aluminum plates. Some one color some 4-5 colors each color had to be cured before another color was laid down. Both the UV and heat cure stayed liquid until cured.

[Michael Kowalczyk]

Michael,
Do you have any close up photos? What I want to do will have much more detail and I would like to see a closer view of the edge of the paint if possible.

Joe,
the diagonal squares are around 3/8"- and this is a fair representation of what you may get without sanding. Your detail will come from a number of variables....quality of artwork, quality of screen burn-in, mesh #, ink viscosity, surface it is being applied to, how long ink is open or how tacky it is, height of mesh above product and probably a few others. The results I get may not be the same as what you get or the tolerance you need to be within.

[Paul Phillips]

Martin, you are correct, each color would have to be cured separately but it can be done pretty quick with the right configuration and equipment, you bring out a good point though, for a small do it yourself setup it probably wouldn't be very fast, only with more expensive equipment, i.e. a self feeding drying table or something similar.

[Michael Kowalczyk]

I have heard of some using a Hairdryer. I do not for production runs.

[Joe Hillmann]

I think I misread your last post. I though the squares were much larger than that. That is pretty good detail on wood.

[ken duck]

Hi ; Joe I'm new here but I have 20 years experience . The most important thing is how many pieces you are running . A good grade of sanded Baltic birch is fine . 100 to 150 grit . The bleeding is not a problem. I screen printed thousands of pieces of edge glued pine. Multi-color on color and 4-color process. Nazdar on line is a good place to start. The" ink" that works the best is #5500 Series Flat poster Screen Ink. The ink will dry fast with a hand dryer .NAZDAR has a Technical Data Sheet It will Tell what mesh with what ink ,drying time, what durometer squeegee. what additives. IT can be clear coated with Lacquer if you want a gloss. If I can help just let me know. ken duck ,

[AL Ursich]

First post, WELCOME !!!! This post is a year old.

:)

[Mike Lysov]

I have tried several methods with decorating primed wood(mdf).

1) Screen printing is good and fast only when you have screens ready. But if you have multicolored design or just print many designs you will have to invest a lot of time and money on making screens.

2) Vinyl stencil printing. Quite fast and cheap but you cannot do many colours. Actually you probably can but it will take a lot of time.

For one colour you stick a signage vinyl to a piece of wood, then scorch your design with the laser into vinyl, weed out all details from your design that required to be coloured and then spay it from a paint spray can or roll paint it. After paint is dried you can remove vinyl from wood.
In most cases it works great but when you have a lot of small details to weed out it is very time consuming.

3) Printing on a UV ink or solvent ink based flatbed printer. I guess no need to say that it is the fastest and you can print anything you want. However a good UV printer costs over 30K for an A3 size and over 100s 0000 for a much bigger size. You can get a cheaper one from China about 10K for A2 size but you may not get lucky and have a lot of problems with it.