Screen Printing Scale why it is important

Screen Printing Scale to control our variables

As explained here in the topic on important screen printing tools, the digital Screen printing scale is the basis for consistency in screen print colour preparation as we prepare our colour recipes with the screen printing scale.

We work mostly with the Pantone colour chart, and most screen printing ink suppliers will give you the mixing recipe for most Pantone colours.

This is very helpful for you, as Pantone himself approves this colour mixing system. But not only when you prepare Pantone colours. And so any colour you prepare for your clients. You need to measure exactly what colour you added to the ink.

So that at any time, you can reproduce the colour recipe.

Accordingly, This works only with a precise screen-printer scale, which measures even under 1 gram.

This type of scale is not expensive anymore. It starts at 20 USD, but when it goes higher, means so much more weight it can take, so more expensive they are.

Be aware that you don’t get a scale, that will jump by every 5g, you need something much more accurate, specialy when mixing inks with pigments.

Screen printing scale why it is important

As an example, water-based inks, have small amounts of pigments that we add to them. Even drops only and this the screen printing scale needs to record.

Therefore please keep in mind, that each time you prepare a colour, measure it. To reproduce a colour later will be done in minutes and you are sure, the colour is right!

Here is a short video, of why it is important. Ignore the dirty image of this scale, because it been shot in a process to do color preparation. The ink department should always be as clean as possible.

Since you know the printer scale, have a look at the Pantone Capture helps a lot with this critical color-matching process.