Customer called out my ink coverage and I had to eat crow

I run a small t-shirt shop near Austin and last month a guy ordered 24 shirts for a reunion. When he picked them up he pulled out a loupe and showed me the white ink under the collar, said it was too thin and see-through. I was annoyed at first but then I checked my screens and realized my mesh tension was way off after 3 months of ignoring it. I retensioned everything and dropped my coating method, now the prints are way more solid. Has anyone else gotten feedback that turned out to be a totally fair technical catch?

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fionarodriguez8d ago

Wait, are you sure dropping your coating method was actually the fix here and not just a coincidence? The mesh tension thing makes total sense for thin ink, but your coating method is a separate variable that affects how the emulsion sits on the screen, not how much ink passes through. If you changed both at the same time, you can't really know which one solved it. I've seen shops get burned by fixating on the wrong thing after one customer complaint. Maybe run a test print with your old coating but new tension just to see if it's really the coating or if it was all tension. Cause if you dropped a coating method that was working fine, you might be introducing a new problem down the line without realizing it. Good on you for checking though, that customer saved you from worse issues later.