What kind of basic tools should I own for cleaning my screens off?

A reader posted this question on Printwear. Here's a quick tip from Kieth Stevens:

Although popular, it’s best to stay away from cardboard scrapers as they tend to soak or absorb the liquid portion of the inks. Some screen supply stores offer specially designed plastic ink scrapers. These plastic scrapers feature rounded corners so they avoid harming the screens.

As far as the cleaning liquids go, there are many available that do a great job. You can usually use an ink degradant on the screen to help break down the ink chemistry. However, they seem to be greasy in nature, so once you have cleaned the screen with a degradant, it may be difficult to get tapes to stick to the screen. It is often necessary to add a final cleaning using a more aggressive solvent to achieve a clean, dry screen.

Kieth Stevens is the Western regional sales manager for International Coatings. He has been teaching screen printing for more than 10 years and is a regular contributor to International Coatings’ blogs.

International Coatings manufactures a complete line of Centris™ non-Phthalate screen printing inks, including a wide variety of whites, specialty inks, special effects inks,color matching systems, additives and reducers.  In addition, International Coatings also manufactures a line of AXEON™ non-Phthalate, non-PVC special effects inks. For more information on our products, please visit our website at www.iccink.com.