What's my Problem?

[Inkworks]

Okay, we got it figured out after a couple of hours dicking around, it was a new problem by me. I'm wondering if you guys can troubleshoot it from a good description and get the right answer.

Running an Index colour wildlife (Wolf) print on Black Gildan Heavy Cotton T's and Black Gildan 50/50 Hoodies

4 colours, all mixed from QCM WOW Inks, a little softee base added to all, not much, ~5% or so.

Prints:
Dark Warm-Charcoal Grey Base - 230 standard mesh
Flash
Warm Grey 4C - 230 standard mesh
Yellow (for the eyes) right out of the can - 230 standard mesh
Flash
Hilight White - 230 standard mesh

The problem, the hilight white is turning yellow in the dryer, not just dulling or sinking in, but quite noticeably yellowing.

Oven is a old 14' Hix with no air, digital temp read-out but only an analogue temp control, we run at 325F for 80-90 seconds and have never had undercure issues.

Press is a 2005 12/14 Progressive Falcon E with 2 quartz flashes.

Guesses? If you want more info or want to "try" something to isolate the problem, ask, we tried a lot of things before getting the right fix so I can probably tell you the result of any proposed test would be.

[Orion]

Wish you had a pic. No contamination from the white over picking up the yellow? Was this only on the hoodies?

If the IR panel in your dryer that houses the thermo probe, which regulates the temperature, is on the fritz (or even the thermo probe itself is bad) you are overcuring/overheating the garments. That should be checked too.

[Inkworks]

The yellow print was in the eyes of the Wolf only.

Problem was noticed during test-runs on a spare T, we solved it before going onto the production run which was t's first and Hoodies last.

The thermocouple is separate from any of the 4 heating panels, and the digital temp read-out is a totally separate unit from the oven temp control. It's actually a digital thermometer used for cooking roasts in you oven with the wired temp probe. We've used it for close to two years now with no problems.

[Orion]

Perhaps the yellowing is coming from the warm gray underbase which contains a percentage of yellow and/or orange in the mix formula. Try running your white on a lower mesh count if possible.

[Inkworks]

Bingo! Damn, where were you this morning when I was screwing around with dryer temps!  That's the first time I've seen colours from other ink layers bleeding through like that. It was coming from the Charcoal underbase. Befor we figured it out we tried lower dryer temp, speeding up the belt, adding a touch of blue to the highlight white, switching to a low-bleed poly white for the hilight white, switching the warm grey #4 to a cool grey and finally printing the hilite white on the shirt with no underbase to see if it still yellowed, that's when the lightbulb went on.


....sometimes you can't see the forest for the trees!

[brandon]

Okay, we got it figured out after a couple of hours dicking around, it was a new problem by me. I'm wondering if you guys can troubleshoot it from a good description and get the right answer.

Running an Index colour wildlife (Wolf) print on Black Gildan Heavy Cotton T's and Black Gildan 50/50 Hoodies

4 colours, all mixed from QCM WOW Inks, a little softee base added to all, not much, ~5% or so.

Prints:
Dark Warm-Charcoal Grey Base - 230 standard mesh
Flash
Warm Grey 4C - 230 standard mesh
Yellow (for the eyes) right out of the can - 230 standard mesh
Flash
Hilight White - 230 standard mesh

The problem, the hilight white is turning yellow in the dryer, not just dulling or sinking in, but quite noticeably yellowing.

Oven is a old 14' Hix with no air, digital temp read-out but only an analogue temp control, we run at 325F for 80-90 seconds and have never had undercure issues.

Press is a 2005 12/14 Progressive Falcon E with 2 quartz flashes.

Guesses? If you want more info or want to "try" something to isolate the problem, ask, we tried a lot of things before getting the right fix so I can probably tell you the result of any proposed test would be.

I promise you will get a better print w/o the softee base. It is not meant for wow printing. Either stir those QCM wow inks better or use their wow base or halftone base. We use their wow inks every day and never use softee base with them. If anything that softee base will "dull" your print. We use to use it a lot for soft hand (on oversized/jumbo non wow prints) but now just go the complete water base route. My 2 cents. Doesn't mean it's right for your shop though

[Orion]

Glad that you nailed down your problem. Print on, Brother... print on...!

[brandon]

Crap, Im sorry. I am glad you have this run working! But I swear try ditching the softee base and get some wow base in their if needed. Give it a shot on larger runs and you will notice a difference on wow printing from the actual results to not stopping in the run to clean screens with the softee base.

[Orion]

A long,... long time ago... in a print shop far,... far away... we had problems with build up. With today's chemistry and high tension screens, you may want to look at your inks first, and then squeegee pressures and off contact distance

[3Deep]

Speaking of WOW inks I just did some shirts with and I catch hell reason I was flashing the the wow ink thinking I would stop any bleed, nope it just got all tacky, best to print those inks wet on wet with tight screens.
Lesson learn!!!!
Darryl

[Inkworks]

So, no pics of the yellowing, but a few shots of the job and some others for the same customer.

The Wolf that wanted to be yellow:



Brown bear:






Here are some Left-chest prints of the Wolf and Polar Bear. I wasn't a big fan of the Polar Bear art, (White/ PMS 646 Blue/Hilight White) but I was happy with the detail we held for a 4" x 4.5" print. These are printed on the inside of a scrap shirt, hence the rough texture. Also this was the first batch of film off of the new Epson 7880. My old 3000 has a bad nozzle on the print head that is causing drag-outs and dribbles, and that is what the film for both the Big Wolf print and Brown Bear print were done with. I'll rip new films for future re-runs of the big prints. Good film rocks!





ps: I don't think we've had to ever had to clean the back of screens with the QCM WOW inks, even for 500 shirts.

[brandon]

Those are nice prints. Good job! For the QCM wow inks you should not have to stop and clean any screens on the shirt side of the screen. I was referring to people using the softee base with low bleeds as that seems to be the case on the forum here and on other ones.

[Inkworks]

Yeah we ditched the low bleeds altogether as soon as we started doing index colour prints. Even for spot colour work the wow inks perform well enough that we don't need to have XOLB's on hand, although straight out of the can XOLB white may have helped keep the yellow from bleeding up from the underbase on the Wolf.

I was wondering how WOW base would help WOW inks. I did bring in a gallon of 1/2 tone base to try, but I haven't played with it much. We use the softee base as a viscosity buster more than anything.