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screen printing => General Screen Printing => Topic started by: Clark on July 15, 2011, 08:13:18 AM
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Not looking forward to this one at all. 2 flashes, red 100% poly. Client doesn't want too much ink on the shirts..Ugh. Please say a prayer for me and my bottom line. :o
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Oh My!! Yes you are going to need lots & Lots of prayer!
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I was just given a sample of new Wilflex low temp low bleed poly ink. My thinking is I will be able to print flash only once rather than building a thick bleed blocking layer with pfpf. Might be worth looking into as you could possibly get away with one flash only.
it does cure at a lower temp, but I don't know how that would influence the top colors.
pierre
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I would play around with WM aqua pura, no heat needed at all. awesome ink, nobody seems to talk about it much.
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I've been running Wilflex Epic Performance and have been impressed. Very low cure temp and they make a Performance Base to use with the PC system (good luck getting spot colors or matches of this stuff). Just off that generic description I'd run the UB Grey and then your top colors.
Despite a claim of "no odor" it's actually the stinkiest ink in the shop and smells like that weird blue chemical at the barber shop and that lovely fragrance will linger on your garments. ( I haven't had a "professional" hair cut in like 10 years or more, so maybe nobody uses that stuff anymore)
The white is, predictably, kind of a bitch to print. The prints tend to cure out to a more brittle feel but it's not as bad as some that I've seen. Prints very well through 150/48 and I even did halftones through a 225/40 on one job. Pulling the white by hand is brutal but it passes through the mesh somehow.
In the past month I've ran it on 3 100% poly jobs - red, black and black, bike jerseys and dri-release Ts - and not a complaint yet.
If it were me I'd grab a handful of shirts from different sizes/boxes immediately. Print a base/flash/white on there with a similar mesh count/coverage to what you're going to use on the full run. Cure and wait a few days before running the complete job. 1600 pcs will be out the door in what?..4, maybe 6 hours or less for you? So let that job sit and see what happens to the testers first.
Oh, and warm that ink up before printing. It makes a serious difference in printability.
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What's this aqua pura bizness Homer?
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http://wmplasticsinc.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=52_79 (http://wmplasticsinc.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=52_79)
I've got some here, I use it on knit winter hats. . .it's the bees knees. . .
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I was just given a sample of new Wilflex low temp low bleed poly ink. My thinking is I will be able to print flash only once rather than building a thick bleed blocking layer with pfpf. Might be worth looking into as you could possibly get away with one flash only.
it does cure at a lower temp, but I don't know how that would influence the top colors.
pierre
Whats the name of that ink Pierre?
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I was just given a sample of new Wilflex low temp low bleed poly ink. My thinking is I will be able to print flash only once rather than building a thick bleed blocking layer with pfpf. Might be worth looking into as you could possibly get away with one flash only.
it does cure at a lower temp, but I don't know how that would influence the top colors.
pierre
Whats the name of that ink Pierre?
It's the Wilflex Epic Performance that Zoo described few posts up. The sheet I have says "Cures at 290 deg".
pierre
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Well, if the bottom of a thick layer of the epic white got to 290 then I would imagine the top colors got to 320. These shirts are coming in wednesday for delivery Friday, so they won't be allowed to sit. I'm just gonna run the atkins probe through several times, keep the temp low as possible and cross my fingers. It's the second flash that has me worried. I normally don't ever use the second flash, but because of the amount of white base I will need to put down, I am sure I will need it.
Thanks guys!
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I tried to run some Epic this week with mx colors on top, when I got the whole ink layer to 320, it had migrated like a SOB, be careful. It was like 320 was too much for the Epic, but is was very high coverage too. Let us know how it goes for you.
Eventually I want to run the Epic base/PC's as the top colors.
We get pretty good results using Classic polywhite and mx on top, keeping the cure temp between 320-330, but when it gets much higher than that is when problems start to happen.
Oh and if your base is high coverage, definately keep that second flash as short dwell and low temp as you can.
Good luck dude.
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I slapped QMX standard colors on top of the Epic Performance Grey Underbase on red 100% poly jerseys and no reports of migration so far. Then again, they're in Bhutan....
a quick nomenclature check up on these Wilflex inks:
EPIC - refers to the non-phthalate line of inks, inherently better coverage and more bleed resist than standard, phthalate-laden inkbut
it's a general term for this line, doesn't indicate any bleed resist beyond that
PERFORMANCE - the low-cure for poly garments with dye blocking a key point. affix Epic before it and there's the combo.
Wfx recommends the grey base for these jobs and I'll second that notion. Clark, try and get some from GSG before running, I think they keep the grey in stock. I'd have a lot more piece of mind with that stuff under my ink than just Quick.
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Zoo. I'd be using the Rutland super poly white. I'm gonna see if I can test a barrier base on a few 100% poly rags I have here. Barrier base, flash, red, navy, flash, light blu, white. From my understanding it would take an act of god for the barrier base to bleed.
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Rutland Super Poly is great stuff, I use it all the time. I don't think you will have any issues, they should print great.
Toby
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I think I may have written my last post a little hastily, I was referring to epic performance white, and if I'm not mistaken, if you run mx colors atop, a real cure will require 320, anyway that's my understanding and my results weren't so good at 320 using epic performance white as a base with normal ink.
For now I'll use the epic for a standalone white, and as a base classic polywhite.
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Every year we do a large run of red 50/50 with the design being red, white and blue, fairly large open area for the white in the design. The first year we printed them, they looked terrible, pinkish in the white area, but the next year I used Wilflex's underbase grey. This stuff was very difficult to print with but we made it through the run, extreme squeegee pressure and I believe the dreaded double stroke was used but there was absolutely no bleeding. On the third year I cut the underbase grey with some qcm 158, about a 50/50 mixture and it increased the printability by 100%, and the bleed resistance was also still 100%. Not to mention less than a second of flash time because the underbase grey will flash gel if you freaking breath on it right. I've printed white designs on 100% poly red performance shirts using the underbase grey with no bleeding. I'm sure most of the other suggestions probably work fine, but I don't ever have one thought or worry about bleeding anymore.
On that note, every time I mix up a new batch of UB grey, I keep going higher on the white ratio number to where the last batch was 70% white. The key to mixing them is making sure the white has a good degree of bleed resistance and all will be good in the hood.
Has anyone else tried this or have any info they could add to the grey underbase ink?
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Definitely agree about UB grey as a great bleed blocker, however grey is not always suitable color for an UB, take for example a bright pure yellow, a pure orange, or fluorescents, grey shifts those colors too much.
I've never tried mixing white into UB grey, but it sounds like it may be worth a shot, depending on how pure the overprint color needs to be.
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Red polyester is buttf*cking evil.
And that's about all I gotta say about that.
:P
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I mix perf white w. the ub grey to get lighter underbases.
Agree w. squeeg on over cooking the low cure ink at the bottom when using higher cure temp inks on top. It's risky.
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We basically only do sports/poly type shirts where I work. We started using one stroke versamax... at first I hated it because it had the body of soup.. I called and wrote them a letter and now the stuff is super creamy. Bleed resistance is pretty good, but we take a few precautions.
1. With red poly we run the garments through the dryer first and then let them cool for a while. This is my boss's idea, I'm not sure if it is the best idea or if it really helps. Poly is synthetic, and when it gets heated the dyes get excited and rise to the top... so I figured the less you suject them to heat, the better? But he thinks otherwise so I just go along with it.
2. On 100% poly I usually lay a 3rd layer of white down. I hate doing it because it is such a thick print, but the customers don't complain so I guess it's okay.
3. Don't stack the shirts on top of each other when they come out of the dryer. Put them on a table with a fan blowing on them. The faster the fabric cools down, the faster you stop the dye from rising.
I never really had problems on the 50/50 reds with the versamax. But 100% poly is always tough.
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I never really understood why there seems to be so much trouble with Poly. I never do the dryer excersize just use a good bleed resist and start printing. Wilflex Polywhite and Rutland are what I've used in recent years.
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I think because they heat so fast there is much less window for perfection. I actually love 1 color prints on poly, especially white ink. I actually did some forest green poly with a 2 color back..white and lime. It was beautiful. And the coverage was silky smooth. Thick on the back of a wicking tee, but smooth as a baby's bottom.
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I am with Brad I am starting to love printing on poly as it becomes more and more common. It gives the best smooth prints with great opacity with the right lo-bleeds it is better than printing cotton.
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On St Thomas all the local work I did for hotels, restaurants, landscaping, and most other businesses was almost always on poly. They claim it breathes better.
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I never really understood why there seems to be so much trouble with Poly. I never do the dryer excersize just use a good bleed resist and start printing. Wilflex Polywhite and Rutland are what I've used in recent years.
Mostly has to do with I am a small shop, and this is roughly $8K worth of garments that will be rejected by the customer if there is any bleeding.
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Small shop or not, $8K is a lot of money at risk.
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You know, if this is contract work, drop shipped garments, you should maybe have a standard disclaimer/write-off for poly garments. Just lay out your parameters that you guarantee your shop will hold (low-bleed ink, cure temps, etc.) and have them sign it. You could also have a test that you run to determine the level of bleeding to be expected. If they happened to ship you a bunch of poly garments chock full of agitated red dye that's not your problem really.
Printing retail it's a different story, but for contract, that's probably how I'd roll. Just spec out what your going to do and let them be aware of the risks of printing on the substrate they chose. None of us, no matter how good we are at printing, can guarantee red poly won't bleed even though we'd like to pretend we can.
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It's retail. I got some garments to test on this morning, and I'm going to let them sit here for a couple days. I think as long as the Atkins probe isn't lying, we should be okay.