TSB
screen printing => Ink and Chemicals => Topic started by: ericheartsu on March 02, 2015, 07:16:26 PM
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What can I do, so that my waterbased prints do not fade as much?
both shirts are printed on a canvas 3001 white tee. Both shirts have the same Sericol Texcharge WB ink. The shirt on the right has been washed about 5 or 6 times in cold water. Shirt on the left just came out of the dryer!
each job was done at a seperate time, but both times, the brown was through a 166, and the red through a 196!
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In my experience, most ringspun shirts printed w/ waterbased ink will look like this after a wash/dry. It not necessarily fading, but the fibers are just rising through the print and giving the illusion that it is. So the same print with the same ink/drying time on a Gildan 2000 would look much better following a wash, just because the shirt itself doesn't get fuzzy. The issue shows itself based on contrast, so a dark ink on a white shirt is always going to look the worst.
In regards to a solution, I've found more ink, more penetration, and more drying time to help. Fixers can help as well. But I usually tell my customers about the possibility of this happening up front so they know what to expect. The same thing happens with softhand plastisol if its runny enough.
On the flipside, I always wondered why the issue doesn't really happen with discharge inks on the same shirts.
Looking forward to hearing if anyone else has a real solution as I have yet to find one. I've always considered it to be part of using waterbased inks.
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use water base fixer.
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Try an actual WB base v. the unactivated discharge. I didn't have good results with unactivated Texcharge and would low activate it instead.
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Try an actual WB base v. the unactivated discharge. I didn't have good results with unactivated Texcharge and would low activate it instead.
What level would you activate at?
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Maybe one or two percent, depending. We don't do that anymore but I think that's around where it was. Un activated it would fade out pretty bad after enough washing
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You need fixer and/or longer tunnel time.
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What everyone else has said, plus, what does the inside of the shirt look like?