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screen printing => Waterbase and Discharge => Topic started by: ericheartsu on July 14, 2015, 10:15:58 PM
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I'm trying to figure out what happened here. Client just sent over a picture of a shirt we dropped off with them on Friday.
Printed on Canvas 3001 deep heather, and 3001 Teal, with the following screens and inks:
160, DCUB (under white and purple only!)
Flash
225, Green Galaxy Black WB
135, Green Galaxy Purple WB
Flash
110, Green Galaxy White
Cured at 08 belt speed, and 330, on a sprint international gas dryer.
What puzzles me is that the purple is undercured, but it also is showing no signs of the DCUB.
Any ideas as to what happened?
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First thought: Issues with the purple ink/chemistry.
But the whole print looks like it is having some cure/durability issues.
Did you do a discharge test on the garment before production? How did it look?
Does this garment perhaps have a heavy silcone/chemical softness on the fabric?
Is this same issue happening across all the garment sizes/colors?
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First thought: Issues with the purple ink/chemistry.
But the whole print looks like it is having some cure/durability issues.
Did you do a discharge test on the garment before production? How did it look?
Does this garment perhaps have a heavy silcone/chemical softness on the fabric?
Is this same issue happening across all the garment sizes/colors?
we've printed on this style of shirt before with no issue. In fact the back print, which i've included a picture of, looks fine. Printed through the same mesh counts to match the front, and cured the same way!
I do agree that the whole print is having an issue. I'm trying to figure out what changed though.
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Couple of questions. How many feet of heat is your dryer, and does green galaxy offer any sort of fixers with their system?
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Is that back print DCUBed? It doesnt look like it from the photo, though the photo is kind of small. Front print does look undercured for whatever reason (or there is some other issue with the ink or the shirt itself). It looks like even some parts of the black which arent underbased are coming off the shirt.
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Is that back print DCUBed? It doesnt look like it from the photo, though the photo is kind of small. Front print does look undercured for whatever reason (or there is some other issue with the ink or the shirt itself). It looks like even some parts of the black which arent underbased are coming off the shirt.
Yep,back is the same inks as the front!
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Couple of questions. How many feet of heat is your dryer, and does green galaxy offer any sort of fixers with their system?
I believe it's a standard 8 ft chamber....but i'll double check.
We used the ink straight from the bucket, so even if they had a fixer (i think we have a matsui one as well), we didn't use it this time.
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I will say, I always use the fixer, but I only have 6 ft of heat (with forced air fortunately).
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Did you print the front first? A lot of times I slow the belt down for the front print because the shirts are holding ambient moisture, then for the back print I'll pick the belt speed back up because they're still hot and dry from the first trip down the dryer.
The other thing is that seems like a lot of saturation of the 3001 to deal with. Full DC underbase and then mashing in the waterbased color on top. Doesn't that wash out the color? I have never had luck with layering WB over a DCUB without it resulting in a pastel washed out color, but your color on the back looks good. I'm just playing the Tony card where he'd say DC ALL the ink colors!
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back first, then the fronts. So i'm wondering if that's why the backs look good, as they had double dryer time.
We haven't had any issues with this set up before. The Green Galaxy are an HSA ink as well, so they are a little bit thicker than normal waterbased ink.
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started to quick after lunch or smoke break and dryer wasn't up to heat? left a door open near dryer on a windy day.
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started to quick after lunch or smoke break and dryer wasn't up to heat? left a door open near dryer on a windy day.
wish this was the case, but this was the last print of the day, on a gas dryer, that head easily 2 dozen testers before the production was started.
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Have you done a wash test on any of the test prints?
Are all the shirts washing the same way?
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Have you done a wash test on any of the test prints?
Are all the shirts washing the same way?
doing this today. Client is doing the same for us.
my only concern on the test prints is that they aren't on the Heathered shirts
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Heather grey shirts seem to be very hard to cure WB on. Looks like you had about 1 min of dwell time in the oven. I believe most WB manufacturers recommend at the minimum 2 minutes of dwell time, we mostly use 3. There is a huge difference in durability between 1 and 3 minutes.
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That's definitely going to be the issue. The heather's have poly and are going to act totally different.
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we use fixer in everything... the extra 3% mix for the matsui fixer-n is just 'part of our process' now...
since you say you printed the back first, and the backs were fine.. my guess is that the fronts didn't spend long enough in the dryer to get up to temperature to fully lock the pigments into the fibers. The backs on the other hand got enough heat the second time through to fully set.
our belt speed for waterbase work is SSSLLLOOOWWW.... minimum dwell time is 2-2-1/2 minutes in the chamber at 340. even at that speed tho, we're still averaging nearly 350 shirts/hr down the belt, (we also have a tendency to doublestroke discharge -- most likely due to superstition, but it works, and the shirts look and wash great, so it is what it is).
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Heather grey shirts seem to be very hard to cure WB on. Looks like you had about 1 min of dwell time in the oven. I believe most WB manufacturers recommend at the minimum 2 minutes of dwell time, we mostly use 3. There is a huge difference in durability between 1 and 3 minutes.
would be roughly 1 min and 40 seconds in the dryer, which is our standard DC/WB cure
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I would say undercured. Eric you mentioned white dc ubase, what was the white/base ratio?
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I would say undercured. Eric you mentioned white dc ubase, what was the white/base ratio?
CCI 80% base, 20% White
What i don't understand though, is why the purple would wash out, but not the white. Especially since the purple was the 3rd color in the sequence. The undercuring i get, but for a color to wash out? that i don't get
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What's the inside of the shirt look like? I don't see any effect on the shirt at all from the dcub?
We use straight CCI base for dcub, adding white makes me nervous. I would be particularly
nervous on anything with poly in it. Those Tultex blends feel like they've been siliconed.
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I thought the same thing about the DCUB. And i'm having the client take a pic for me.
We've never had an issue with the base before, and we use it multiple times a day.
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Were you experienceing build up? Were you running a high squeegee pressure or higher offcontact? Higher pressure on bad ink or overloaded ink could cause the pigments to separate from it's carrier and you end up with a thin flaky layer on the shirt and no curing will fix it.
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not that I recall. This was the last print of a very frustrating day, but i don't recall there being any build up issues, as the purple was being flashed heavily due to it being a HSA.
Also pressure was pretty low, according to our notes, around 35psi.
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i talked to ryonet and green galaxy, and they just suggested that we needed more cure time.
they also suggested adding warped drive into all the inks, which i actually don't think is a bad idea.
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Warp drive is a band aid for your problem...... Its like adding nylon bonding additive to plastisol and hoping it stays on the shirt.
Warp Drive is designed to help ink cure at a lower temperature. If your ink is not curing at the correct temp and time..... it's bad ink.
With good ink and I see no problem adding warp drive. It will only assist you with proper cure time.
Lets find out what the other garments are doing during your wash test and go from there.
Remember, Green Galaxy inks are made in Italy and its awful hard to go to the lab and test a retain sample.......
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did you check you exhaust? is it sucking out your water vapour out of the oven?
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Under cured for sure. We run a Sprint with 8 ft of heat at 8 and the temp at 380-395. Shirt temp in the 360's. No wash out problems. We add Fixer to everything but the whites. We print discharge everyday and random wash test for QA with no issues.
Your other problem could be buying from people that relabel their stuff so its a guessing game as to what your getting sometimes. Buy from the manufacture or buy from someone that sells it as what it is. Not only will you know what your getting but you will save lots of cash along the way. Not saying that this is the whole issue but its definitely in the equation.
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Under cured for sure. We run a Sprint with 8 ft of heat at 8 and the temp at 380-395. Shirt temp in the 360's. No wash out problems. We add Fixer to everything but the whites. We print discharge everyday and random wash test for QA with no issues.
Your other problem could be buying from people that relabel their stuff so its a guessing game as to what your getting sometimes. Buy from the manufacture or buy from someone that sells it as what it is. Not only will you know what your getting but you will save lots of cash along the way. Not saying that this is the whole issue but its definitely in the equation.
if i'm not mistaken Green Galaxy is not a re-label...but i could be incorrect. I also though Virus was from Italy, not Green Galaxy.
On your dryer, do your Triblend and Light color garments not scorch at that temp?
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Also, here are some updated pics. Two new pics of a different gray shirt, and one of the Teal Shirts.
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How long were you flashing the base?
Did the hth grey shirt actually discharge?
If you stretch a print pre wash what does it do?
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Green Galaxy is an actual brand.
http://www.greengalaxycompanies.com/story/ (http://www.greengalaxycompanies.com/story/)
The main guy is Bobby. The last I heard was that he was having all manufacturing done in Italy at the same place that makes Virus and other waterbase type products. I forgot the name of the company who does their production.
I could be wrong at this time.
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update on this:
1st job we are printing this morning is a similiar job:
Canvas 3001 Deep Heather
DCUB
Red HSA
White HSA
Royal HSA
will have an update on some findings later today