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screen printing => Waterbase and Discharge => Topic started by: ericheartsu on July 29, 2015, 05:02:54 PM

Title: HSA inks on Royal Tees
Post by: ericheartsu on July 29, 2015, 05:02:54 PM
What's the secret to getting a really opaque HSA WHITE print on a royal tee? so far all our attempts have failed.
Title: Re: HSA inks on Royal Tees
Post by: ZooCity on July 29, 2015, 05:04:48 PM
3 screens of HSA White, flash between all.
Title: Re: HSA inks on Royal Tees
Post by: brandon on July 29, 2015, 05:31:57 PM
What Chris just said
Title: Re: HSA inks on Royal Tees
Post by: ericheartsu on July 29, 2015, 05:39:54 PM
I don't know why i didn't just email both of you
Title: Re: HSA inks on Royal Tees
Post by: Colin on July 29, 2015, 07:28:13 PM
I third that motion......

We like 65/90/65 squeegee blades.
Title: Re: HSA inks on Royal Tees
Post by: ericheartsu on July 29, 2015, 07:52:27 PM
I third that motion......

We like 65/90/65 squeegee blades.

we use pretty much all smiling jacks (green, yellow, and red)!
Title: Re: HSA inks on Royal Tees
Post by: ZooCity on July 29, 2015, 09:02:21 PM
55/90/55 TX blade here for 99% of wb/dc/hsa. 
Title: Re: HSA inks on Royal Tees
Post by: Homer on July 30, 2015, 08:09:14 AM
excuse my ignorance here but what exactly is the appeal with these hsa inks if you have to run 3 to make an opaque print?!
Title: Re: HSA inks on Royal Tees
Post by: Sbrem on July 30, 2015, 08:16:04 AM
excuse my ignorance here but what exactly is the appeal with these hsa inks if you have to run 3 to make an opaque print?!

Yes, what am I missing here?

Steve
Title: Re: HSA inks on Royal Tees
Post by: Colin on July 30, 2015, 09:49:43 AM
Customer demand........ but a higher price tag as well.
Title: Re: HSA inks on Royal Tees
Post by: Sbrem on July 30, 2015, 10:39:00 AM
Have yet to have that request...

Steve
Title: Re: HSA inks on Royal Tees
Post by: Colin on July 30, 2015, 11:26:44 AM
Keep it that way ;)

We are printing a 3 color and a 2 color HSA job right now.... thankfully its a distressed look and I can get away with one screen for the white ink......
Title: Re: HSA inks on Royal Tees
Post by: tonypep on July 30, 2015, 11:49:13 AM
Agreed. IMO, HSA inks not ready for prime time and way too expensive
Title: Re: HSA inks on Royal Tees
Post by: ebscreen on July 30, 2015, 11:54:41 AM
Most HSA whites are less expensive than quality white plastisol. Personally I love the stuff.
Mattes down even the gnarliest of yarn ends.

We get opaque whites with two screens, lowish mesh, double stroke the first single on the second.
Trick for us is to run the ink on the scary side of thick, IE no water/retarder etc. It can make production
a touchy affair in hot dry climates but if you manage it correctly it's all gravy.

Title: Re: HSA inks on Royal Tees
Post by: Itsa Little CrOoked on July 30, 2015, 12:08:13 PM
I don't know why i didn't just email both of you

'Cause then the poor schlubs like me that are considering HSA, wouldn't have gotten to read their sage advice.  :)

excuse my ignorance here but what exactly is the appeal with these hsa inks if you have to run 3 to make an opaque print?!

My exact question. So once again, thanks to this forum for saving me from having to make EVERY DUMB MISTAKE possible on my own.
Title: Re: HSA inks on Royal Tees
Post by: brandon on July 30, 2015, 12:17:55 PM
We like HSA for the fact that our clients are not worried about compliance issues so when printing :

1. On top of discharge it is easy, the results are stellar with matt down, brightness, and lack of hand.

2. Clean up is a breeze.

3. Pricing for us is cheaper than plastisol.

Again, this is just us. We had to reclaim a plastisol screen the other day for the first time in weeks. Wow, screw that!

But back to the question - yup, if you can't do discharge underneath is can be a pain. But depending on the design we do from time to time just white flash white HSA on black and it is the brightest white ever. But again depends on design - amount of real estate in the print area and so forth
Title: Re: HSA inks on Royal Tees
Post by: ZooCity on July 30, 2015, 05:48:51 PM
Agreed. IMO, HSA inks not ready for prime time and way too expensive

I'll agree on all points but this ink is being used by very large shops, larger than any conversing on here.  So ready or not, HSA is absolutely "prime time" at this point.

Most HSA whites are less expensive than quality white plastisol. Personally I love the stuff.
Mattes down even the gnarliest of yarn ends.

We get opaque whites with two screens, lowish mesh, double stroke the first single on the second.
Trick for us is to run the ink on the scary side of thick, IE no water/retarder etc. It can make production
a touchy affair in hot dry climates but if you manage it correctly it's all gravy.

Absolutely.  Running the ink thick yields plastisol like opacity.  Our climate is too dry here though.  The ink will literally dry on the inside edges of stencils.

Clean up of these inks has not been friendly for us.  We use Rutland HSA.  On our last move I added warm water to washout to deal with the HSA.

Our HSA Soft White is a little more expensive than Quick White.  What are yinz using for opaque HSA white and what are you running per 5er? 

For those wondering why bother with these, I wonder that myself often but you can't hold a candle to our HSA prints with plastisol, the HSA is very low to the shirt, softer and still fully opaque.  But yes, it can be hell if not over a DC UB.
Title: Re: HSA inks on Royal Tees
Post by: TCT on July 30, 2015, 07:59:24 PM
Most HSA whites are less expensive than quality white plastisol. Personally I love the stuff.
Mattes down even the gnarliest of yarn ends.

We get opaque whites with two screens, lowish mesh, double stroke the first single on the second.
Trick for us is to run the ink on the scary side of thick, IE no water/retarder etc. It can make production
a touchy affair in hot dry climates but if you manage it correctly it's all gravy.
Totally agree.
We had a Matsui rep in last week and we ran a job with one of their over complicated named whites and it knocked our socks off!
We ran a job today that was essentially a solid pic of the U.S. ~12"*7" or so, so a LOT of open area and with 2 HSA whites it was way nicer than when we use to print the design in plastisol. Drying in the screen does kind of make you want to pull your hair out, or actually consider inquiring what one of those mister attachments costs:-[
Title: Re: HSA inks on Royal Tees
Post by: Homer on July 30, 2015, 08:49:43 PM
huh...we do about 75% wb/dc jobs and slowly growing as we can not STAND plastisol....maybe we should investigate these a little further...what would be a good one to start with, as far as a white goes?
Title: Re: HSA inks on Royal Tees
Post by: ericheartsu on July 30, 2015, 10:49:07 PM
huh...we do about 75% wb/dc jobs and slowly growing as we can not STAND plastisol....maybe we should investigate these a little further...what would be a good one to start with, as far as a white goes?

We really like the Green Galaxy Inks. And they are about to launch their pigment system. We got it in today, will be mixing it up next week!
Title: Re: HSA inks on Royal Tees
Post by: TCT on July 30, 2015, 11:08:19 PM
@Ericheartsu do you guys use the Green Galaxy white for your HSA white? If you do, do you modify it at all?
Title: Re: HSA inks on Royal Tees
Post by: abchung on July 30, 2015, 11:35:05 PM
Can we use Matsui Neo P.C with Rutland WB99 or any Rutland waterbase?

Sent from my SM-G900H using Tapatalk

Title: Re: HSA inks on Royal Tees
Post by: ericheartsu on July 30, 2015, 11:52:37 PM
@Ericheartsu do you guys use the Green Galaxy white for your HSA white? If you do, do you modify it at all?

we do use it, we add a little bit of water, and we started adding warped drive to most of our inks, just to be extra sure that they are fully curing.
Title: Re: HSA inks on Royal Tees
Post by: willy35 on July 31, 2015, 02:28:55 AM
For 1 color white job and waterbased, I found polyurethane based wated based ink better than acrylic base.
The opacity is better.
Title: Re: HSA inks on Royal Tees
Post by: IntegrityShirts on July 31, 2015, 05:51:27 AM
Can we use Matsui Neo P.C with Rutland WB99 or any Rutland waterbase?

Sent from my SM-G900H using Tapatalk
The Rutland wb99 base will work with Matsui pigments but I did have some issues with ink turning to a jelly consistency. I use cci DC bases with the Matsui pigments with no issues.

Is the Matsui stretch white an HSA ink? Seems to cover well with 2 layers...
Title: Re: HSA inks on Royal Tees
Post by: abchung on July 31, 2015, 06:05:50 AM
Can we use Matsui Neo P.C with Rutland WB99 or any Rutland waterbase?

Sent from my SM-G900H using Tapatalk
The Rutland wb99 base will work with Matsui pigments but I did have some issues with ink turning to a jelly consistency. I use cci DC bases with the Matsui pigments with no issues.

Is the Matsui stretch white an HSA ink? Seems to cover well with 2 layers...
Thanks for the info.

I mix the matsui 301 white stretch with matsui 301 white because the stretch white dries too fast.
we also add small amount of old white mixture to thicken the white to give better opacity. I don't know how it will affect the durability of the print. But we heat press @ 155C all our matsui inks because I put it in the I.R oven at 140C for 2.5 minutes. The ink won't fade.

I use to have a customer that tried to find any excuse to lower the price. He tried to stretch test the 100% stretch white ink to Crack test it. He ripped his cotton fabric before the ink cracked....



Sent from my SM-G900H using Tapatalk
Title: Re: HSA inks on Royal Tees
Post by: Sbrem on July 31, 2015, 09:49:08 AM
At the beginning of the thread it sounds like a major pain. Our first try with it a couple of years ago with a sample from Rutland was, shall we say, hated? Now, with a little more input from folks, I can see the need, but not here yet, as we've had absolutely no request for this. I am a little surprised at how some have developed a disdain for plastisol, having printed with it for 40 years very happily. My first job was with air dry vinyl inks, and we had to stop and clean the squeegee, floodbar, and all the ink out of the screen, which was 30 x 45 on a flatbed press so we could go to lunch and shut down at the end of the day. So plastisol, "What? It doesn't air dry????" was pretty good. That makes this a kind of turn around in my head, so I just want to get all the info I can, which is best gotten here from you folks. Keep it coming, please.

Steve
Title: Re: HSA inks on Royal Tees
Post by: Homer on July 31, 2015, 10:27:03 AM
what drives us crazy about pastisol is the need for flashing and all the mess that goes along with that.
Title: Re: HSA inks on Royal Tees
Post by: jvanick on July 31, 2015, 10:44:06 AM
what drives us crazy about pastisol is the need for flashing and all the mess that goes along with that.

HSA is just as bad or worse with flashing...

and it's bleed resistance seems to be next to zero, so you usually have to base with a blocker (black) -flash- white -flash- and then top white or colors...

the hand is definitely superior to plastisol tho...

we've been doing ALL badger digital camo with this method and it's been working great.
Title: Re: HSA inks on Royal Tees
Post by: ebscreen on July 31, 2015, 11:21:16 AM
HSA white flashes significantly faster than even a fast flashing plastisol white.
Title: Re: HSA inks on Royal Tees
Post by: jvanick on July 31, 2015, 11:30:05 AM
HSA white flashes significantly faster than even a fast flashing plastisol white.

you are correct on this point, I just meant that you have to flash more times typically.
Title: Re: HSA inks on Royal Tees
Post by: Sbrem on July 31, 2015, 01:30:03 PM
HSA white flashes significantly faster than even a fast flashing plastisol white.

you are correct on this point, I just meant that you have to flash more times typically.

So, all three inks in this example are HSA?

Steve
Title: Re: HSA inks on Royal Tees
Post by: ericheartsu on July 31, 2015, 01:38:42 PM
This is a job we just ran, on royal next level 3600s

166: GG meteor white
flash
166: Sericol Red
flash
200s: GG Meteor White

It came out looking pretty great. I'll admit the picture makes the white pop a bit more, but in person it looks pretty great.

The job we were trying yesterday wasn't going to work with the two whites, due to it being SUPER blocky. Basically a "staff" print.
Title: Re: HSA inks on Royal Tees
Post by: ZooCity on July 31, 2015, 01:41:40 PM
HSA white flashes significantly faster than even a fast flashing plastisol white.

you are correct on this point, I just meant that you have to flash more times typically.

So, all three inks in this example are HSA?

Steve

Yeah, I think there's a real spread on how HSA performs from mfg to mfg and from shop to shop.  It's climate based for sure and the amount of additives used, H20 included has a big impact along with flash air flow, pre-heating platens, blade type and angle, etc. 

In our testing the Rutland Soft White beat out Wilflex Oasis, CCI Pure White and I want to say Magna but can't recall, in overall opacity with 2 screens so we rolled with the Rutland.  At the time they were touting a HSA clear mixing base that is tinted with WB99 PCs, I thought this would be perfect, less ink on the shelves.  Turns out that the WB99+HSA base isn't very opaque (nobody has nailed this yet I hear) and you have to buy the "RFU" inks which utilize a dry flake pig if you want plastisol like opacity.  I put RFU in quotes because they aren't ready for use and require fixative sometimes.  How do you know when?  When you have to recall a crap ton of shirts. 

Anyways, there are more options available now than when we tested initially that we need to check out like Green Galaxy, Virus, Matsui's newer line and Rutland is supposedly revamping the HSA line. 
Title: Re: HSA inks on Royal Tees
Post by: ZooCity on July 31, 2015, 01:42:22 PM
Eric, what sericol ink are you overprinting onto an HSA base???
Title: Re: HSA inks on Royal Tees
Post by: ericheartsu on July 31, 2015, 01:43:49 PM
Eric, what sericol ink are you overprinting onto an HSA base???

It's a custom mixed texcharge! our wash test with it seemed like it was fine
Title: Re: HSA inks on Royal Tees
Post by: ZooCity on July 31, 2015, 01:51:44 PM
Geezus.  You overprinted DC ink onto HSA and that worked out?  I could not be more skeptical.  A couple years back CCI told us we could overprint WB inks onto their Pure White and that was a load of bullcrap, the prints looked great out of the dryer and then faded away after 1-3 washings.  I can't imagine unactivated discharge somehow adhering.
Title: Re: HSA inks on Royal Tees
Post by: ericheartsu on July 31, 2015, 01:52:48 PM
weird, I  just checked out 3rd wash batch, and they didn't fade, they looked fine!
Title: Re: HSA inks on Royal Tees
Post by: ZooCity on July 31, 2015, 02:04:04 PM
Well that's awesome!  Still scares me though and I also do not understand how that is working on a physics/chemistry level.
Title: Re: HSA inks on Royal Tees
Post by: ericheartsu on July 31, 2015, 02:05:26 PM
Well that's awesome!  Still scares me though and I also do not understand how that is working on a physics/chemistry level.

no matter how i try, i never understand how things work on a chemistry/physics level.
Title: Re: HSA inks on Royal Tees
Post by: ebscreen on July 31, 2015, 02:07:40 PM
To be clear, that print is unactivated discharge over a HSA white base?
Title: Re: HSA inks on Royal Tees
Post by: Rob Coleman on July 31, 2015, 02:07:54 PM
HSA white flashes significantly faster than even a fast flashing plastisol white.

you are correct on this point, I just meant that you have to flash more times typically.

So, all three inks in this example are HSA?

Steve

Yeah, I think there's a real spread on how HSA performs from mfg to mfg and from shop to shop.  It's climate based for sure and the amount of additives used, H20 included has a big impact along with flash air flow, pre-heating platens, blade type and angle, etc. 

In our testing the Rutland Soft White beat out Wilflex Oasis, CCI Pure White and I want to say Magna but can't recall, in overall opacity with 2 screens so we rolled with the Rutland.  At the time they were touting a HSA clear mixing base that is tinted with WB99 PCs, I thought this would be perfect, less ink on the shelves.  Turns out that the WB99+HSA base isn't very opaque (nobody has nailed this yet I hear) and you have to buy the "RFU" inks which utilize a dry flake pig if you want plastisol like opacity.  I put RFU in quotes because they aren't ready for use and require fixative sometimes.  How do you know when?  When you have to recall a crap ton of shirts. 

Anyways, there are more options available now than when we tested initially that we need to check out like Green Galaxy, Virus, Matsui's newer line and Rutland is supposedly revamping the HSA line.


Hey Zoo!  these HSA inks are CONSTANTLY evolving.  The inks you looked at six months ago are not the same as today in many cases.  Venture to say, 12 months from now, there will be other changes.  Manufacturers in this field are constantly chasing the elusive pot of gold!

Wilflex new INTENSE WHITE and MAGNA's new AQUAFLEX White are worth looking at in your mix.
Title: Re: HSA inks on Royal Tees
Post by: ZooCity on July 31, 2015, 02:10:14 PM
On the list, thanks Rob.  And that's good to hear there is R&D going into HSA inks, I think they'll be great with the right chemistry, much more friendly on press than now I hope.
Title: Re: HSA inks on Royal Tees
Post by: TCT on July 31, 2015, 05:49:29 PM
Here is a pic of that job we did with the Matsui ink. Top pic is 2 HSA whites, bottom pic is 2 plastisol(IC Legacy I believe).

(http://images.tapatalk-cdn.com/15/07/31/e87f347ddfce47b6396ea62ec475e9de.jpg)
Title: Re: HSA inks on Royal Tees
Post by: alan802 on July 31, 2015, 06:20:54 PM
It's been a year since I tested an HSA, and I literally threw the remaining ink in the trash when I was done.  If everyone was getting the above results then it looks to beat plastisol.  It sure wasn't close to plastisol when I tested it but it's changing quickly so maybe one day it will rival plastisol for us.
Title: Re: HSA inks on Royal Tees
Post by: TCT on July 31, 2015, 07:43:38 PM
We had counted Matsui out for the most part, mostly I was frustrated with their awful and confusing product naming. But there was a rep that came out and brought us some samples, we ran the HSA white on a purple shirt job we had set up. The sleeve prints we used the HSA white for made the front and back we had already printed look dull!

Anyway, the stuff is called "301W-CL" (ya, they still have work to do on the names! ) Used a 180S and then a 150LX, but we later printed another job with a 200S and a 180S. We would do a 2sec flash @ 212f and it was good. It does dry in the screen like a mofo though!
Title: Re: HSA inks on Royal Tees
Post by: ZooCity on July 31, 2015, 08:09:14 PM
All the HSA's definitely beat plasti in terms of a fully bridged, finished print.  There's no real comparing the two, it's not even close in terms of hand and opacity.   Some of them just need 3 screens to get there. 

Alex, your description of the Matsui sounds typical to me.  The ink prints very opaque with two screens at a certain level of hydration, no additives, but dries aggressively.  So in goes the water and the open time extenders and retarders and out goes the opacity in varying degrees.  I think they just need to get the humectants figured out with this ink so we can print it thicker without being at full pucker on press.
Title: Re: HSA inks on Royal Tees
Post by: brandon on July 31, 2015, 10:46:16 PM
We run almost all discharge and HSA now and reading others' posts temp and humidity does have a major role in this. Being we are in New Orleans our ink prints like butter. I can't imagine trying to print some of the half tones and multi color wet on wet jobs we do in Arizona or some place like that. But I will not lie we do not use any of our inks out of the bucket even the RFU's. They all get prepped before going to press.
Title: Re: HSA inks on Royal Tees
Post by: abchung on July 31, 2015, 11:37:59 PM
FYI my printing environment stays at a humidity of 60% to 70% average.(when it rains it goes up even higher).
we can flood the screens for lunch for an hour then come back and start printing again.

Sent from my SM-G900H using Tapatalk

Title: Re: HSA inks on Royal Tees
Post by: bulldog on August 02, 2015, 02:03:55 PM
This is a job we just ran, on royal next level 3600s

166: GG meteor white
flash
166: Sericol Red
flash
200s: GG Meteor White

It came out looking pretty great. I'll admit the picture makes the white pop a bit more, but in person it looks pretty great.

The job we were trying yesterday wasn't going to work with the two whites, due to it being SUPER blocky. Basically a "staff" print.

I saw this and then some comments about this being a HSA base? I thought Meteor White was plastisol. Comet White is WB but didn't think that was considered HSA?

Am I missing something?