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screen printing => Waterbase and Discharge => Topic started by: Itsa Little CrOoked on August 18, 2015, 10:14:50 AM
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I used to use Matsui and their 300 formula was just excellent. But I've never done any Royal Blues with CCI, my current system, that weren't yawners.
I do have a little Fluoro Blue from CCI, but its DULLSVILLE Deluxe. (Maybe I am missing the ZFS ratio???)
Need help, please.
If somebody can fix this, I'll take back everything bad I've ever said about this forum. ;)
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I wouldn't call pantone 300 royal blue. It's a little bright, maybe a light royal? I have always used 286 when someone asks for royal blue...
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Ok. I'll stipulate that, but we have High School custy for whom the 300 was terrific. Then I stopped Matsui.
Your 286 would work. How much Activator? Pigment loading? Is it bright?
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we use 286 as our royal blue as well here.
(sorry no help on CCI mixing as we're all Matsui)
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I also use matsui :D sorry!
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Job is printed, Blue was okay.
I mixed a little CCI Reflex Blue pigment into my CCI D-Flo Blue and activated it @ 4% ZFS.
The percentage was about 1.6% additional pigment load of the Reflex Blue. No time to wash test, but at only 1.6% added pigment, it should wash just like the D-Flo when properly cured. This particular job got some foiled elements mixed in, so plastisol was out for this one. Foil resist doesn't work very good for us. WB Discharge resists foil, everytime.
I still wonder if lowering the % of activator can maximize the brightness of blue Waterbased Discharge. It matters with red, FOR DEFINITE SURE.
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Job is printed, Blue was okay.
I mixed a little CCI Reflex Blue pigment into my CCI D-Flo Blue and activated it @ 4% ZFS.
The percentage was about 1.6% additional pigment load of the Reflex Blue. No time to wash test, but at only 1.6% added pigment, it should wash just like the D-Flo when properly cured. This particular job got some foiled elements mixed in, so plastisol was out for this one. Foil resist doesn't work very good for us. WB Discharge resists foil, everytime.
I still wonder if lowering the % of activator can maximize the brightness of blue Waterbased Discharge. It matters with red, FOR DEFINITE SURE.
You can do up to 30% pigment load they say. I can't imagine using that much in any ink. Most i have done is 20 percent and that seams like a ton. The less activator the less bright the blue will be to a point. I do 4 percent with my blues and have no issues. Red is a special case since the activator will eat the red pigment. That is why most red formulas, that work, have high pigment loads. Its really sacrificial pigment to the agent gods. I always do tests for color and modify the pigments to make sure the final print is as dead on as I can get it. Most of the time the CCI formula is close but needs modifying for the items I am printing.
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Screened, do you have a Royal Blue you print regularly?
What I wound up with was okay, but some of the CCI colors are almost stunning, like the D-Flo Pink. The D-Flo Blue printed right out of the can doesn't exactly make me wet myself...at least not with 5% activator.
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Screened, do you have a Royal Blue you print regularly?
What I wound up with was okay, but some of the CCI colors are almost stunning, like the D-Flo Pink. The D-Flo Blue printed right out of the can doesn't exactly make me wet myself...at least not with 5% activator.
When I started doing DC I thought I was going to pick like 12 colors and use those as my basic colors to offer. I never did that. I make new colors almost every job. They are all pantones. The only color that I don't color match is red. I have a formula for reds that is a good red. I used to do a ton of dischage work but I am back to doing more plastisol now. I am way behind and the educating the customer takes too long. Just easier to print the old no fun ink.
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Interesting you should say that. I'm doing more plastisol as a percentage of our output too. It is easier than Waterbased Discharge for some work. We are probably 75 or so plastisol jobs out of a hundred nowadays, but it used to be about the reverse of that. We might even be 80% plastisol at this point.
But for intermixing foil with color...there's nothing as good as waterbased.
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Sericol RS blue RFU out of the bucket. Add base/white to lighten. Seriously good product
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Sericol RS blue RFU out of the bucket. Add base/white to lighten. Seriously good product
Yes!
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Sericol RS blue RFU out of the bucket. Add base/white to lighten. Seriously good product
Yes!
Okie Dokie. Just ordered a gallon to try out. Thanks!
I don't know why you can't just pick a product line and go whole hog with every color in every circumstance, but it doesn't seem to work out like that. The only WB Red Discharge I've ever been consistently happy with is the Sericol Texcharge Yellow Shade Red, spiked with Matsui's MFB Red Pigment. We were ALWAYS happy with Matsui's 300 formula for our go-to royal blue, but we've dumped most of our Matsui stock in favor of CCI. Maybe we should just develop a color pallet and order pigments and bases a la carte style...only stocking what we KNOW works.
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Screened, do you have a Royal Blue you print regularly?
What I wound up with was okay, but some of the CCI colors are almost stunning, like the D-Flo Pink. The D-Flo Blue printed right out of the can doesn't exactly make me wet myself...at least not with 5% activator.
When I started doing DC I thought I was going to pick like 12 colors and use those as my basic colors to offer. I never did that. I make new colors almost every job. They are all pantones. The only color that I don't color match is red. I have a formula for reds that is a good red. I used to do a ton of dischage work but I am back to doing more plastisol now. I am way behind and the educating the customer takes too long. Just easier to print the old no fun ink.
I really wanted this too and at one point even mixed up a couple quarts of standard colors which ended up sitting mostly unused for way too long. Doesn't help that colors shift in DC mixes over time, even unactivated, and pigments tend to clump a bit. I have been doing less and less DC work just because plastisol is so braindead easy and fast in comparison. I even like cleaning up plastisol more since I don't have to immediately clean every single thing after a run or risk things getting stained and ruined.
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I really wanted this too and at one point even mixed up a couple quarts of standard colors which ended up sitting mostly unused for way too long. Doesn't help that colors shift in DC mixes over time, even unactivated, and pigments tend to clump a bit. I have been doing less and less DC work just because plastisol is so braindead easy and fast in comparison. I even like cleaning up plastisol more since I don't have to immediately clean every single thing after a run or risk things getting stained and ruined.
Yup. And almost no ink waste to have to deal with. It usually goes on the shirts, not in the trash. If I did a ton of plastisol mixing for SimPro (which I don't...) I'd gel the waste in deli cups in our toaster oven and toss them in the dumpster. Almost no stanky air to have to breathe, compared to DC. That toaster oven is dedicated to mugs. 200° for about 10 minutes gels the ink in a deli cup enough to make it a dumpster friendly solid. That's what I do now anyway.
Still, I'm stuck on WB DC for some things. In our shop, I don't see it going anywhere, anytime soon....
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This is all good news to me
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I might have been unclear with my gelling story. I gel PLASTISOL waste ink (very little) and dispose of the warped but solidified ink cups in the trash. Its easy and I don't get into hot water with the Enviro-Nazis. I've never found a good way to dispose of waste WB DC inks that fits my budget. (Or my nostrils.)
But I won't stop printing WB DC completely, because it's a slam dunk for certain jobs. I just do less of it than I though I'd be doing at this point, and waaaay less than a couple of years ago. I think its because of the average size of my runs. (read: small)
The job that prompted this thread was Royal Blue. My WB DC Royal Blues are just underwhelming ever since my almost wholesale change to CCI. I should have my sample of Texcharge TC 217 Blue (Red Shade) tomorrow. I'm anxious to see....
But yeah. For us...on certain jobs...plastisol has quicker setups and less waste generated. Clean up is slower however.
Plastisol doesn't work for our mixed media and foiled stuff and we are doing lots of it right now. Foil resist is inconsistent in my experience.
I've never tried Virus. Yet.....
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^^I believe you are supposed to cure/fully solidify ink, although gelling is one step better than many do. As far as WB/DC goes, I hear (Disclaimer: Hearsay) mixing it into cement is a reasonable equivalent. But then again, I suppose it all depends on your area/regs.
This is all good news to me
I've been in your corner this whole time. ;)
No really though, I understand the conundrum--I can't even manage to educate the guys I work with.
"What do you mean, we have to clean it up right away?"
I really enjoy doing DC/WB, but I really only do it for friends and myself.
Too bad. Fun stuff....
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I may have a few unfair advantages, but after 20ys printing waterbase we have managed all the problems out of the technology.
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I much prefer the finished results with waterbased, but there are just so many "issues" with printing it in my shop. Manual shop, one person, live in central texas with wide temperature and humidity swings, etc.
Pretty close to impossible to prevent dry-in on high color count high quantity jobs because it's just hard to keep the ink moving fast enough manually. I assume an auto would fix dry-in issues on long runs mostly just because the ink can keep moving through the screen. Of course there are "fixes", but they are annoying and time consuming (misting frequently, adding fresh ink frequently, etc). Plastisol on the other hand, put ink on screen and print. Fast, slow, long run, high color count...none of that matters because they inks print the same the whole time.
Being a one man shop also causes headaches with waterbased. Get a phone call or have a walk in, hard to stop mid-run and expect it to be fine 30 minutes later. Not finished with a long run and have to leave for some reason (happens a lot with me since I have a one year old who seems to get sick all the time). Have lots of small jobs that need out the door, too bad you have to clean everything immediately after finishing before setting up the next run. Plastisol on the other hand...wanna take a 15 minute break, no problem. Long run can't finish tonight, no problem just finish in the morning. Wanna batch clean later, go for it.
Don't get me wrong, DC is awesome ink and I use it for my personal work and for jobs where it just makes sense (retail lines, one color bright colors on black 100% cotton, huge coverage on thin garments, etc), but it just can be a headache a lot of the time. There is a lot more waste too in the form of activated but unused ink. Even if you measure it well and have minimal overage, you still need overage to cover the flood at the end of a run and you have to toss that ink.