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screen printing => Ink and Chemicals => Topic started by: Dottonedan on March 03, 2017, 11:40:33 AM
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What is the name of those rubbery inks that people like. Is it Silicone?
I'm wondering about possibly using those (if they are good as bleed blockers for our athletic numbing on backs of jerseys etc. Currently, we cannot use the Onestroke digital black on bleeders because our numbering system is not designed for adding a 3rd color as a base. (Two color number system). So the inks need to be laid down very heavy...too heavy. It's ridiculous to do this on thin poly sports tees.
Would the silicone inks be a good fit for this? Need opaque, softer and bleed resistant. Is there such a thing?
Who is selling the Silicone inks?
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Nazdar's Image Star series is Silicone based
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You are in a very difficult situation as the silicone inks will also require a special underbase on sublimated 100% polyester. This certainly will not help your current situation but the Ultimate Numbering Machine will allow for the third color underbase. Another option would be to try our ELT Zip Transfers. We have seen very good success heat pressing sublimated polyester with these inks and the ELT Zip Performance Powder. If you would like some instruction here, definitely let me know.
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We use Nazdar's silicone inks also. Works great for printing fabrics prone to migration without using a blocker base. Only products we have had issues with have been sublimated shirts like Badgers digital camo.
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Yep, Nazdar and Rutland have one on the market.
On really bad bleeders you can still have some issues with dyes from the poly, so test test test ;)
I know Rutland has a Black blocker for just this reason. I assume Nazdar does as well.
Have you tried the ELT-S and curing at 250 or so? Slow down the dryer so it is in the tunnel for over a minute maybe? If you have questions, talk with Rocky at One Stroke. From reading between the lines it sounds like the cure temp is at least 250 maybe lower. But not everyone is as anal about dryer temps and cure as some of us on this board. So he is reallly hesitant to talk about low low cure temps. Thumbs up to Rocky.
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I walked away for a few minutes while writing and everyone posts great info!
We use the One stroke adhesive powder here. Run our transfers through at full cure temp and then heat press at 270 for 7 seconds. Works wonderfully. We have not had a need yet to try lower/faster times, but we have not done bad bleeders/sublimation yet.
LOVE the powder though!
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Control your heat, and use Rutland Super Poly White on 100% Poly Jerseys and its a breeze with zero bleed issues. Unless its some printed fabric like digicamo! then you need blocker.
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I have a poly drifit type shirt from Vietnam, with a print that has a smooth but really sticky feel to it, rather than rubbery. If I fold the print on itself and store it, it almost bonds to itself.
I had assumed it was silicone ink, but maybe someone can clarify if this is a recognizable property of silicone ink?
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More than one way to make silicone :)
What you have there could be silicone. I remember getting shirts years ago that were printed with silicone manufactured over seas that would slowly start to pick up lint and look dirty. They were slightly sticky.
It could also be a rubber base ink. Those inks will typically air dry/cure. They have amazing stretch properties and are really durable. Don't know if it will slowly bond to itself though.
Lots of stuff used over seas that can t be used here.
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Just out of interest, how would someone pick up a garment and recognize a silicone ink vs plastisol vs HSA?
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Just out of interest, how would someone pick up a garment and recognize a silicone ink vs plastisol vs HSA?
Stretch it. As far as you can. Then further. Nothing ha elasticity of silicone. Also, silicone will "feel" a bit "rubbier". Not all silicones are the same; some may feel tackier.
If silicone is printed correctly on polyester material, it will be significantly lighter in ink film weight than either HSA or plastisol. Drapes much better as well.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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Just out of interest, how would someone pick up a garment and recognize a silicone ink vs plastisol vs HSA?
Stretch it. As far as you can. Then further. Nothing ha elasticity of silicone. Also, silicone will "feel" a bit "rubbier". Not all silicones are the same; some may feel tackier.
If silicone is printed correctly on polyester material, it will be significantly lighter in ink film weight than either HSA or plastisol. Drapes much better as well.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Yup, I tried stretching a print and it just kept on going so it must be a silicone ink. Very cool for the stretch and opacity, but the tackiness makes the garment really awkward to fold and pack...
Thanks for the info!
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I just went to another shop down the street to see how they did printing some silicone ink on Friday. They printed a bunch of stretchy poly/spandex garments and I cannot believe how bad the bleeding was. I thought one of the selling points to silicone was great bleed resistance?
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I just went to another shop down the street to see how they did printing some silicone ink on Friday. They printed a bunch of stretchy poly/spandex garments and I cannot believe how bad the bleeding was. I thought one of the selling points to silicone was great bleed resistance?
I'm pretty sure the bleed resistance is due to a low temperature cure, not any type of dye blocking capabilities. Maybe they were running the dryer too hot?
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Almost undoubtedly correct
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I can't imagine 210-220 degrees being too hot? But that's why I'm asking, someone who has much more experience with this ink can help steer me in the right direction.
I'm testing the ink right now, and it cured at a setting of 290 and 30 belt speed. I printed it on a bad bleeder so I'll know shortly if it bleeds at that temp. I'll keep going down on the temp.
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290 @ 30 should be in the ballpark for most dryers. Thats how we run the Wilflex products (16' ft heat)
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248-284 for one to two minutes as spelled out here in their tech sheet
https://sourceone.nazdar.com/Portals/0/TDS/ImageStar-Silicone-InfoGuide_2016-web.pdf
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I read the spec sheet before I get too far into testing something and generally they are spot on, but the temp the shop told me they were hitting and the awful bleeding I saw means that something is wrong. I'd suspect the ink manufacturer knows their product well, but I've seen things fail going straight by the book. The guy that runs that shop is a heli pilot and knows how to follow the rules, hence me bringing this up here. If it acts like a plastisol at those higher temps in regards to bleeding I hope it brings a lot more to the table in other areas. I tried to run a job with it yesterday and pulled the ink out after 15 minutes of test printing and the ink drying up. When it printed right I loved the print, but it was drying and forming tiny balls that were hanging up in the stencil. Yes, I was printing like WB, but it was very hot and dry yesterday. I gave up on it and put in some One Stroke ELT, cured it at 290 and got essentially the same print visually, just doesn't feel as rubbery and stretchy.
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Certain drifit/poly/blend fabrics will actually exhibit color shifting all by themselves without a print when run through at typical plastisol settings. I've seen silver turn pink. BTW the Imagestar products must have a catalyst 3 to 5% as stated on the spec sht
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I've seen the siler to pinkish orange also, at 280
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Alan
We decided to run the ELT-S here instead of Silicone for all the above reasons and more. We have a sprint 2000 HO. We run our temps at 270 and a dwell time of one minute. We have only had bleed issues on severe bleeders. We used the Digital Black under base and had zero issues after.
Garment drape is awesome, hand is phenomenal. No catalization. No ink waste. No drying issues.
We have noticed the ink is maybe on the low side for opacity, so we have stared adding some Cabosil (powder thickener) to the ink to help that out.
Running 150S for our base and 150S or 180S for top colors. 65/90/65 blades, sharp. Most of our work is on the auto.
I would not go back to Silicone for any reason right now.
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Even though the Imagestar silicone chemistry comes from Dow Corning I don't feel the product is ready for primetime as Colin suggests. Liked the One Stroke products but probably going back to making our own LCA plastisols.
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Even though the Imagestar silicone chemistry comes from Dow Corning I don't feel the product is ready for primetime as Colin suggests. Liked the One Stroke products but probably going back to making our own LCA plastisols.
Hey Tony: Sorry to hear this. It actually is prime time! :) Launched a few years ago and significant sales -- one our fastest growing products for sure. Not without it's limitations, but for it's intended purpose, one heckuva a solution. Will be happy to discuss with you sometime.
Alan - Silicone (at least ours - can't speak for others) - will not bleed (post dye migration). There are no solvents nor plasticizers to solvate the dyes in the polyester and bleed. You can see sublimation due to heat being higher than the set point of the low-energy dyes being used today. This is where temp comes into play. While we recommend 250-280 for 60 seconds, the fact is silicone is either dry or it is not. There is no gel and cure stages like a plastisol. So, skin cure it (maybe 210-220), and let it post cure for 24-48 hours and you are good to go. Many people do not even use a tunnel dryer - just flashing off last color and box.
All the above is for POLYESTER dyes - not dye sublimation which is a different animal. This is where we need to use our Masking Black under everytihng. This is the ONLY time masking black is needed; when printed on standard non-dye-sub 100% poly, just white underbase and colors.
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To be clear.......not saying it doesn't work it works fine but too many limitations. For instance we have over 1200 PMS plastisol colors on shelf which; just by adding an LCA (additive not catalyst) turn into low cure inks just like that. For a lot less money and zero waste. Silicone simply isn't for everyone but few things are ;)
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We ran the crap out of the silicone, was extremely happy with the results. Abused it just to see what we could get away with. Ran the digital camo without the black blocker base.
Few things learned along the way.
Hot days cut back on the catyliat to 3-4%. Run smaller batches and have them pre measured ready to mix and dump in the screen when needed. No different to how we ran discharge in the summer.
If they did bleed it would go away within 24 hours. The ink would not hold the migration.
I ran a cooler dryer, just hot enough to stop the ink from transferring to the next garment at the end of the dryer. It is a chemical cure so even without heat it would cure.
Stretch beyond the garment breaking point but still retain the image without cracking or disortation. Helpful when the customer orders small spandex but should have gotten a XL.
Clean up with WD 40, then normal reclaim.
Megan has a jacket going on five years, our first silicone print. She wears it almost daily, washed countless time and the print is holding up better then the garment.
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Where are yinz getting the 290˚F @ 30 belt from? Our Sprint HO has a 16' chamber and we run wilflex performance at 290˚ at like 8-10 belt speed which is our regular speed or 320˚ at about 16-18. We based our speeds off donut probe reads on actual garments and they are setup to just kiss the target temp for plastisol and hold it for a few seconds.
Are the belt speed readouts maybe different dryer to dryer? For reference, our 8 speed equals about 1min 30s in the chamber.
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I imagine Temp is temp, but overall temp of dryer setting...and belt speed to reach that actual cure temp would be based on environmental factors that would change. Room size, Geographical location (Arizona. Main or Florida), time of year, weather. That sort of thing. That's why you can't rely on only one donut reading and then "set it and forget it". It changes. Our guys just learned they had not been totally cuing the inks for a long time now after we bought our donut.
I know they think they just read it once and we're done and forget about it. Should be good right? I know you need to check that temp often. Every other day, or at least every week. Getting warmer now, The doors are staying open longer and it's been storming lately. Need to do it again. Mornings, mid day and evenings till you get a feel for what the day is going to do. That's what makes this job interesting. Always something to check on.
One of the jobs at a shop I worked as an artist had a position for people in the glass factory as a pinger. The pinger would sit in a chair and ping the glasses and mugs as they came off the dryer belt with a ceramic stick and ball on the end. We called them pingers because of the sound it made. You would also hear a distinct difference when they hit a bad one. LOL. $6.25 an hr + benefits in a union shop back 15 years ago.
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Where are yinz getting the 290˚F @ 30 belt from? Our Sprint HO has a 16' chamber and we run wilflex performance at 290˚ at like 8-10 belt speed which is our regular speed or 320˚ at about 16-18. We based our speeds off donut probe reads on actual garments and they are setup to just kiss the target temp for plastisol and hold it for a few seconds.
Are the belt speed readouts maybe different dryer to dryer? For reference, our 8 speed equals about 1min 30s in the chamber.
Most gas dryers used to calculate based on feet per minute(or meters if metric). So an 8 setting with 16' of heat would get you 2 minutes in the chamber, a 10 setting should get you a minute 35 seconds(1:35) or thereabouts.
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Where are yinz getting the 290˚F @ 30 belt from? Our Sprint HO has a 16' chamber and we run wilflex performance at 290˚ at like 8-10 belt speed which is our regular speed or 320˚ at about 16-18. We based our speeds off donut probe reads on actual garments and they are setup to just kiss the target temp for plastisol and hold it for a few seconds.
Are the belt speed readouts maybe different dryer to dryer? For reference, our 8 speed equals about 1min 30s in the chamber.
I think all the M&R dryers will be the same, and it's on a feet/minute calculation. We've only got a 12' chamber and a belt speed of 12 is exactly 1 minute inside the chamber. I am still a believer in the donut probe but the settings that I would need for the probe to say I hit 320 degrees seemed excessive so I've continually lowered the temp/time and wash-testing, stretch testing, "white glove rub & tug" :), and then comparing the results to the laser temp gun readings. With our dryer, and I'm certain on most M&Rs, if I set the temp to 360 the gun is usually within 2-3 degrees of that setting on the ink surface, so getting the temp at the bottom of that deposit even with the donut probe I think is a bit of a guessing game. With all the testing I've done it seems like on prints with a decent underbase the bottom of the print will be about 40 degrees cooler than the surface. So if I hit 360 on the surface with the temp gun I feel that the important temp is at or around 320. On a thicker ink deposit the donut probe would tell me I hit 320 with dryer settings of 390 and a 22 belt speed. But the shirts were so damn hot you couldn't handle them without gloves so that's when I started thinking we were too hot. And I've gradually changed the settings over the years and a typical cotton shirt, dark, with a good underbase will cure with a temp setting of 360-370 and a belt speed of 25-27. According to the probe we're not hitting 320, but every test we use tells us we're cured. It has been very rare that I've had a print fail a wash test, even on settings that I was quite sure were going to undercure. And we've stopped using all those older inks with questionable history and the only inks we're running now are QCM XOLB & WOW, along with some 500, 533 and 550 series Excalibur ink. I'm not sure the spec sheet info on those but I think they cure under 320. The One Stroke ELT white seems to cure if you really give it a hard stare, and maybe just a little bit of heat :). I think I need to calibrate the probe again and maybe I can get to that today.
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Alan
This maybe a redundant question: Are you pushing the cross hairs into the ink deposit?
I was always told to do that - as best we can with the print - to get an active read on the inside of the ink deposit.
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You were told right, although this may be splitting (cross) hairs! Certain ink colors absorb heat while others reflect. Ink film thickness can certainly affect the time it takes an ink to come up to temp. Also mass.............a 55 htone dot will come up to cure quicker than, say, a 3" circle
tp
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Alan
This maybe a redundant question: Are you pushing the cross hairs into the ink deposit?
I was always told to do that - as best we can with the print - to get an active read on the inside of the ink deposit.
Yeah, I try to put the shirt on the belt so that it's raised slightly where I'm putting the probe so that the wires get down into the ink and I don't have to worry about it raising out of the ink as the shirt passes over the cross-braces of the dryer. I hope that makes sense.
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Cool.
I noticed a very broad degree of difference in donut temp to laser gun surface temp as well.
Poly garments/Heavy athletic type printing/thicker deposits were on the high side. Standard clean - spot color and halftone printing were on the lower end.
At 325 degrees with one minute retention, we hit cure temp anywhere from 8-10 feet through our 12 foot dryer. Thickness of ink dependent (majority of our print jobs have one or 2 flashes, so the shirts are hot/warm going in).
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I printed Rutland and Nazdar (Dow) for a year straight. Usually cured it at 290. Remember that it takes a full 24 hours to fully set-up. Sometimes the white ink looked much better the next day. Also we always used the black blocker on the sublimated poly.
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Ok that makes sense. I think this comes down to the cya built into cure temps/reten times. Also, I replaced both the belt motor and speed controller on our sprint HO so it may or may not have re-calibrated, not sure on that. We basically run at 1:30 retension and adjust the dryer temp if needed throughout the day so we're curing wb/dc/hsa fully but not over baking the plastisol, there's an ideal for each ink and then a happy middle ground to keep from toggling the dryer all day and scheduling each shift to death to match up ink types.
Remember that a typical ray gun is reading a cone of air with the cone's base centered around the laser dot, we honestly don't use them but a couple times a year anymore. I always thought they read high like Alan says compared to an atkins probe.