TSB
screen printing => Waterbase and Discharge => Topic started by: ebscreen on October 05, 2012, 02:35:51 PM
-
Anybody use one? Mixing ourselves seems wasteful in terms of time and labor,
the Matsui product, while great, is roughly $60 a gallon which seems high.
Just looking for a good waterbased black.
-
I have a homogenizer here and back in the day I used to get the binder concentrate, antifoam, etc and make WB black and colors for less than..........$5.00 per gallon. Only for white and light shirts though so we stopped. I'll mention it to my bud over at CCI though. Seems like they could do it for around $30 but thats just a guess.
-
$30 would be fine.
Where does one obtain the base ingredients for waterbased inks?
-
Yeah, the Matsui Jet Black Paste water base is amazing but spendy. It is jet black for sure! We have cut it with a fair amount of base and water with totally fine results. But whatever happened to that water base forum by that Matt guy? Can't remember the name for it and I just did a search with no luck. Maybe it is gone now. Sad as it had some pretty good stuff from time to time. I do know the Matt guy who ran has or had a shop where they primarily printed beach towels all day, every day. I do remember reading his posts where they made all of their inks from scratch. Everything. So I am pretty sure he knew what he was talking about. Wish he could chime in here!
-
I remember reading that post also. He did some amazing towels. He had a belt press that printed with metal rods. Very cool and detailed prints. I couldn't find that forum. I will see if I can find the video of his press. Its just cool to see.
-
Awesome! Glad someone else remembers too. Yeah, they did towels all day every day from I got out of it. Something like there are only a half dozen or so shops in the country where that is all they do and he was one of them. And yeah, they did some amazing stuff on a very hard substrate to work with. I mean those thick, crazy ass beach towels!
-
I found a video of his press.
Belt Printing 2 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LdO8bgcjsk#ws)
-
Just checked out his youtube site. He has like 20 videos on there. This guy knows towels and waterbase. Maybe if we talk about him enough he will post on here...
-
Just checked out his youtube site. He has like 20 videos on there. This guy knows towels and waterbase. Maybe if we talk about him enough he will post on here...
Hahaha, totally! Where is he these days?
-
He is up north...(upnorthscrn is his youtube name)
I never talked to him on the forum. I just read the posts when I was going to start doing waterbase about 2 or 3 years ago. He knows his stuff that's for sure. I wish the forum was still up. I can't find it. It had all kinds of info.
One thing I remember him saying is that the ink he mixes up has a ton less ingredients then the manufactured inks we buy. He siad that they put alot of stuff in them that is not needed. I would guess he is referring to the mold resistant stuff and and other thing like that since he mixes his up fresh and uses it right away.
We need to get ahold of him and see. I am sure tony knows just as much but it would be good to have another guy here with years of WB experience.
Brandon you going to Vegas??? I think you owe me a beer from not making it to Long Beach.
-
He is up north...(upnorthscrn is his youtube name)
I never talked to him on the forum. I just read the posts when I was going to start doing waterbase about 2 or 3 years ago. He knows his stuff that's for sure. I wish the forum was still up. I can't find it. It had all kinds of info.
One thing I remember him saying is that the ink he mixes up has a ton less ingredients then the manufactured inks we buy. He siad that they put alot of stuff in them that is not needed. I would guess he is referring to the mold resistant stuff and and other thing like that since he mixes his up fresh and uses it right away.
We need to get ahold of him and see. I am sure tony knows just as much but it would be good to have another guy here with years of WB experience.
Brandon you going to Vegas??? I think you owe me a beer from not making it to Long Beach.
I wish. Just got back from a month vacation in Sweden though. Can't make it. We didn't make it to Long Beach last year because we got snowed in. It sucked. Airport down for like three days. But will be there for sure this year! And I will buy you two beers this year!
-
I ask about premix black and John gets two beers out of the deal. MODS!!!!
-
I ask about premix black and John gets two beers out of the deal. MODS!!!!
Hahahaha. Be at Long Beach in January and lets all have several beers on me! Or more. It will be like Caddyshack where Dangerfield cranks the volume on his golf bag and goes "everybody lets dance!"
-
He is up north...(upnorthscrn is his youtube name)
I never talked to him on the forum. I just read the posts when I was going to start doing waterbase about 2 or 3 years ago. He knows his stuff that's for sure. I wish the forum was still up. I can't find it. It had all kinds of info.
One thing I remember him saying is that the ink he mixes up has a ton less ingredients then the manufactured inks we buy. He siad that they put alot of stuff in them that is not needed. I would guess he is referring to the mold resistant stuff and and other thing like that since he mixes his up fresh and uses it right away.
We need to get ahold of him and see. I am sure tony knows just as much but it would be good to have another guy here with years of WB experience.
Brandon you going to Vegas??? I think you owe me a beer from not making it to Long Beach.
Holy crap, checked out some of Matt's videos and those are some large screens! Wonder how low the tension is on those screens! Some cool stuff for sure though
-
I thought that high tension is not nearly as important a trait when we are diving WB ink into the fabric as when trying to get a thin deposit only on the surface as with plastisol.
-
I was sorta surprised in that video that the guys at the end of the dryer were grabbing the towels and stacking them on top of each other after they were printed
-
I thought that high tension is not nearly as important a trait when we are diving WB ink into the fabric as when trying to get a thin deposit only on the surface as with plastisol.
You know, to be honest I have never really thought about it that way with regards to tension and WB inks. But our largest print area is 20x23, not multiple feet by multiple feet! So we tension our screens to the levels they are supposed to be according to the manufacturer and print both plastisol and water base with them. But we also do a ton of wow printing up to 9 screens and we have to have proper tension for that. I know they are printing beach towels like crazy there and the substrate is a very different one from the normal shirt we print on so I am really not sure. I wish Matt was on here. Maybe Tony has some answers
-
I totally remember Matt form the screen print h2o forum. Their company does some really amazing work on towels. He once posted a pic of a Fuze Drink towel that was over the top great. He did in fact mix all of the elements to make his own inks. They played with the idea of actually becoming an ink manufacturer, and had sent us out some samples. The ink was great, but then that forum was just gone one day.
We do some towel printing (hand towels), and we use super low tension screens. You really gotta saturate the towel, so a low tension screen allows alot of ink to deposit . High tension screens just don't cut it. On standard water base printing when printing garments, we use high tension screens just as we do with plastisol.
For those of you that have yet to try water base printing, give it a try. It's all in the prep. Read Tony's article on it as it explains it in detail. We have a great success using as high as a 350 screen for super fine detail.
Have a great day!
Paul
-
Thats correct about tension. A typical belt screen is 52"x65" and high tension can cause penetration issues. I've probably run about a dozent belt printers from Precision Screen Machines to M&R and even used to demo them at trade shows when they were all the rage. At Precision and elsewhere we would make our own WB inks as the manufacturers mostly didn't care about us. Their main business was and arguably still is for the roller print factories printing yard goods. You had to buy the pigments in 5 gallon containers and yes, back the certain ones were prone to molding. Some may remember pole dryers wher towels and cut pieces were draped over poles that wre drive via chain and sprocket. This was the only way to achieve sustainable production. Laying pieces flat would require such slow belt speed to cure all that WB. This was often overlooked when companies would invest in cut piece equipment. Also overlooked were screen prep issues such as coating, burning, stretching, sinks, etc. And lets not forget labour. A typical press crew was up to six people. Most belt printers were contract shops servicing the cut and sew businesses. Careful time studies revealed that many were actually losing money yet retail could not bear the brunt of severe price increases.
So at the end of the day U.S. printers (at least the smart ones) got out of that niche and watched it migrate south of the border when NAFTA opened that door.
Good Times
-
Which got me thinking about the "Top Secret" room at Precision where they stripped the heads off a belt printer and hooked up a bunch paint guns to it. We made dums of neon discharge colors and sprayed the shirts. They were cured and then overprinted for programs like the Warren Beatty Dick Tracy movie. Some of the first "allover" treatments. Thats when the "Don't Have Cow" shirts and "Newport Alive with Pleasure" stuff was going down and the first "Batman" movie shirts as well.
The Newport shirt program was 3,000,000 shirts front and back. Spent most of the day loading and unloading 22 footers.
-
I just got a gallon of matsui ink, a "special edition charcoal" from ryonet. On sale for like 30$ it's not a jet black but my eye doesn't see anything other then black. Way cheaper then the quart I mixed myself. They also have quarts on sale as well but nearly the same deal. They are still very reasonable once you hit the free shipping on matsui, likely because they don't have a hard time pitching It to everyone printing in their homes. If anyone sees any deals floating around message me. I would be happy to do the same.
-
Thats correct about tension. A typical belt screen is 52"x65" and high tension can cause penetration issues. I've probably run about a dozent belt printers from Precision Screen Machines to M&R and even used to demo them at trade shows when they were all the rage. At Precision and elsewhere we would make our own WB inks as the manufacturers mostly didn't care about us. Their main business was and arguably still is for the roller print factories printing yard goods. You had to buy the pigments in 5 gallon containers and yes, back the certain ones were prone to molding. Some may remember pole dryers wher towels and cut pieces were draped over poles that wre drive via chain and sprocket. This was the only way to achieve sustainable production. Laying pieces flat would require such slow belt speed to cure all that WB. This was often overlooked when companies would invest in cut piece equipment. Also overlooked were screen prep issues such as coating, burning, stretching, sinks, etc. And lets not forget labour. A typical press crew was up to six people. Most belt printers were contract shops servicing the cut and sew businesses. Careful time studies revealed that many were actually losing money yet retail could not bear the brunt of severe price increases.
So at the end of the day U.S. printers (at least the smart ones) got out of that niche and watched it migrate south of the border when NAFTA opened that door.
Good Times
That for sure is interesting. Wish I could have seen a process like that in action.
-
The first all over finished goods were printed this way. Eventually a cornstarch based adhesive was sprayed inside the shirts (three person operation) to prevent the shirt from movig between colors. The water base tack most of us use today was also introduced at this time. The screens printed over the collars and sleeves and bottom hems. Underneath the press was a washing system consisting of a series of rollers and squeegee "scrapers" which cleaned the belt and reactivated the adhesive. The earlier belts were single directional drives which made set up a real mothereffer. Typical minimum runs were 500 pcs but even that wasn't cost effective. The all-over platens came years later. They had their own set of issues as well.
Kind of feeling like a historian this morning!
-
professor Tony, do you feel that belt and then simulated belt printing on t shirts on the whole is not profitable? better done as printed fabric before cut/sew?
-
Thats correct about tension. A typical belt screen is 52"x65" and high tension can cause penetration issues. I've probably run about a dozent belt printers from Precision Screen Machines to M&R and even used to demo them at trade shows when they were all the rage. At Precision and elsewhere we would make our own WB inks as the manufacturers mostly didn't care about us. Their main business was and arguably still is for the roller print factories printing yard goods. You had to buy the pigments in 5 gallon containers and yes, back the certain ones were prone to molding. Some may remember pole dryers wher towels and cut pieces were draped over poles that wre drive via chain and sprocket. This was the only way to achieve sustainable production. Laying pieces flat would require such slow belt speed to cure all that WB. This was often overlooked when companies would invest in cut piece equipment. Also overlooked were screen prep issues such as coating, burning, stretching, sinks, etc. And lets not forget labour. A typical press crew was up to six people. Most belt printers were contract shops servicing the cut and sew businesses. Careful time studies revealed that many were actually losing money yet retail could not bear the brunt of severe price increases.
So at the end of the day U.S. printers (at least the smart ones) got out of that niche and watched it migrate south of the border when NAFTA opened that door.
Good Times
ahh the days of watching shirts loaded on belt printers, 2 pole dryers spinning, and big drums of homemade waterbase ink. we did a lot of preprint stuff to then do namedrops etc on, lots of dinosaur/jurassic stuff and chichago bulls championship stuff. all over ovals came next but our belt printers were always busy still.
-
It can be but what killed it for US anyway was cost of equipment over 1/4 million dollars (with sinks, exposure units, dryers, etc), in some cases double the labor at half the throughput and increased off quality; well, you do the math. Cut and sew was more efficient but thats all gone south where labor $$ make more sense. All over printing platens run slower, require an extra loader, same OS screens/squeegees, can have deflection issues due to weight, and generally you'll need one set of platens for every two shirt sizes (thats often overlooked at Point of Sale!) and at around $800-$1,200 per platen thats a lot of beans. Plus many of them have a nasty habit of pinching the armpits. We were the Beta site for these at Harlequin and Oats.
Thats why I'm putting together a sigle station oversized manual table. One color allover WB/DC, one person, with a dedicated dryer. Using stuff we already had laying around like old school kick stands this actually will cost nothing
-
It can be but what killed it for US anyway was cost of equipment over 1/4 million dollars (with sinks, exposure units, dryers, etc), in some cases double the labor at half the throughput and increased off quality; well, you do the math. Cut and sew was more efficient but thats all gone south where labor $$ make more sense. All over printing platens run slower, require an extra loader, same OS screens/squeegees, can have deflection issues due to weight, and generally you'll need one set of platens for every two shirt sizes (thats often overlooked at Point of Sale!) and at around $800-$1,200 per platen thats a lot of beans. Plus many of them have a nasty habit of pinching the armpits. We were the Beta site for these at Harlequin and Oats.
Thats why I'm putting together a sigle station oversized manual table. One color allover WB/DC, one person, with a dedicated dryer. Using stuff we already had laying around like old school kick stands this actually will cost nothing
I find that stuff super interesting. I never thought to do an all over print after cut/sew and while we get the occasional request for it, no one will actually pay for it. In fact, we have no dedicated AOP setup because no one has gone through with an AOP order. I think you're on the right path making a one color, single operator AOP deal. You can get a lot done with one color all over and even add standard printing after, a combo that will fit into more budgets than any other approach. I wouldn't be hyped about doing it manually though, sounds like a lot of work.
So anyways....who's got a good premix black? I like Matsui's a lot but, yes, that is a little spendy for black wb ink. Maybe go for the drum of it if you have space and are running so much? I need to try the Texcharge Black as well (just run unactivated) but I doubt it has better characteristics than the Matsui.
What I want to know is how in the living hell do you dehaze/de-stain a screen after running WB black. It's tenacious.
-
Hey Chris,
Do y'all reclaim your water base screens immediately after use and still have trouble? Or do they have the chance to sit a bit? We do our water base / discharge screens right away and plastisol within a day. I have noticed a difference over time.
And yeah, I would hate to pull or push that AOP set up! "Brandon, these 500 black t's need a one color discharge on a 230. AOP. It's 9:15. Customer comes at noon." No thanks!
-
It's for the Resort line. Typical run is 48 pcs. BTW I remember seeing Jeff Proctor at the Vastex booth in ATL with a one color allover rig.
Am working with a couple of suppliers to produce an affordable black WB ink. I use Vivitone black PC and binder unactivated. About $25 per gallon. And it's the carbon in the black ink that causes trouble.
Definitely reclaim immediately after use.
-
Always reclaim immediately after the run, I mean, right away. The worst has been the TW black so far, the matsui isn't as gnarly.
-
Thread resurrection here.
Pre-mix WB Blacks I've tried:
Matsui 301 - Very nice, always like Matsui's characteristics. ≈$50/gal
Sericol Texcharge Black - good print characteristics but not a good WB black in my opinion. Like most of the texcharge inks, best reserved for it's intended purpose as a mixing black for the Texcharge DC system and not used unactivated as regular WB. ≈$40/gal
Jantex (mine was branded QCM) Black - weirdo print characteristic, the ink is "gloppy" like many hobby brands, requires a lot of water and a lot of high speed mixing to print well on an auto, but excellent finished print that is very durable after 24+ wash/dry cycles. ≈$???/gal I got ours for $9/gal on sale! Should have bought it all.
CCI Spot Black- had such high hopes for this one. Dry in issues right out of the gates, had to pull and add back abt 8% H20. The D-White on press had no such dry in problems and both were on identical mesh, blade, flood, print speed and pressure setups. Was running a 2 color 1000pc on the auto: CCI Spot Black then CCI D-White, WOW, screens right next to each other, moving fast. The CCI Black built up so badly with that "zombie skin" I've heard so many speak of that it physically pulled the emulsion off our white screen about 750 pcs in. It did cover adequately on red ring spun cotton though. ≈$40/gal
What else is out there? I'm surprised finding a good pre-mixed black is so difficult. We do not modify any of our DC or WB inks save for the addition of around 6% water on average. No retarder, no penetrants, fixing agents, softeners, etc. etc. I'd like to keep it that way. Would revert to Matsui but I've found the chemistry of Matsui wb to sometimes not play well with inks like CCI/Texcharge, it seems they may have different solvent systems.
-
Hey I started this!
And I was just about to order the CCI black to boot!
Sadly, we still mix our own. It does give us a use for that lousy Rutland base we have two
pails of though....
-
Hey, I don't want to totally condemn the CCI, I was really rooting for it, trying to get the bulk of our supplies from a single supplier and preferably one like CCI that can manage to ship items it sells in a timely fashion. It does look great in the bucket but I feel we'd need to modify to get it 100%, they just came out with this and the "pure white" HO wb ink so maybe it's just not there in the formula yet.
As is, I see the need for retarder and maybe even a pentrant. It needs so much damn water that it starts to cross that line into too runny for my taste.
I don't think mixing it with the CCI "mixing black" and D-Base premium would be effective, might need to overload to far but maybe I'll give it a whirl. Dumping pigment into a gallon of base once in a while isn't such a big deal in terms of labor.
-
Rutland Discharge Base (Why keep 2 different bases....)
10% black WB pigment (it's dense enough for our picky eyes)
~5% Water (for flow characteristics)
Up to 5% Penetrant (I know, it's a lot. But some fabrics just suuuuuuck!)
Takes 5 minutes to mix up Max.
Under $40 a gallon.
Nice dense blacks.
I will not use CCI waterbase again until they can show me their stuff is greatly improved.
Chris: The Jantex WB Black's PH balance may have been off. Standard waterbase can get gloppy/curdled if it goes to far towards the basic side (think I remember it correctly ;)). It has to do with the thickening agent used. That waterbase had been sitting around for a while as well...
-
Ah! The ph, something I'm just starting to learn a little on, thanks to that Mark Gervais video...that was probably the only "eye opening" thing I got out of it, the ph shift triggering the thickeners to "melt" and allow the ink to encapsulate the fibers. Makes sense.
When did you try CCI Colin? It's been outperforming all else in our shop. I never did lengthy trials with Rutland due to the pigment chunk issue, deal breaker for me.
Where are you getting the penetrant?
-
Was using cci's spot black wb two weeks ago (black and d-white after) and about 40 shirts in noticed the black was actually coming out gray - so weird, as aforementioned it looks awesome in the bucket and whilst loading it on the screen. So I cleaned the screen out and used plastisol black - didn't have time to figure out the issue.
-
RC Screen Supply is literally a few building over from us. So I walk down and pick stuff up when needed ;) Helps that Kelly works there so I can ping him about any hiccups I see during production. Only time I have seen pigment issues is when it gets clogged in the tips of the pigment container. That can create headaches when you see it in your screen :( I've gotten real good about clearing those.
I will say that the few colors I saw mixed with CCI were more accurate than Rutlands.... But.... Read the rest.
Sooo, Tad from CCI came by the shop back in February/March with Nick from Ryonet to chat about their "new" waterbase mixing system. I had been hearing rave reviews here for several months about CCI's discharge inks, so I was psyched to try it out. They both came in, we mixed and printed a nice rich discharge pms red along with their discharge white (this was samples for a 10k plus job coming up, 4 locations, 40k plus prints). Mixed great, the mixing software worked, ink was very smooth and almost fluffy in consistency, penetrated the fabric like crazy (could see the red coming through the inside of the shirt), discharged amazing at 4% activator and looked absolutely beautiful after it came out of our M&R 12 foot HO Sprint set at 340 degrees running at 6 feet per second i.e. a two minute dwell time. Tad was happy with the print, Nick thought it looked great, we were all happy. I asked if there was anything I should have/could have done different with their system and they said nope.
Then I washed it twice. At that point you could see the greige color of the garment coming through and discoloring the red..... Yes, the dark cream/grey/greige of the raw shirt color was coming through... Tad was absolutely adamant that the base was perfect and had EVERYTHING in it you could ever need for a perfect print. Yea... not so much. It keeps getting worse each time I wash it since it's now a work shirt.
We ended up getting in Rutlands WB system and ran the job with that. Went through 30 gallons of discharge base on that job. Every print sample we washed was awesome. No greige fiberlation, just ink colored fibers like every job before it.
So, until it is proven to me that their ink is consistently better.... I'll take longevity and durability of print - and happy customers.
-
Wow. Just curious Alternative Apparel?
-
Tultex actually.
They feel odd....... Don't drape very well.
-
That's strange, all my cci wash tests have been rock solid and we are far from a 12 foot sprint HO. Did the prints hit 350 before exit. I swear that's somehow important.
The Rutland we have ran was unimpressive- frequent pig chunks, consistency and smell of latex paint. Makes good prints but I prefer the characteristics of cci or sericol.
-
I don't remember if it was set to 350... I remember 340... But again, CCI's West Coast Technical Sales Rep was standing right there the whole time......
Yea, I was really surprised by my wash results! But I got corroborating reports from others in my area. Maybe it was a few bad batches..... but even then, I need greater consistency. I'm glad everything is solid on your end!
The components CCI use in their inks are really different than Rutlands. With Rutlands, if it dries out it feels like a rubbery gel almost. CCI's actually looks and feels a bit foamy and dry. Which makes sense when you look at it's consistency and how easy it is to print with. I'll say again, it almost feels fluffy....
In the end, it's about what works best in your shop and gives you the best results!
-
I am looking for a nice black as well. Scott form CCI came in a week or two ago and we did much the same as Colin , we mixed a nice, bright red and it looked meh coming out of the tunnel along side sericol red ys. I love the rfu system of sericol so the cci pigs are not on the top of my list anymore, EXCEPT for the flou colors.. the software was pretty simple to use but the results were less than stellar. HOWEVER, the D-White and base are awesome.
Talk about a massive fail, we had a few sample gallons of CCI plastisol given to us to try. One was a black called easy flow black, we ran 500 pieces the other day and set up, black, white, flash, royal, red...the black was caked so thick onto the white screen it would print after 150 prints...I have never seen an ink build like this, ever. We asked Scott and knew all about it, he said the baja black would do that too but I can't say i remember seeing that.. Kind of a turn off on their plastisols...
-
I am looking for a nice black as well. Scott form CCI came in a week or two ago and we did much the same as Colin , we mixed a nice, bright red and it looked meh coming out of the tunnel along side sericol red ys. I love the rfu system of sericol so the cci pigs are not on the top of my list anymore, EXCEPT for the flou colors.. the software was pretty simple to use but the results were less than stellar. HOWEVER, the D-White and base are awesome.
Talk about a massive fail, we had a few sample gallons of CCI plastisol given to us to try. One was a black called easy flow black, we ran 500 pieces the other day and set up, black, white, flash, royal, red...the black was caked so thick onto the white screen it would print after 150 prints...I have never seen an ink build like this, ever. We asked Scott and knew all about it, he said the baja black would do that too but I can't say i remember seeing that.. Kind of a turn off on their plastisols...
have had the same issue trying to hit a red with CCI pigments that looks as good as sericol red. finally after a few tries and not being able to get a really bright red that would pop off the shirt, i decided to use in place of the discharge base, 50% discharge base and 50% dflo magenta, and added my red pigments to that base mix, mixed, activated and printed, niice bright popping red was the result. formulas may need to be adjusted slightly to compensate for the pigment already in the dflo magenta.
-
Update on this.
Did a side by side with Jantex premix black and CCI Spot Black. Are there any other spot blacks other than Matsui's that we're missing? As probably mentioned earlier we don't do much Matsui in here as the chemistry doesn't seem to play well with the CCI/Sericol inks.
Jantex does very well on most 100% cotton and has the softest hand. More affordable and easier to work with on press.
CCI Spot Black outperforms it over a wide variety of fabrics. Much less fibrilation on poly/cotton and tri blends. Stiffer hand to the finished ink but still soft and acceptable. Spot Black's one big (huge?) drawback is it does not perform well WOW. We like to put black down early in a WOW sequence and, so far, Spot Black has picked up so aggressively that it will actually delaminate the next stencil down on it over 1000 prints. It can also be a little bit of a pain to work with on press, likes to dry in and requires thinning or even retarding at times. CCI's W-base in general has the same issue. Like the d-white, I think this ink could use more penetrant as well.
We're keeping both and tossing in the Jantex for cottons and especially WOW runs.
Here's something crazy- just for gits and shiggles, we tested both on 100% poly performance shirts....and they both look great after many washings. CCI outperformed on this fabric too. I would not hesitate to run WB black on 100% poly at this point, need to test colors however.
-
Permaset got a very nice and soft waterbased black.
As for the towel printing posts earlier on in this thread, Matsui do a base that is made only for that purpose, at least here in Japan.There is no feel at all to that base. You will find plenty of print shops here that do only towels, day in day out.
Anyway, the Permaset black is great.
-
Since we have a homogenizer we have the ability to make our own for less than $5 per gallon
-
I haven't been too happy with the matsui black. Do they have multiple blacks? I know you aren't supposed to trap waterbased, but if there is any blur at all between the black and another color it grays really bad. Even speedball black performs better in that regard...
-
I haven't been too happy with the matsui black. Do they have multiple blacks? I know you aren't supposed to trap waterbased, but if there is any blur at all between the black and another color it grays really bad. Even speedball black performs better in that regard...
The only Matsui black I would recommend is their Jet Black. Black as night on the cloudless tundra of Siberia. With a price to match. Buy directly from them. But I don't use their product anymore so not to sure what their distro situation would be. But it is a great product and I assume they still make it. Used to buy it in 5 gallons if memory serves me correctly
-
I'll ask my local supplier (he stocks matsui). I don't think I have Jet Black currently, but I am honestly at a point where I don't care how much something costs if it just works. I've gotten to the point of being fed up saving nickles and dimes to produce subpar product or spend extra time tweaking crap with every job to get the desired result. I'll give every product a shot and do sufficient testing, but if it doesn't perform, it gets replaced. I just don't have the time...
-
I understand. Then give the Jet Black a shot. If that is your WB Ink of choice I would only use Jet Black from them. Nothing else.
-
We use the matsui discharge, but I keep hearing about how great CCI is and some of the premixed sericol's and I will likely be buying those for testing soon. I love the idea of premixed discharge as mixing every time is a pain in the ass. I actually have 6 standard colors that I mix gallons of already and just pour down, activate, and hit with a little water when I use them. The main issue I have with the matsui is how mixing to a pantone can be perfect for some colors and completely off, like multiple shades, for others. There are some weird issues with the pigment separating and changing colors over time as well.