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screen printing => Waterbase and Discharge => Topic started by: jsheridan on October 28, 2012, 02:02:56 PM
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My friend from a local contract shop here in town has been getting into discharge printing over the last year. He had a job in house last week, 15k shirts with 3 locations, all discharge. A light gray with a bright yellow-gold. He calls me last week freaking out that mid run his prints went from yellow to green suddenly with no explanation. He mixed some fresh ink but still got the green print. We talked on the phone and tried to solve the problem. I told him it was probably that he ran into some over-dye problems and to pull a shirt from every box and test to be sure. He was dead set that the ink and the entire discharge process was nothing but a headache and got off the phone to call his custy and ask if he could run plastisol instead. He calls me back, they said OK and off he ran into his comfort zone of thick plastisol printed through a 110 mesh.
I cruised over to see him after work to see for myself what the problem was.
He was using AAA shirts, youth S through adult 3X. All the problems were only on some youth sizes. He never pulled shirts from other boxes as he felt he was under a time crunch and didn't have the time to test.
I took one look at the yellow print gone green shirts and sure enough.. they were over-dyed green shirts.
It's just part of the process to get stuck with over-dyes from time to time. It's no reason to give up.
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overdyes were my first thought too. ran into that back when i first started w discharge printing in the early 90s and we got FOL black ts and all of a sudden we started getting the weird color change too. eventually got out of FOL that they were forest green overdyed to black that was causing the problem. havent ran into it since, but now i know to keep an eye on it still.
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what do you guys do if this happens? send the shirts back? is there any way to salvage a bad dye lot?
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what do you guys do if this happens? send the shirts back? is there any way to salvage a bad dye lot?
Over-dyes are the bain of the discharge world as you have no idea what you're getting from the supplier. A really good eye can sometimes see that the black isn't really black or it's a deeper black than normal and you test it, but most times the guy loading the press, has no clue until the dryer catcher says something and you halt printing.. only to find the 20+ shirts in the dryer along with the 10-18 on press are all rejects.
If you're a contract printer, it's in your terms of service that you are not responsible for over-dyes and just keep printing putting the rejects aside.
Custom printer.. you take the hit and order more shirts.
With discharge, you never really know what's going to happen until it comes out of the dryer and by then, game set match.
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I thought I heard somewhere that you can specify discharge ready shirts when ordering from some of the major suppliers. It's worth talking ot the rep and finding out who offers this.
pierre
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Tultex are gauranteed to discharge or money back.
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Tultex are gauranteed to discharge or money back.
Yep.. for a premium price.
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And with no compensation for down time.
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Thats an eye opener for me cuz I ran into this and thought I was dealing with a label issue (50/50)labeled as a 100% thanks guys!!
Darryl
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call me crazy, but this is why I like a discharge base with a plastisol top. Still no flashing and the prints look fantastic. I just ran one on black with a DC ub and 3 top colors, looks amazing and the customer LOVES them. She sells about 300 a weekend(when she as events).
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Just a random hint, but more than a few times I've seen shirts that are re-dyes that have tags that are off color.
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swab test, pre flight.
your friend could have easily just added a second screen of high opacity yellow wb or plastisol to overlay the dc. thats what I would have rocked on a run that size if the swab tests showed too much variance box to box.
we have yet to get a balls out color change on a run. it's usually just a difference in hue and typically you only notice it when we're running ink with a low percentage of activator.
even if you bump into this dc still makes sense with two screens if it reduces or eliminates flashing.
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swab test, pre flight.
your friend could have easily just added a second screen of high opacity yellow wb or plastisol to overlay the dc. thats what I would have rocked on a run that size if the swab tests showed too much variance box to box.
This is the same friend who a while back decided to keep using 2" tape when it was mathmaticlly proven 3" would save him time AND money.
He also opted to keep the rubylith vs the amber or clear light sleeve on the darkroom bulbs because it felt nostalgic to be in the darkroom ::)
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That's funny John, everyone has their own way.
I'm actually going with 4" tape next order b/c I found we're doubling up the 3" to get up high enough on the rollers for security when running wb. I'd rather pay a little extra per roll and use half the amount of tape, not sure how he missed the math on that one. I'm guessing he refuses to use a wider scoop coater as well?
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This is the same friend who a while back decided to keep using 2" tape when it was mathmaticlly proven 3" would save him time AND money.
He also opted to keep the rubylith vs the amber or clear light sleeve on the darkroom bulbs because it felt nostalgic to be in the darkroom ::)
Has any one done any "coin test" with the clear sleeves? I've looked at the numbers and it's not in the correct range of blocking... I am just being anal but I like to quantify the risk.
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Back on subject if you run into this problem check country of origin. Not that it will save in mid production but this is often the culprit
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Back on subject if you run into this problem check country of origin. Not that it will save in mid production but this is often the culprit
great point..
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This is the same friend who a while back decided to keep using 2" tape when it was mathmaticlly proven 3" would save him time AND money.
He also opted to keep the rubylith vs the amber or clear light sleeve on the darkroom bulbs because it felt nostalgic to be in the darkroom ::)
Has any one done any "coin test" with the clear sleeves? I've looked at the numbers and it's not in the correct range of blocking... I am just being anal but I like to quantify the risk.
Back off topic.. yes I have. With two 4' bulbs on a 12' ceiling had no issues. Use two sleeves if you want to feel safer. (the ones posted here many times are just rolled up pieces of plastic you wrap around the lights. They are not those hard plastic safety type tubes)
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Since I know squat about discharge I have to ask, why doesn't the discharge, discharge all dyes to shirts natural color? Is it safe to assume that the original shirt dye is tougher to discharge out than the second dye?
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Not sure what you mean
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Certain dye colors don't work with discharge inks.
We just had a run of Gildan 5000 black (never had a problem in the past) and all the
larges had a green tint to them. Just the larges, which unless we had tested every size,
would have rendered a swab test false.
Comes with the territory I guess.
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When I have a mixed order with discharge I have the client either select a backup color for suspect garments or consider adding a top color.
Nobody wants to add a color usually but the backup concept is good for the suspect garments. You just pull them aside if they test bad and do a color change to plastisol our whatever at the end and print the non dischargeable ones in the backup color. Won't work for a situation like above with all of one sizing having issues though.
What did you do in this case Sean?
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Replaced them.
We have a ridiculous stock of 5000 black, and if for some reason we don't have the quantity/size, we usually
have an order in house that does.
We don't even offer discharge on suspect garments for retail, way too many pitfalls that result in a lot of down time.
Contract, it's on you.
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Or you can do it this way. DC UB no flash. The plastisol overprint (230 mesh) can hide shading issues.
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Maybe a better picture
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OK I got it now EB answered it.
Tony what i was wondering is why the discharge did not discharge all the dyes to the shirts natural color no matter how many times its been re-dyed. I did not know discharge did not work the same on all dye colors.
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Thats correct. For our resort line, each season we add/lose garment colors. All have to be tested and rated for dischargeability. Back when we used our own dye house I set them up with a mini print/ cure system and color viewing booth just for this.