“Pirate Printers” Raubdruckerin literally take to the streets in their home Berlin but also in Lisbon, Amsterdam, Paris and around the world and print shirts using objects on the streets. So cool. Some photos and then a more or less translation down below about what they are about. Raubdruckerin uses existing surfaces such as grids,…
We recently printed the wrong back on a series of four colors of shirts that have the same front but in different colors and one gets a different back. Last order somebody screwed up and we printed the wrong back on that one design. Everybody was told to be careful this time and print that…
Make American Great Again? Make America Gay Again? Make America the jumbled up bunch of confused people we have always been I would say. Trump have been using American Apparel merchandise for some of their campaign stuff. Really? I guess Trump forces are trying to avoid the Dubya issues with merch (the Bush folks were…
We have posted before on the Ink Kitchen on what you can do about ink spots on garment dyed shirts. Check it out here. The short answer, is “not much.” The shirts are wonderful and customers love the feel and the colors, but the dye system that makes them wonderful also gives printers problems. One of…
Go to the Justin Bieber site and try and buy some merch and instead you have to sign up for a newsletter. “Tour merch available everywhere now” except nowhere you would expect. It is a whole new world out there of high fashion and $1,675 tour jackets. One printed word and a skimpy scrap of…
One of our most popular series here at the Ink Kitchen is “Misprint Monday.” The philosopher Immanuel Kant once said, “…in the misfortunes of our best friends there is something which is not altogether displeasing to us…” I don’t want you readers to get the wrong impression from our articles on how to do things “correctly” that we…
The exact instructions for how to cure ink are “figure it out.” There is no magic formula of dryer setting and belt speed that I can give you, no matter how many of you beg for that information. There are too many variables. Some of this follows earlier posts, but this is a topic that continues…
These days most of your customers don’t want to visit your factory unless it is a “show and tell” field trip. We have found that the days of press checks are long long gone and that even nervous customers with large orders don’t want to visit the plant. Too much traffic, they are too busy,…
Q: What temperature should I set my dryer at? A: I don’t know. That’s the best answer to that question. Another answer is to say, “whatever temperature raises the ink film temperature to 320 degrees for ten seconds.” Curing ink will be affected by the ambient temperature, how long your drying chamber is, the height…
Last week we ran a big Ink Kitchen list of reasons why you might not hold detail in your prints. My pals at Saati had a little more feedback. It is their usual type of feedback, helpful and practical. “First, make sure to run an exposure (cure) test and at least get into the range…
