In the last several months we have been printing with discharge inks at a higher level than ever before.  This is partially a trend and partially driven internally.  This trend also corresponds with a trend toward specialty substrates, i.e.: tri-blends, fashion fleece, etc.  Obviously, this complicates things.  You can be reasonably sure of the results you will acheive when printing 100% cotton reactive-dye fabrics, but specialty substrates are another thing.  Time to talk to the manufacturer… or not.  Perhaps it’s just a CYA thing but when consulting with the manufacturer about discharge compatibility regarding specific products I often receive one of two “canned” responses:

1. No you can’t / we do not recommend it

or

2. We don’t know

We’ve learned to avoid going to the manufacturer and skip straight to R&D.  The results have been pretty amazing.  We are experiencing success discharging fabrics that I never would have attempted discharging years ago.

So today when we printed discharge on a product with a manufacturers warning that read:

“This style is not made of 100% cotton
face yarn. Please do your own testing prior to
screen-printing. This is not a discharge friendly fabric”

Well, we were just peachy about it…