I recently met with a perspective customer. He was questioning the quality he was receiving from his current print provider and brought a couple of samples to get my take. His issue was with the heavy “hand” on the white discharge ink in his printed designs. “It looks great but it feels like shit, until you…
Discharge ink has a “pot life” of only four to six hours. Once you add the discharge agent, the chemical ZFS that makes the shirt discharge, you can only use that ink for so long before it no longer will discharge. Two tricks that help with this. 1. You can mix up all the colored…
For blocking out screens for printing water-based discharge inks, regular old generic clear nail polish works very well. It holds up and that aggressive discharge ink doesn’t get through, and also importantly it reclaims fine. It isn’t expensive either. Another trick we did not follow in this situation, don’t print out so much crap on…
A variety of specialty pallets are available today for printing over and/or around zippers. Six+ years ago the options were not quite what they are today and I chose a DIY approach which resulted in a foam-top pallet design which we still utilize today…
We have a guest post today from good printer and our good buddy Brett Bowden, El Capitan of Printed Threads in Dallas, Texas. [divider type=”black|thin|thick|short|dotted|dashed” spacing=”10″] There are many ways to print interior tags on shirts. Tom’s post a while back showed the small screen printing presses that have hit the market in the past…
I’ve read quite a things about not over flashing, that if you cure the ink instead of making it just gel that it will wash off. Honestly, I can’t say that I have ever seen it, have you? I think the proof is that our test prints overprint previous designs all the time and when…
All purpose ink that works for everything? Fahgettaboudit Today’s post considers a new dye blocking ink to print with a little more smooth, soft, and stretchy results. These days if you only want to print basic t-shirts you will go out of business. Polyesters, spandex, bamboo, rayon, triblends, wicking, ringspun, open end and all kinds…
People often ask me what my favorite print is. That’s a doozy of a question but the one that brought me the most satisfaction was this one. It was designed so that the type was a continuous ribbon. The trick was to get the high part of the ribbon a little lighter, and the shadows…
Soft plastisol inks can be a viable alternative to water base inks (and even discharge inks depending on the design, graphic and garment) with respect to visual and tactile characteristics. Soft plastisol inks are also easier to print, especially when printing high resolution halftones through high mesh counts. The key to soft plastisol ink is…
How do you know ink is cured on a shirt? Wash it as you normally would launder a shirt and see if the ink comes off. Get a washer and dryer at work or bring shirts home, that is the only way to be sure if the ink is cured. You can use all kinds…
