Polyester White Plastisol Inks-Choices

[JBLUE]

Used performance for the pat year and a half, price jump is rediculous.

Sometimes this is the worst way to look at it. There is not an ink out there that is not worth every penny if it does what you need it to do. There are so many post of people using crappy products and wondering why it does not work right, print right, block dye, flood right, have good opacity.....bla bla bla. Sorry tha last parts the beer talking.......

If you factor in the time wasted trying to get crappy products to work like good products you never come out ahead. For example: If your shop rate is 200.00 per hour to run and you spend that our messing around with ink your savings is right out the window. Not only did you lose that 200 for the hour wasted but how many shirts could you have printed in that hour? 500 pieces, 800 pcs? Is that really worth 80.00-100.00 dollars in a price difference for 5 gallons? Not how I see it. I can honestly say that I have tried or tested almost every white out there. Some of the ones mentioned here suck. It is what it is.

If you have Harbor Freight quality products you get Harbor Freight results. There is a reason why its cheap. Its because they are not putting the good stuff that makes the better products work.

[alan802]

I'd pay $500/5 gal for a white if it was good enough to get everything I wanted out of it, but like Blue, I've used so many different white inks the last few years it's hard to keep track.  I agree that with white ink price shouldn't be the main factor, but too many times we've used a cheaper white ink and gotten better results than with some of the expensive inks so price is not always a determiner of performance.  Many times it is though.  I'm fairly certain some ink manufacturers sell the same basic ink with very slight adjustments or perhaps none at all and label it something different, charge a different price for it and most shops never know.  Printers are a weird bunch.  I've given my guy a gallon of white to test and he hates it, then I ask him what he thinks I should mix together and what percentages and then I give him something totally different than what he asked for but he loves it because he thinks it's his formula. Sometimes I really wonder how some shops are using some white inks because too many times I've tested an ink and thought it was terrible only to hear others rave about it.  Then I'll rave about an ink only to hear that others thought it was terrible.  We might be the only shop using the Tidy white with success but there hasn't been another ink that has given us as many one hit prints than it, and it's not even close really.  It's not production friendly but when mixed thoroughly and altered very slightly it becomes friendly.  Just like the old qcm 159 versus 158, I much preferred the printed results of the 159 but it climbed the squeegee too bad for real production and the 158 wasn't much better but we used it more.  The 158 wasn't as opaque nor did it flash as quickly but it was still a pretty good ink.  The 158 reminds me a lot of the Miami smooth. 

I gladly pay more for the Tidy white and then alter it slightly so it doesn't climb the squeegee but I still test new inks all the time because you never know.  The Miami whites really surprised me with their performance and they are the cheapest we've used besides street fighter.  SF is good for the price, probably the best white for that price that there ever was, but it just isn't opaque enough for us.  I've gotten a gallon of SF and a gallon of snap only to not be able to tell the difference between the two and wonder why we paid more for the snap when it looked, felt, and performed exactly like the SF. 

I love talking white ink, I've got two poly whites to test coming in on Monday and I'll post my thoughts and results next week. 

[GaryG]

Less than $500/5 will buy you the best ink on the planet- Wilflex.
Try a gallon Alan. Unless I missed it, read most of your posts and haven't seen
this PolyOne/Wilflex brand. Have you extensively tested any of it? I'm sure you would be a very
honest evaluator. Quick or Extreme and a few more from which to choose. I bet if you pm'd
a rep, they would even send a free sample.

[Prosperi-Tees]

I cant see us paying more for a white ink other than Street Fighter. My only gripe is that it does not drop off the squeegee after printing. Is that enough of an issue to go from paying under $40 a gal to something double or triple the price? Not for us. We are not high production anyway, I am the only one loading and unloading and am happy printing away at 2-300 pieces per hour. I am going to experiment with some sort of additive to help it drop off the squeegee better and I got a winged floodbar from Action coming to see how that works for us.

[alan802]

Less than $500/5 will buy you the best ink on the planet- Wilflex.
Try a gallon Alan. Unless I missed it, read most of your posts and haven't seen
this PolyOne/Wilflex brand. Have you extensively tested any of it? I'm sure you would be a very
honest evaluator. Quick or Extreme and a few more from which to choose. I bet if you pm'd
a rep, they would even send a free sample.

In the past year I have tried several wilflex whites, the sprint and quick for sure then another I can't quite remember, is there a buffalo white?  The sprint was really good for a while, then it separated/got unstable and almost gelled in the bucket.  The quick was very good, short bodied but still usable.  When I was trying the wilflex I also got in a gallon of Tidy from rutland and that's the main reason I didn't go back to the wiflex.

I've got some Union Poly white coming in this morning and hopefully some wilflex performance tomorrow.  I got another confirmation of bad puffing with the rutland super poly over the weekend so that's not good.  I was hoping maybe I got the only batch that had too much puff.  We've tried going to higher mesh counts but the ink doesn't work all that good with them and the cold snap we've had here the past week has made the ink even more difficult to work with.  The super poly through a 180/48 still had too much puff in it with PFP but obviously wasn't as bad as the lower mesh counts.

[mk162]

i am over puff in white inks.  My understanding is it's needed more in poly to offset the dye migration.

I was corrected by an ink rep one time about puff in white ink.  He was quick to say it's not puff, but instead it's a blowing agent.  I told him I didn't care what it's called, it sucks and if it acts like puff, I will call it puff.

I have not tried Wilflex performance white, their HT Polywhite is thick as heck.  Good but just thick.  Xenon Mu$tang white is a fine name, does Tiger white or Buffalo white not sound pretty much the same?

[IntegrityShirts]

Less than $500/5 will buy you the best ink on the planet- Wilflex.
Try a gallon Alan. Unless I missed it, read most of your posts and haven't seen
this PolyOne/Wilflex brand. Have you extensively tested any of it? I'm sure you would be a very
honest evaluator. Quick or Extreme and a few more from which to choose. I bet if you pm'd
a rep, they would even send a free sample.

In the past year I have tried several wilflex whites, the sprint and quick for sure then another I can't quite remember, is there a buffalo white?  The sprint was really good for a while, then it separated/got unstable and almost gelled in the bucket.  The quick was very good, short bodied but still usable.  When I was trying the wilflex I also got in a gallon of Tidy from rutland and that's the main reason I didn't go back to the wiflex.

I've got some Union Poly white coming in this morning and hopefully some wilflex performance tomorrow.  I got another confirmation of bad puffing with the rutland super poly over the weekend so that's not good.  I was hoping maybe I got the only batch that had too much puff.  We've tried going to higher mesh counts but the ink doesn't work all that good with them and the cold snap we've had here the past week has made the ink even more difficult to work with.  The super poly through a 180/48 still had too much puff in it with PFP but obviously wasn't as bad as the lower mesh counts.

Post a pic of the puffed print. I overprinted orange on my white super poly and it didn't blow through and is 100% passable and even looks great.  I wouldn't ever try to do super fine detail with the rutland poly but for poly fleece it works great for me. There's no way in hell my customer would be able to tell the difference if I showed them one printed with regular ink vs poly ink.  They just aren't that in tune with those kinds of details. Print looks good and is bright = out the door $ in hand.

[GaryG]

Yeah I would like to try Rutland, so hard when using a product for so long.
I have always revered Rutland over the years.

[alan802]

i am over puff in white inks.  My understanding is it's needed more in poly to offset the dye migration.

I was corrected by an ink rep one time about puff in white ink.  He was quick to say it's not puff, but instead it's a blowing agent.  I told him I didn't care what it's called, it sucks and if it acts like puff, I will call it puff.

I have not tried Wilflex performance white, their HT Polywhite is thick as heck.  Good but just thick.  Xenon Mu$tang white is a fine name, does Tiger white or Buffalo white not sound pretty much the same?

When I say puff I am really talking about blowing agent, just like you I will call it puff, it's exactly what it is and what it does so that's why I've always called it that.  It has always been used in some white ink formulas for different reasons, in poly inks to help with blocking dye migration, I just wish it wasn't in our super poly.  It's a recent issue for us so it's not like it's always been in the super poly white.  I am looking at 4 prints I did a few months ago with rutland super poly on 100% poly red and the deposit is not too thick, it's absolutely perfect really, no puff/blowing agent.  Now I have printed samples of the super poly that are unacceptable to me although I doubt any customers would have a problem with it. 

And I thought the Xenon white was called "horse" white not knowing the word m u s t a n g would be edited.  I don't think mu$-tang is a bad name, but horse...yes, that would be a terrible name for an ink.

I'll try and get a pic that will show the amount of puff I'm talking about.  I'm not sure a pic will do it justice but we can try.

[alan802]

You see in the first pic the amount of puff and the roughness of the print.  This shirt is a nightmare to print on and we've tried numerous mesh counts to get something smooth.  They are the 95% poly, 5% spandex ST700 for anyone who's interested and I hate printing on them.  A smooth print is not easy to achieve on this shirt so be advised.  We had a few test shirts to play with and this was one of them.  If you do print on this shirt, get a few extra to use for testing to get the fiber matte down you need.


This pic doesn't do the puff justice, and it's on a tight weave hoody, the sport tek F244, and not the usual 50/50 hoody we all are used to.  You can see the blowing agent is very noticeable, to me at least.  Although this print looked great from 2 feet away, up close you see the imperfections.  This pic is of a single stroke through a 123/55 and not PFP like I said earlier.  We ended up printing it differently with a PFP and not the single stroke like seen here.

[IntegrityShirts]

That through a 180 single hit PFP? That's a healthy puff lol. There has to be something up with your batch of ink, my NPT poly white didn't puff like that, yours the non-phthalate version?  I'd cut it in with a regular white and mix the piss out of it. Not sure I'd give up on the Rutland poly white, think you have an off-bucket.

[alan802]

Top print was a 150/48 single stroke, flash, single stroke on the white.  The bottom was printed through a 123/55 with one stroke.

I have the union ink here to test so after lunch I'll see what it's all about and post my thoughts.

Edited:  Gave wrong info about the bottom pic print.  We ended up printing it PFP through a 180/48 but I took a pic of the single stroke through the 123. 

[ebscreen]

One of the reasons I really like the Rutland Super Poly is its super smooth finish.
I'd say something got mixed up in the mix there Alan, which in itself is a ding
against the product.

[ZooCity]

I'd say something got mixed up in the mix there Alan, which in itself is a ding
against the product.

A big ding in my opinion.  I will never go back to an ink situation where every bucket is dramatically off from the last.  This chit is hard enough to do as it is without the ink changing on you constantly. 

I'm going to try the NP Street Fighter low bleed white that my rep dropped off just to be nice but, with multiple reports of formula changes, I'm not seriously interested in Rutland plastisol.  I'm in JBlue's camp- don't stress ink cost, get the best or what works best for you. 

[ebscreen]

Personally I haven't seen any inconsistency with Rutland from bucket to bucket, though I'm not timing flashes either.
Might be a shipping thing, which could affect any manufacturer. I know Rutland is southeast, but we're just north
of a major market for their products, so I'd assume it comes via truckload rather than UPS shipments sitting in freezing
warehouses over the weekend.

I use to love Quick, tried the SF, and while price is of little concern, the difference between the two was so minimal it did not justify 2X the cost.