printing on shammy's. what kind of ink do we need?

[blue moon]

as mentioned in the title, we have a customer looking to print on the shammys (that super absorbent material/cloth thing). I have no idea of the chemical composition of it and am worried if the plastisol would withstand the abuse of everyday use.

It sounds like they had some sublimated before. . .

Any thoughts, ideas?

pierre

[cbjamel]

How about water based? If not on dark. Soft hand feel.
Shane

[blue moon]

How about water based? If not on dark. Soft hand feel.
Shane

I am trying to find out, but my concern is that they will be used every day and waterbased ink might wash off. Also not sure if it would adhere to actual leather (if that's what they are made of).

pierre

[mk162]

are they really chamois? <-- and yes, that is how you spell it.

or are the the sham-wows?

Plastisol would render them useless for cars or anything that might scratch.  i would use a vinyl ink that soaks in to the material and give it no feel.  I use Nazdar Vinyl ink on coast guard jackets and it works really well.  I would play around with it.

waterbased might not hold up over time, but I don't know.

[Frog]

Some of these are "Micro Fiber". The good ones we have are 80/20 Poly and Nylon, and are more like thin towels than the really thin leather chamois

I like the idea if sublimation

[mk162]

we did some of the phony ones on our DTG, works great.

[blue moon]

OK, I got the product info. It is a blended microfiber. here's the link:
http://www.raglady.com/detail_MBMICRO25__137__microfiber_cloths_premium.html

any thoughts now?

pierre

[mk162]

i'll print them on our DTG for you.   with poly pretreat the ink will stick fine, as long as it's CMYK.

I would shy away from plastisol, unless these won't be used on anything that can scratch.

[Frog]

OK, I got the product info. It is a blended microfiber. here's the link:
http://www.raglady.com/detail_MBMICRO25__137__microfiber_cloths_premium.html

any thoughts now?

pierre

The Rag Lady actually says in the ad that you can screen print them.
Might be interesting to see what they would say, and with how much knowledge of our chemistry.

[Sbrem]

We have a swim coach who brings us those from time to time, and I believe we use a multi-purpose air dry, but I'm also pretty sure you can use a plastisol, printed thinly, maybe with some stretch additive.

Steve

[Colin]

I have done testing with waterbase inks and adding a fiber lock additive.

We found that 2-3 wash cycles brought a LOT of the fibers up and dulled the print if we did not add an additive.  Using the fiber lock additive held about 80% of, what would have come loose, in place.

Do some tests!