Need ideas how to fix this...

[TCT]

Ok so I was able to get some pics, but have not been able to test the ink the presses were tied up today and I didn't want to jinx the good planning and execution since it never seems to work together!    My brain is mush right now and I need to get out of here but I wanted to get these pics up. Below is a pic of the backs, Rutland discharge white plus, one of the shirts is washed and the other is out of the original folded dozen from when we boxed them. Can you tell which one has been washed? 


So as you can see there really isn't any issue with the white, but wait for the orange! Below are a few pics of the print on the one that has not been washed. The one where there is orange and white is where the two colors meet.






OK and now for the orange section of the washed one...



Now I am not too sure of what all I have pictures of there, but I am going to assume that for some reason the orange did not bond to the threads. If someone smarter than me(not all that hard) cares to chime in with exactly the class is looking at that would be awesome!

So for tomorrow I plan on
-Testing that same bucket of orange on 100% cotton. Activated 5%
-Testing the same orange from the 100% cotton shirt on one of the bad 50/50 T's
-Rolling or printing fixer over the image.(yes this is probably a poor idea and a stretch but I am willing to gamble on it if it saves me $2K)

Also I called TSC and the batch of good T's we printed also came from Nicaragua...

[sqslabs]

Great photos man!

Alright, from what I understand of discharge ink, and I'm finding out quickly that I know less than I thought, it needs to penetrate the thread in order to set properly.  This has always been how I have treated it, which is why I've always required 100% cotton shirts when printing with it.  I apply the same rules to waterbased ink.

Cotton is a natural fiber, and acts like a sponge, absorbing the ink.  Polyester is a synthetic, non porous thread, so the discharge sits on top of it and doesn't penetrate.  Both can look great once printed, but when washed, the ink falls off the poly.  This is my understanding, and would make sense in this case.  Except for the white.

And this is where I get confused.  I've never seen a discharge white print hold like that on a blend, and didn't think it was even possible without some sort of bonding additive either added to the ink, or some sort of pretreatment to the shirt.  Even on a 90/10, using Matsui inks I've always seen 10% less brightness on the final product over a cotton shirt.  Now obviously I'm a bit behind the times on this, as a bunch of people on this forum seem to be discharging 50/50's and getting great results, even after a wash.  So have the inks changed?  Or are the shirt manufacturers doing something different in order to make their blends dischargeable?  In this case, it looks like the white ink is bonding to the polyester fibers, but the orange did not.  Which goes against everything I thought I knew about discharge ink.   

Anyways, not trying to threadjack, and apologies if its coming off that way.  Just trying to understand what exactly is going on here. 

[TCT]

I always had trouble with Matsui white inks. That was probably 3 years or so ago, but I could never get them to look right. D-White was better, and for us the Rutland white discharge worked even better. We are finishing up our last 5gal of the Rutland though, we tested a gal of the Union white discharge(same owner both companies) and it is the same damn thing but way cheaper!

[Mr Tees!!]

...looks pretty clear to me, from these pics, that you have a good case for bad ink here. You can see some areas where the the orange is embedded closer to the core of the threads, so penetration isn't the issue. And since the white cured properly, the dryer settings should be correct. Looks like only the orange didn't cure as it should have.

...I'd be calling the manufacturer, If I had gone thru all the trouble and testing that you have here. Of course, The whole "perform wash test before running production" caveat will probably be levied on you here. Always a loophole.

[Binkspot]

I have always been told by reps and I could have been given misleading info or just heard it wrong but like said above a discharge ink esentaly removes the dye from the thread and replaces it with another pigment. Please correct me if this is wrong or incomplete. That being said the poly will not discharge and take the new pigment. Maybe just maybe the white has a binder that will adhear the white pigment to poly fibers and the orange does not. So in this case the orange will wash right off the poly but was able to penetrate enough into the cotton to hold in those threads. But the white stays because it is basically glued to the fibers it can not penetrate.

Have you sent this to CCI? They have some great support people. We have used the fluro orange on straight cotton with great results.

Sorry it's at your expense but this could turn into a very informative post.

[TCT]

Have you sent this to CCI? They have some great support people.

Who do you talk to!? Do you have any names? I always seem to get minimal help from them at best. A lot of contradicting answers. what ever happened to the CCI guy that used to be on the boards?


Well it will be good if this post serves as a learning tool for others down the line. Let's do this, if you have read this far please send me $4, PM me for my address:D

I'll continue to update with pics tomorrow!

[brandon]

Hey,

Not sure if I missed the info in any of the postings but are you running gas or electric? Just curious. We do 50/50's all the time (mostly Gildan and Anvil) and sometimes no matter what there is a situation. However, we did a run with those shirts last week and I attached a before and after multiple washing pictures. They are cropped because they are a contract job but you can see the colors. They look slightly different due to the pics taken during the day and night but in person they look the same. Not to say everything is perfect all the time. We did a 700+ three color discharge job on 50/50 Anvil's last week and about 80 of them came out different from the rest. Same lot, factory, all that. Bummer! But the customer is great because they despise plastisol.

[ZooCity]

Alex, that is seriously rough.  It looks like a problem with the Orange ink.  It's barely encapsulating anything in those louped pics, whether cotton or poly thread.  I would send the batch# in to them asap and save the bucket if they want to test the actual.  If I manufactured that ink I'd be upset and very concerned seeing as your white is perfectly fine and penetration looks adequate under the loupe. 

Binkspot may have nailed it with the comment on binder, seems like that could have been out of whack on this Orange.

[Frog]

With discharge inks becoming the rage, and sometimes seemingly coming out faster than white plastisols, stories like this make me wonder if you guys aren't in that "everyman beta user" position we often seem to accept with hardware and software.

[TCT]

Sorry guys, today was, um, well, a bit extreme. There was no way I was getting anything done post lunch. Blink got me some contact info for CCI and I'm gonna give then a call tomorrow. I keep putting off re ordering the shirts fooling myself they can be fixed, but I know the disappointing facts

I will TRY to get some more louped pics of the testing.

Side note- note no one has PM'd me for a address where they can send their $4

[ZooCity]

With discharge inks becoming the rage, and sometimes seemingly coming out faster than white plastisols, stories like this make me wonder if you guys aren't in that "everyman beta user" position we often seem to accept with hardware and software.

I believe we are.  Many DC/WB inks are not really tested before being sold.  A lot of the complaint about getting differing or contradictory recommendations on use from a mfg is actually due to the fact the mfg simply doesn't know as they have not thoroughly tested.  This is not a knock on any one brand, both of the ones brought up in this thread have required us to do our own in house testing and we have saved major issues from occurring by not trusting a data sheet or a rep's advice and actually testing the damn stuff.  It's scary how flippy floppy things can be in reality.  Just one example from our camp- a "fixative" designed to ensure washfastness if running at faster dryer speeds that actually destroys certain ink's ability to stay on the garment, literally the opposite effect.  That one almost went into all the ink for 15k pcs we ran last month but it didn't because we're freaking paranoid and we thoroughly tested pre-flight.

To maybe squeeze some lemonade out of a thread based on a terrible situation- I would love to know how exactly poly threads get discharged and why.  Like many here we have been very successful in discharging blends and they are wash fast but I honestly don't know the technical side of why this works.  My guess is the DC ink has adequate ability to encapsulate the poly, yielding a nice even print across the blend even though the poly fibers didn't discharge fully like the cotton, essentially behaving like a WB ink on the poly thread and a DC ink on the cotton.  Thoughts?

[TCT]

It took me a minute but I found the CCI guy that posted on the boards a while back. Just sent him a PM about this thread. Hopefully he gets email notifications for PM's and he can lend some insight. I know if I talk to someone at CCI tomorrow and try to explain it all here there is a good chance it will be a Tim Taylor and Wilson(anyone remember Home Improvement) situation....

[TCT]

Sorry Brandon, I spaced on your question, dryer is gas.

Not that I'm trying to brag here, but aside from this blunder we have only had maybe 3 discharge jobs with a considerable issue. One was a week or two ago(I posted about it) and was really my fault for trying to rush through something and assuming it would work without taking the time to think it through.
Anyway guess what I am getting at is this wasn't our first time at the rodeo! We did nothing different than we have done on hundreds of other discharge jobs.

[Screened Gear]

TCT if it anything but bad ink I will send you the $4.

[TCT]

Just got off the phone with 2 CCI reps, so lets hope we get some good insight here soon!