Best way to compare white inks side by side

[Rob Coleman]

He said dry pigment.

That is not dispersed pigment.  Dispersed pigment is what you will see in a pigment mixing system.  Typically dry pigment is mixed with a plasticiser and the percent of dry pigment to plasticiser will very greatly.

As for white pigment being a third of the ink.  That is by weight, not volume.  Titanium Dioxide (TiO2) is really heavy.

As for going non Phthalate hurting rheology:  Didn't happen to every ink company.

What Colin said.  He is wise! 

[Robert Clark]

  I think MY biggest take away from this thread is everybody test, prints, and operates differently.  Which I think everybody would agree on. We here at OSI will always do what works best for us. Rocky does take great pride in our product, as I am sure each and everyone of you take great pride in your profession. But this entire thread was to just share one of our testing procedures.

  I believe the purpose for these forums are to learn, educate and share thought and Ideals. When we stare at the same four walls day in and day out we can sometimes get tunnel vision. Every company does something great. But if we take a little bit of all these great ideals and roll it in to what works best for you, and then apply it to your daily operations, you just made your shop better !

 As the old saying goes ..

" If you always do what you always did, your always going to get what you always got ! "

Just my thoughts..

Thanks guys 

   

[Rocky Bihl]

Amazing, I received a shirt from a  pretty large customer who was testing multiple white inks one of them ours. He printed a logo about 10 times on the same shirt each time with a different ink. He labeled every ink on the shirt and was wondering why his test prints did not look like ours. He had no idea which ink was printed first and which one was last. As everyone here knows, if you run a print through a dryer set at 320F 10 times on a 50/50 or 100 percent poly shirt,,,, doesn't matter what ink it is it aint gonna look good. Now every thread here (including my original post) list far better ways to compare inks than the method mentioned above,,, Went south quickly after that!

[alan802]

I do agree with some in that we've always needed AT LEAST a gallon of ink and run it on jobs to know what it can do, but I can get a lot from the test Rocky suggested.  I test for bleed resistance all the time but I'm usually not comparing two inks at the same time, normally it's just one being tested, but I intend on doing a version of this test with some of the different mixes of ink that I come up with.  It won't take the place of running the ink but I know it can help me.  Whether or not it can help others is up to them, but I wouldn't totally discount it because of some of the reasons suggested.  Take those suggestions into account, there is much validity there, but not so much to render that test useless...in my opinion. 

I've tested more white inks than most, but it's not because we can't find one that works.  I can get a one-hit white with the SF2 that performed so poorly for the few months we used it, or the high priced Wilflex stuff many on here use.  I try so many white inks simply because we want to find THE BEST.  We print fast (because it matters HERE), we print with so little pressure that sometimes we have to be careful because our choppers don't chop all the way, so the white ink I like has to be able to perform up to those expectations.  I'm not going to lower our standards, I'm not going to lower our print speeds because then our prints wouldn't be smooth, we'd likely have to use the roller squeegee more often, and I'm certainly not going to print with more pressure.  There are certain fundamentals of printing plastisol that we live by here and the reason we do the things we do, use the tools we use, is simply to make sure the ink is sitting on top of the substrate and not in it.  That's it.  If you're using a 230/48 for your base, no way that ink is going to go through that mesh count without using a lot of pressure.  By "a lot" of pressure I mean the amount of pressure it takes to shear the ink while keeping the ink from going into the shirt.  It's physics, it's math, 1+1=2 and there is nothing that is going to change that.  But still shops fight that all the time and try to convince others that they can somehow get 1+1=3. 

Right now we are using River City's Quick Flash white, 60%, and Rutland Tidy white at 40%.  It's short, but not so short that it climbs.  It shears at fast print speeds, it's very opaque, fiber matte down is good, not great.  Bleed resistance is good for 50/50 but I wouldn't trust it for the bad bleeders.  We use a ton of poly ink these days and OSI Production white is our choice.  Price isn't ridiculous like you see with other brands' high end poly white, it is very easy to handle and it prints more like a cotton white than any other poly white I've tested, and I've tested a lot of them.  OSI does have some very expensive poly whites, which perform so much better than anything else I've ever tried, but the price/performance ratio is just too far off and Production white performs so good.  It has been at least 6 months since I've tested another brand of poly white, so it may be time to go through that so I can stay on top of this ever-changing industry.

I don't have the knowledge to debate a lot of the points being argued here by a few guys, but I do know which brands perform under our conditions, up to our standards and if I had to only use one brand of ink for white, I know who it would be.  When it comes to the price/performance ratio there are only a few ink makers I feel that are a cut above, and most of the popular brands have very similar products and you'd have a hell of a time telling them apart.  You would have no problem finding the OSI inks if they were all in unmarked buckets and that doesn't mean they are great by itself, but in addition to being different, they are also very good at what they do.   

[tonypep]

Whats white plastisol?

[pwalsh]

Whats white plastisol?

Some Words of Wisdom from "The Water Boy!"

Take care mate.

[Rob Coleman]

Whats white plastisol?

Haha!  Nice Tony!  I was waiting for that!   

I love me some waterbase too!  Just wish I could work the magic with it you do everyday! 

[alan802]

Speaking of WB/DC, we finally had a customer that wanted to do it on their next job so we will be doing our first DC job since 2014.  We've done somewhere around 800 jobs in between DC jobs.

[Screened Gear]

Speaking of WB/DC, we finally had a customer that wanted to do it on their next job so we will be doing our first DC job since 2014.  We've done somewhere around 800 jobs in between DC jobs.

That's interesting. If I didn't tell my customers about discharge they wouldn't want it. After they get a job done with it they want it every time. Except one client. He had a big yellow circle on the front of a black shirts. We printed it with discharge because....  Well the next order was done with plastisol. The reason. When he sweats you can see the sweat in the yellow design area really easy. First, and only,  customer I have ever had say they don't want discharge after they had a job done with it.

[jvanick]

Nobody in our area does discharge printing, so people are more used to the bright plasticy plastisol prints... it is taking a lot to educate our customers.

Back on track with the original posts . We ordered in a bucket of osi production white and will be testing it tomorrow head to head with wilflex quick white. 

[tonypep]

We are at the point where we don't offer plastisol period. Sorry ...thread derailing

[Rob Coleman]

Back on track with the original posts . We ordered in a bucket of osi production white and will be testing it tomorrow head to head with wilflex quick white.

Let us know your results.  Based upon reading the TDS for each, looks like the Production White might have better bleed resist as they good BR for poly/cotton blends as well as 100% poly.  Quick on the other hand is only recommended for poly/cotton blends.

Also check out the flash properties - time/temp/tack.  Interested in the results.  Quick states a little lower flash at 220 versus 240-260.  I realize these are just numbers in a TDS, which is why I am curious.  Lastly, interested in fine mesh highlight if you look at that -- maybe 280-305?

Thanks!

[mimosatexas]

I've only had one customer decide to move away from discharge as well, and it was recent.  His first order, which I used discharge on, happened to be re-dyes, and he didn't want to risk it again.  Doesn't really matter to me which ink people prefer, but I have had the same experience that those who order it once basically always want it again.  I try to educate them when it comes to certain shirt colors and blends not working well etc. and they all have been open to changing designs accordingly or accepting plastisol just when necessary.  I basically try to educate people before a job on what options there are and why I would use a particular ink or process for a particular job.  Rarely do clients care that much as long as the finished product is good quality.

I guess I do always kind of hate putting huge plastisol prints on high quality blanks, but sometimes you just have to do what works best with the blend/dye color.

[alan802]

On the production white flash time, it's the fastest flashing white I've ever used.  It blocks bleed really well, has some puff in it but it's not as bad as the Rutland Super Poly, not even close to that.  One of the biggest factors I look at when choosing a white is flash time, it's right up there with body, viscosity and taste .  If a white had superior opacity, fiber matte down and didn't climb, but had a long flash time I'd have to pass on it.  I'd take an ink that wasn't as good in some areas if it had fast flash times.  Having an ink that flashes quickly helps with too many other things after the flash that I think are probably overlooked by many.

[Robert Clark]

Thanks for the feedback Alan ..