Waterbased washout

[ericheartsu]

I'm trying to figure out what happened here. Client just sent over a picture of a shirt we dropped off with them on Friday.

Printed on Canvas 3001 deep heather, and 3001 Teal, with the following screens and inks:

160, DCUB (under white and purple only!)
Flash
225, Green Galaxy Black WB
135, Green Galaxy Purple WB
Flash
110, Green Galaxy White

Cured at 08 belt speed, and 330, on a sprint international gas dryer.

What puzzles me is that the purple is undercured, but it also is showing no signs of the DCUB.

Any ideas as to what happened?

[Colin]

First thought:  Issues with the purple ink/chemistry.

But the whole print looks like it is having some cure/durability issues.

Did you do a discharge test on the garment before production?  How did it look?

Does this garment perhaps have a heavy silcone/chemical softness on the fabric?

Is this same issue happening across all the garment sizes/colors?

[ericheartsu]

First thought:  Issues with the purple ink/chemistry.

But the whole print looks like it is having some cure/durability issues.

Did you do a discharge test on the garment before production?  How did it look?

Does this garment perhaps have a heavy silcone/chemical softness on the fabric?

Is this same issue happening across all the garment sizes/colors?

we've printed on this style of shirt before with no issue. In fact the back print, which i've included a picture of, looks fine. Printed through the same mesh counts to match the front, and cured the same way!

I do agree that the whole print is having an issue. I'm trying to figure out what changed though.

[jamiem]

Couple of questions.  How many feet of heat is your dryer, and does green galaxy offer any sort of fixers with their system?

[mimosatexas]

Is that back print DCUBed?  It doesnt look like it from the photo, though the photo is kind of small.  Front print does look undercured for whatever reason (or there is some other issue with the ink or the shirt itself).  It looks like even some parts of the black which arent underbased are coming off the shirt.

[ericheartsu]

Is that back print DCUBed?  It doesnt look like it from the photo, though the photo is kind of small.  Front print does look undercured for whatever reason (or there is some other issue with the ink or the shirt itself).  It looks like even some parts of the black which arent underbased are coming off the shirt.

Yep,back is the same inks as the front!

[ericheartsu]

Couple of questions.  How many feet of heat is your dryer, and does green galaxy offer any sort of fixers with their system?

I believe it's a standard 8 ft chamber....but i'll double check.

We used the ink straight from the bucket, so even if they had a fixer (i think we have a matsui one as well), we didn't use it this time.

[mimosatexas]

I will say, I always use the fixer, but I only have 6 ft of heat (with forced air fortunately).

[IntegrityShirts]

Did you print the front first? A lot of times I slow the belt down for the front print because the shirts are holding ambient moisture, then for the back print I'll pick the belt speed back up because they're still hot and dry from the first trip down the dryer.

The other thing is that seems like a lot of saturation of the 3001 to deal with. Full DC underbase and then mashing in the waterbased color on top. Doesn't that wash out the color? I have never had luck with layering WB over a DCUB without it resulting in a pastel washed out color, but your color on the back looks good. I'm just playing the Tony card where he'd say DC ALL the ink colors!

[ericheartsu]

back first, then the fronts. So i'm wondering if that's why the backs look good, as they had double dryer time.

We haven't had any issues with this set up before. The Green Galaxy are an HSA ink as well, so they are a little bit thicker than normal waterbased ink.

[Croft]

started to quick after lunch or smoke break and dryer wasn't up to heat?  left a door open near dryer on a windy day.

[ericheartsu]

started to quick after lunch or smoke break and dryer wasn't up to heat?  left a door open near dryer on a windy day.

wish this was the case, but this was the last print of the day, on a gas dryer, that head easily 2 dozen testers before the production was started.

[Colin]

Have you done a wash test on any of the test prints?

Are all the shirts washing the same way?

[ericheartsu]

Have you done a wash test on any of the test prints?

Are all the shirts washing the same way?

doing this today. Client is doing the same for us.

my only concern on the test prints is that they aren't on the Heathered shirts

[jamiem]

Heather grey shirts seem to be very hard to cure WB on.  Looks like you had about 1 min of dwell time in the oven.  I believe most WB manufacturers recommend at the minimum 2 minutes of dwell time, we mostly use 3.  There is a huge difference in durability between 1 and 3 minutes.