Black Ink Fibrillation

[bulldog]

I got a job to print one color black front/back on Gildan 2000 Tan shirts. I thought no problem. I used a 225S (Newman @  24nm) screen and one hit it and through the dryer. Looked great.

Wash tested and I'm starting to get fibrillation on the first wash. Not crazy bad and I'm not sure what is "acceptable" but I'd rather have "none" without sacrificing the soft hand that I have achieved.

Any tips/tricks you guys have? Would you p/f/p the black? Drop the screen to a 150S or so? I'm doing this manually if that helps. The ink was a "soft black" from WM Plastics.

Thanks in advance.

Brandon

[jvanick]

225S with 2 strokes, or 150S... we never flash black.

in our shop we've found that the 225S just don't have enough mesh thickness to lay down enough ink to trap all the fibers

[Doug S]

I agree that 150s is the go to for a nice dark black with 1 stroke.  I've tried the 225 but after printing you can hold the shirt up and see light through even though it looked great while still on the pallet. 

[Rob Coleman]

On a shirt that will fibrillate badly, finding the balance between soft hand and no fibrillation is difficult - especially with the super high contrast of white fiber / black ink. 

If you have a bit of nylon ink catalyst (nylobond, hugger, IC 900, etc), you can try to add a bit.  It will harshen the hand, but will help in locking the fibers down.  If you had time, I would print swatches of maybe 2%, 4%, etc. cure and wash to see what is acceptable.

I will try to attache an article from a few years back that Rick Roth wrote in Printwear as well as another.

[bulldog]

Thanks to all for the input. I'll do some experimenting over the weekend. Rob, nice reads, thanks for sharing.

[ZooCity]

Experiment with a good WB Black.  Solve most of this issue on most shirts.  Our spot black WB stuggles just a little on some neon blends for whatever reason but beats out plastisol big time on all others.

I agree with dropping the mesh down, for big spot fill of black plasti on light shirts with no WOW printing in the mix go as low as you can on mesh count. 

Also, avoid the "super soft hand blacks", go with a black like the Wilflex Matte Black.  I find the difference in hand pretty negligible between a standard, high quality black plasti with a good pigment grind or whatever and a soft hand one but a big difference in performance over many washings.

[mimosatexas]

I'm also on a manual and everyone is right about using lower mesh.  Basically, use the absolute lowest mesh that will hold your detail when you want to get a nice solid dark on light print with little or no fibrillation post wash.  I would suggest against pfp usually as it takes longer, but also tends to make the ink shiny and have worse hand than just a thick one stroke print with a lower mesh.  I also find that for me hard flooding with the fastest and lightest push stroke I can while fully sheering the ink results in the best final print.  The ink will sit a little on top of the fibers and hold together better as a layer of ink vs getting jammed into the shirt and having fibers basically poking through it and breaking up the ink layer.