Printing Waterbase ink?

[Logoman]

When printing water base inks is the print rough until it is washed? Any input appreciated.

[jvanick]

it depends on the ink, and how much you are laying down...

we had rough issues with Rutland, even with adding their softener...  however, if we snapped them at the end of the dryer, they would get a bit softer.

Matsui on the other hand has been really good... if we lay down a ton (doublestroking), it may be a little brittle until washed, but overall with their softener product, it's been better than the Rutland inks ever were.

[Colin]

Define "rough".

All Waterbase inks have some hand before washing.

You can add softener - i.e. silicone to the inks when mixing for an initial softer hand, but it will not do a whole lot for you after washing.

[JBLUE]

The lower mesh you use the rougher it will feel. There is a nasty rumor that you have to use low mesh and saturate the crap out of a garment when printing water base inks. It is not the case. I seen where people say that the ink fades if they use too high a mesh count. That is not a problem of the higher mesh. You can still have perfect opacity when using a higher mesh. If your ink is cured properly you can lay the ink into about 30% of the shirt. You only need the top part of the substrate to be penetrated by the ink. Anything more and your just waisting ink and working the equipment to hard. We run between 180 and 230 for all our discharge work and it stays on the shirt better than most.

Some of your softness is affected by how much agent you use and the grind of the pigment. Cheap ink with a crappy grind and too much activator makes for a super rough pre-wash print.