Ink Recommendations?

[Prince Art]

Due to past limitations on our part, we've shied away from waterbase & discharge printing. (We've gotten pretty good at soft-hand plastisol, but that's not always the best trade-off.)

Thankfully, things are changing. I've read through quite a few articles, watched videos to get up to speed on what we'll need to be prepared for. (And I do have a tiny bit of past experience.) So, my question is simple: What's your recommendation for the best ink line to start with?

We're currently a manual shop. (Beginning to take our first serious looks at changing that, too.)

A few criteria I'm looking for:
-Ease of use
-Color mixing system available
-If there's any difference in feel/hand, I need to know that, too.
-Availability (We're in FL; close-ish distributor would be nice.)

Bonus: If any company offers full CPSIA compliance documentation (CPCs + test results) so that we could use this on kids garments, that would be awesome. (Is this even possible with discharge? Has to be with WB, right?)

[mimosatexas]

Manual shop here too.  Have tested a bunch of options for discharge (not many HSA or non-discharge waterbased options though, but those jobs are less frequent and the differences in inks aren't as stark).

I would say CCI is the "best" out of what I have tested.  They are not objectively the best in every category, but overall I would rank them that way.  Their discharge is bright, creamy, has decent screen open time, easy to mix, well priced, etc.

A few things specific thoughts (I have not tested every offering from every manufacturer):
-The sericol flo colors are the best I have tested.  CCI's are just OK.  Matsui's suck and smell like dead fish.
-Matsui has the brightest white, but it also has terrible issues with drying and gumming up in the screen, smells like crap, and will cottage cheese on you if not super fresh.  CCI D-white is super easy to work with and still plenty bright most of the time.  Magna white is too runny and not very bright. Sericol white isn't bright enough either, but easy to work with.  Some people love the rutland white, but I have not tested it.
-sericol rfu mixing system has issues with brightness (matching pantones is a nightmare due to everything being pale and needing boosting). Matsui is super bright, but has issues with pigment clumping and dry-in. Have not tested the CCI RFU system, but their unconcentrated pigment system is nice.
-Matsui has lots of awesome additives that work well with the other systems in my experience (fixers, softeners, penetrants, etc).
-Matsui Metallic base is awesome and easy to tint.
-Virus is supposed to have the best foil adhesive, though I have not tested it.

My advice is to get samples of each white and use whichever one you like the most for the price and have the easiest access to when you need some in a pinch.  Then test out the color matching and ease of use of the mixing systems and pick whichever one of those you like the most.  Then when a job calls for it, test out the more specialized stuff like the flo colors, metallics, etc.  Pick up some of the Matsui additives and add those in as well (there are lots of threads discussing those).

Brandon, Zoocity, and tonypep have lots of waterbased knowledge and searching through their posts alone will help you a lot.  There are plenty of other people who do lots of waterbased printing as well who can help (DannyG, jvanick, pierre, and tons I am not thinking of).

[Shirt Lord]

CCI is good. I've heard great things about their T-Charge system. The bases are easy to adapt to other pigment systems as well.

Rutland has a good system that I've used for years. Their color matching is easy and consistent for around 95% of the PMS book. When you mix the colors, do the pigments first, stir them up to get your PMS match, THEN add the base. Some formulas are just a touch off and it is much easier to adjust before you add the base.

When you move off of manual and go automatic for long runs, I highly suggest looking into the Wilflex Oasis line. The bases work well with every other manufacturer's pigments that I've tested, and they don't dry up easily. I tested their base by putting a fan on high over the screen and going to lunch. I came back, printed 6 test strokes to clear and then continued the job right after like there was no issue at all. So far it looks to be the Ferrari of WB ink systems, but the diversity of the 3 different bases and uses makes the learning curve a little steep, even for some discharge pros. Once you get the hang of it though, it's nearly unstoppable. You can even print WB on polyester with their Neutral Base. Super breathable and no dye migration issues.

[Atownsend]

We are mainly plastisol printers, but when we do use discharge, we use Matsui. Only because it's the only one I have experience with. Pantone matching is 90-95% accurate about 60-70% of the time. But this is discharge / WB, so I don't think you can expect it to be perfect. Usually we use less black than the formula calls for. I find reds particularly difficult to match. It is hard to get good red... perhaps someone has a formula they want to share. They have downloadable mixing software for PC, online for mac. We have an electric dryer, so we use fixer F and a bit of retarder in the mix as well.

[RICK STEFANICK]

We use the CCI  D-white but also like the rutland white plus. The printers like the consistancy of the d-white better so moving forward thats the product. we do run more 70/90/70's now with the d-white. as far as base we use D-base which works great with the rutland WB pigments. sericol flou. colors here also, they are the best on the market. bought 5 of the magna base  but had to make black as it did not work well with the rutland pigments..

[ZooCity]

CCI is good. I've heard great things about their T-Charge system. The bases are easy to adapt to other pigment systems as well.

Rutland has a good system that I've used for years. Their color matching is easy and consistent for around 95% of the PMS book. When you mix the colors, do the pigments first, stir them up to get your PMS match, THEN add the base. Some formulas are just a touch off and it is much easier to adjust before you add the base.

When you move off of manual and go automatic for long runs, I highly suggest looking into the Wilflex Oasis line. The bases work well with every other manufacturer's pigments that I've tested, and they don't dry up easily. I tested their base by putting a fan on high over the screen and going to lunch. I came back, printed 6 test strokes to clear and then continued the job right after like there was no issue at all. So far it looks to be the Ferrari of WB ink systems, but the diversity of the 3 different bases and uses makes the learning curve a little steep, even for some discharge pros. Once you get the hang of it though, it's nearly unstoppable. You can even print WB on polyester with their Neutral Base. Super breathable and no dye migration issues.

We're Rutland WB99 here but I looked hard at Oasis years ago when we were settling on a WB PC system.  They just didn't have the availability for the PCs at the time.   Bummer because I love using their IMS system.  Good to hear the bases are performing with WB99 pigs, will order some up to try.  What you described in your test sounds fantastic.  We need all the help we can get in our mostly arid environment here.

To the OP. Mimosa summed it up.   You'll ultimately settle on a mix of different brands in your shop to suit your needs.  WB/DC inks are mostly (I say mostly, not completely) interchangeable between systems and brands.

[redwoodtees]

...When you move off of manual and go automatic for long runs, I highly suggest looking into the Wilflex Oasis line.

Newbie here.. Would the Wilflex Oasis inks be a bad choice for a manual press? I would think open time would be as important or more on a manual press, since things are moving more slowly.

[mimosatexas]

Not familiar with the Oasis inks, but open time is hugely important for manual.  The consistency of the ink is also important though, so while one ink may have great open time, it might also be too runny for manual printing as gravity will pull the ink through the mesh on larger color count jobs while you are printing subsequent colors (say 30-45 seconds between strokes on each screen for something like a 6 color design).  This happens even when using 280 mesh in my experience, which causes its own issues with dry-in etc.  Lots of balancing necessary with waterbased inks.

Also, though it has little to do with the brand of ink, S-mesh is AMAZING for waterbased printing as it helps immensely with dry-in in my experience, and even when you do get a little you can force ink through with a little extra pressure on the flood or print stroke and get back to normal quickly.

[Homer]

Sericol is idiot proof...ask me how I know 

BUT it's not that easy to get.... CCI is next in line and now they have a full RFU system if needed...we use cci pigs and have moved on from the rfu but damn is it ever easy. open the lid and go! I would look at CCI and then get some Sericol for the reds, because they are that good.

[Prince Art]

I just have to say, I love this forum. I really appreciate the insights you guys share. It helps so much! So, thank you, one and all.

@Mimosa: thanks for the detailed rundown! Lot of good info in there. I will be adding to my notes.

@Shirt Lord: Is mimosa correct? Would the viscosity of Oasis inks be an issue on the manual? Because your fan experiment pushes away one of my big reasons to avoid WB - in a 1-printer shop, you've got to be able to take a break on long runs!

To everyone who mentioned it, CCI was indeed a front runner already, so it might be my starting point.

Question about shirts: I've seen some spec sheets for some WB inks (including one from CCI, maybe) that say they're formulated for 100% cotton. How accurate is this? The first real run I plan to do with WB is triblend. Any special considerations there? It's a very basic black-only print. (I like to keep it simple when I say yes to something I haven't done before.) And again, this just WB, I'm not tackling what will & won't discharge. In fact, I expect much of the WB we'll do will likely be on fashion blends, so if you've got more advice, I'm all ears.

[Homer]

for that job, I would recommend the CCI spot black, it smell like cherries!!

we can tell you what works and what doesn't all day long but until you drop it in your screen, it's all just personal preference.. Buy some and give it a shot!

[mimosatexas]

Black will pretty much work on anything with cotton in it, and any brand should be fine (even shitty speedball black honestly...).  For waterbased (not discharge) if you want to print on blends or cotton colors that do not discharge (royal, red, purple, kelly green, etc) you will likely need some kind of binder and will need to use HSA or higher opacity inks.  Others who do that style of printing more than me will be able to offer better advice on that front.  Otherwise, any time you are printing on 100% cotton or certain very specific blends (like a handful of colors in specific styles from Next Level) and you want a bright solid print, discharge is your ideal ink.  Otherwise, standard waterbased (not HSA) will look vintage or faded at best and may not even show up (say you are printing yellow on black for example).

[ZooCity]

CCI Spot Black is our WB Black of choice as it performed best over the widest variety of fabrics, including tri blends.  Costs more than other black inks, some of which can be had for very cheap and work fine for cotton applications but nice to only stock one WB Black.

Another option would be a quality HSA Black.

[Maff]

We switched over to GG Fusion Mixing system earlier this year. We've been very happy with it's eas of use, color mixing, and finished hand,  though we have learned to work with it, and adjust it in ways that fit us best. I believe it is CPSIA compliant. We are also a manual shop. 

Coming from Matsui PC system, our biggest struggles were dealing with dried  bits of pigs in the ink and in our screens, difficulty's in mixing colors and in making accurate consistent small batches of ink... the tiniest bits over or under mixing the pigs seemed to through the final color way off. And PMS  mixing formulas seemed to never be even close and constantly spending a ton if time fighting with mixing colors. With that said, the printed end results were usually great and that's why we sticked with it for so many years. But we had enough and decided to move on...

The GG pigments are what I was really drawn to, they are not as concentrated like other systems. You can max them out up to 25%, though I've never gone that far.  The pigments have the consistency of ketchup from a pointy squeeze bottle. This makes them very easy to work with and a bit more forgiving. They have also not yet shown any signs of drying out.

The GG mixing system formulas don't always hit right on and tend to add a lot of white pigment ( which is a cureable pigment)  which I find to dull out some of the colors in the middle of the book. So we add white last in sparing amounts, and often not at all.  I often have to make my own judgment calls adjusting the formulas, but they are easy to adjsut, so it's usually not much of a problem. They also have separate cureable booster color inks to add more punch to some colors. We've also been using more opaque base in our mixes, but surprisingly this hasn't effected the finished painted hand much at all. 

On press they print very nice, manually, and stay open well without the use of retarder. We haven't done much layering yet with white a base, but in a few orders it worked great. And wash results have stayed nice and bright.

For Discharge we have stayed with Matsui super 75 for our white discharge.  But for colors we switched to Sericol Texcharge and have been mostly happy with them, but yes some colors are a but dull, weve been experimenting with boosting them in a few different ways.

[Shirt Lord]

@Shirt Lord: Is mimosa correct? Would the viscosity of Oasis inks be an issue on the manual? Because your fan experiment pushes away one of my big reasons to avoid WB - in a 1-printer shop, you've got to be able to take a break on long runs!

It depends on what base you put it in. If you use the Hydrosoft base, which is only for light garments, then it may be a touch runny. The Discharge and Neutral Bases aren't really runny at all. Just don't put a gallon of ink in the screen and you'll be fine. Adjust your springs if you need to so that the frame isn't at an insane angle.