Discharge Disaster

[Mystery]

Had some tees come back from the customer today.
Never seen anything like it.
Printed 5 plastisol colours on top of a discharge base. (CCI U-Base)
After a wash the plastisol is coming away from the base. Flaking and peeling.
I think the Discharge ink is to blame. (Probably past it's use by date)
Has anyone encountered a problem like this before?

[Dottonedan]

Sometimes a picture of the issue can help.

[Sbrem]

Sometimes a picture of the issue can help.

Too much white pigment in the discharge base is a common problem, we had a similar issue and that was the fix... You might be able to find that conversation with the search tool...

Steve

[TCT]

I agree with Steve.

Sucky situation man!

Sent from my LG-H918 using Tapatalk

[lrsbranding]

I had the same problem when I tried CCI U-Base. I summed it up to improper curing. I made a test shirt where I printed a small logo, ran it thru the dryer, printed it again just above the previous print, ran it thru the dryer then printed once more above them. Ran thru dryer. The first print had 3 cures the second had 2 cures and the last had 1. After 3 washes the first print with 3 cures held up fine. The other 2 flaked and chipped. I use a Vastex EconoRed 1 dryer and can slow it down to about 2 mins cure but since it's not the ideal discharge/waterbase dryer I presumed that was the problem. Never tried it again since curing 3 times for 2 minutes each is crazy. I wonder if heat pressing the shirts will fix the problem? I know straight plastisol works great under a heat press. I don't know about discharge. Once it's dry is it too late to recure?

[Maxie]

I would guess under curing.
If they haven't washed all the shirts get they back and run them through the oven again.

[Frog]

If you do run them through again, I suggest that turn them inside out

[RICK STEFANICK]

I think lightly flashing the d- base would solve your problem in the future. Also never go over 20 percent white in the base if any. Then obviously run a highlight white to not be tempted to get it with one white. We have almost stopped running discharge bases and run straight up discharge colors to avoid the curing issues.

[mk162]

FYI, you can heat press them and try to drive the plasti into the fibers better.  We had this problem when we used too much white pigment.  They passed both our scratch tests and wash tests after pressing for 15 seconds at 330.

[Maxie]

Why turn then inside out?
Water based cures very differently to Plastisol.     The water first has to evorate so that the base can get to the right temp, only the does the curing start.      I use a water base that needs a 5 minute dryer time, I usually run two minutes and then put the shirt through the oven again, this allows us to print faster.
It all depends on the binder used, I've tried binders that dry cure faster but they also tend to dry faster in the screen.     Bayer used to make a base that air cured but they stopped because it was carcinogenic.
One of the problems with curing water base is that you need a lot of hot air circulation, if you are using a oven with infra red panels you ar going to have a hard time curing water base.

[Frog]

Why turn then inside out?

If the discharge ink is not fully cured, and now covered with plastisol, I figure that it will be even tougher now to complete the cure in the standard orientation.
This was actually a trick used by folks with smaller dryers that didn't really meet the standard,  to cure/dry waterbased and discharge in general. Twice through, with the second pass inside-out.

[RICK STEFANICK]

Andy your exactly right, it is a way to get the water out of the discharge underbase. It was a trick a lot of guys used that did not have forced air dryers even running straight up discharge. seriously though, It seems this topic comes up regularly so just flash the base and problem solved. I realize some are trying to avoid flashing and that's the reason to choose the discharge base but we did it to achieve optimal hand so we flash. just sayin

[Frog]

Hey Rick, us old dogs did learn some old tricks.

[Maxie]

Did you never have a problem of the plastisol sticking to the inside of the shirt?
There have been posts about plastisol curing times changing due to humidity or moisture in the garment.
With discharge we print water onto the shirt (discharge base)  and then plastisol, the plastisol cannot bind to the garment until all the water has been removed.     I think what will happen if you cure in a hot oven for not enough time, the plastisol will bind to itself and form a sheet but not bind to the cotton.     This will then come off in pieces in the wash.    With a short, infra red oven I would definitely give a long flash but also put a fan after the flash to remove more moisture, try and get the shirt dry before printing the plastisol.

[Mystery]

Thanks for all the feedback. I've been printing tees for 25+ years and I'm still not sure what has gone wrong here. I must admit all of the most baffling problems over the years have been caused by Discharge printing. Love the results when things go well but is it really worth the hassle?

O.K. Some more details. Flashed the discharge base and printed Wllflex MX Pantone colours on top, through an M+R Sprint 2000 HO dryer. It's a proper dryer.

A comment was made during set up regarding the CCI U-Base which is why my initial thoughts were the ink was bad. It wasn't mixing very well and almost looked "separated" or "oily". Has anyone experienced this? It printed O.K though and discharged well enough on the press. The print looked awesome.

When the customer complained about washing issues we Ubered the stock straight back. My hope was they were under cured so I cranked up the heat and slowed the belt. Put them back through and gave them a heatptress for good measure. After a wash my heart sunk as the plastisol (only in a certain area) was coming away from the base. Did the same again but with a 25 second heat press and more pressure. In the washing machine now.............
Will let you know how it goes and post some photos if I get time.

Fun and games.