Changing to waterbased...

[Joshua]

Morning, everyone!

I'm at a decent sized shop (4 M&R sportsmans, 4 diamondbacks, and 4 sprint 3000 dryers) and have been tasked with mapping out the possibility of a change from plastisol to WB.  I have some experience with WB, but am by no means an expert.  I have come up with a list of what (I believe) we will need to enact the change and was hoping for some feedback.

First would be the "relearning" for the guys on the floor.  Not leaving the screens with ink in them, not stepping away, upping their speeds, proper curing, proper mixing of inks and discharge, etc.  This shouldn't be too bad since we've got a pretty solid crew around here.

Next would be the necessary equipment.  Scales for measuring the discharge agent, emulsion that can handle the new inks, smaller buckets (quart size?) for mixing.

Last would be any improvements (if needed) to the facility in regards to ventilation for the discharge.

Also, I have seen that some places have a dedicated ink tech.  We use off the shelf inks (either rutland or one-stroke, both plastisol) for all of our prints, so we do not have an ink tech.  Is this a position that is needed if we swap over ink types?

Thanks in advance for the advice!

[T Shirt Farmer]

does you shop print a lot of blended fabrics, colors of fabric that don't discharge well like Kelly Green, Purple and Royal, need to have accurate PMS match for corporate colors etc....if so WB more than likely is not for you...iof you can live with the above than WB is really amazing and awesome to work with after you learn about 2 dozen things that differ from plastisol.  JMO

[ericheartsu]

although we aren't 100% WB/DC, we are pretty close. Our ink person not only pulls inks from the shelf, but is constantly having to build custom pantone colors.

One thing to note, it's EXTREMELY difficult to pick one brand of ink and run with it. Everyone has something great, and we have a huge selection of different brands of inks.

[ericheartsu]

Also, from our experience, alot of WB is backwards from plastisol. Especially when you have big blocky prints.

[Joshua]

does you shop print a lot of blended fabrics, colors of fabric that don't discharge well like Kelly Green, Purple and Royal, need to have accurate PMS match for corporate colors etc....if so WB more than likely is not for you...iof you can live with the above than WB is really amazing and awesome to work with after you learn about 2 dozen things that differ from plastisol.  JMO

The vast majority (about 80%) is done on 100% cotton.  We rarely use the "problem colors", so the dye interference will be of minimal impact. 

although we aren't 100% WB/DC, we are pretty close. Our ink person not only pulls inks from the shelf, but is constantly having to build custom pantone colors.
One thing to note, it's EXTREMELY difficult to pick one brand of ink and run with it. Everyone has something great, and we have a huge selection of different brands of inks.

We're not looking at a 100% change over, just for the majority of our retail line.  We would still need to be able to print on 100% poly for some of our custom clients.

Also, from our experience, alot of WB is backwards from plastisol. Especially when you have big blocky prints.

I heard you on that one.  I remember the first time I tried to use it and i stepped away from the machine for about 10 minutes.  Never did that again.  Or the time when I tried to use a 80tpi screen....  That was not pretty.

[Sbrem]

Also, from our experience, alot of WB is backwards from plastisol. Especially when you have big blocky prints.

What does this mean exactly? or not exactly?

Steve

[alan802]

As a one-auto shop with only 2 production employees right now, I'd hate to try and do a switch to WB as it would be a nightmare.  So take my problems and multiply them by about 10 and you have your shop.  I commend you for wanting to undertake something as big as that, and if you're not too busy that you can somehow schedule each team/crew to learn the new techniques in sections, or blocks, then maybe it won't be so bad.  I doubt you could round up the entire production crew and teach them on a weekend, but I guess it's possible.  Maybe a better way to do it would be converting the screen technicians 1st, then do each press crew one at a time and over the course of a few months you just slowly make the switch.  The 1st few teams that learn will be able to teach the newest ones a lot of tricks that they learned along the way and that would keep misprints to a minimum.    If you decide you want to do it all in a very short amount of time then best of luck to you.  My advice would be to take it slowly.

[Joshua]

As a one-auto shop with only 2 production employees right now, I'd hate to try and do a switch to WB as it would be a nightmare.  So take my problems and multiply them by about 10 and you have your shop.  I commend you for wanting to undertake something as big as that, and if you're not too busy that you can somehow schedule each team/crew to learn the new techniques in sections, or blocks, then maybe it won't be so bad.  I doubt you could round up the entire production crew and teach them on a weekend, but I guess it's possible.  Maybe a better way to do it would be converting the screen technicians 1st, then do each press crew one at a time and over the course of a few months you just slowly make the switch.  The 1st few teams that learn will be able to teach the newest ones a lot of tricks that they learned along the way and that would keep misprints to a minimum.    If you decide you want to do it all in a very short amount of time then best of luck to you.  My advice would be to take it slowly.

The conversion would be a single machine crew at a time.  As for training them, I will be doing that myself and it would be probably 2 days each.  I've got around 9,000 to 10,000 WB prints (about 20% of those being DC) behind me.  Mostly I'm just looking to see if I've missed anything I would need for the conversion.

I know it's gonna be a bit of a pain, but I'm expecting it so maybe it won't be quite so bad as expected.

[Colin]

What film/exposure setup do you have?

Tri-Lock?

Mesh counts?  S thread?

Will you be using HSA?  Do you have misters/people who can add moisture to the inks during the run?

Humidity in your shop?

Are you mostly spot colors?  Halftones?  Sim-process?

Clean up and disposal practices of bad waterbase/discharge leftovers?

Depending on the emulsion you use, you may have longer reclaim times.  It will especially impact you if you have an Auto Reclaimer.

You will definitely want an ink guy who has experience mixing waterbase inks of all kinds.

[ericheartsu]

Also, from our experience, alot of WB is backwards from plastisol. Especially when you have big blocky prints.

What does this mean exactly? or not exactly?

Steve

in plastisol, you might do your highlight color on a 230, 280, 305. with HSA you'll have to start using lower meshes for your highlight colors. So like 120-135s, we've found have had the best result.

[ericheartsu]

does you shop print a lot of blended fabrics, colors of fabric that don't discharge well like Kelly Green, Purple and Royal, need to have accurate PMS match for corporate colors etc....if so WB more than likely is not for you...iof you can live with the above than WB is really amazing and awesome to work with after you learn about 2 dozen things that differ from plastisol.  JMO

The vast majority (about 80%) is done on 100% cotton.  We rarely use the "problem colors", so the dye interference will be of minimal impact. 

although we aren't 100% WB/DC, we are pretty close. Our ink person not only pulls inks from the shelf, but is constantly having to build custom pantone colors.
One thing to note, it's EXTREMELY difficult to pick one brand of ink and run with it. Everyone has something great, and we have a huge selection of different brands of inks.

We're not looking at a 100% change over, just for the majority of our retail line.  We would still need to be able to print on 100% poly for some of our custom clients.

Also, from our experience, alot of WB is backwards from plastisol. Especially when you have big blocky prints.

I heard you on that one.  I remember the first time I tried to use it and i stepped away from the machine for about 10 minutes.  Never did that again.  Or the time when I tried to use a 80tpi screen....  That was not pretty.

HSA with Poly is awesome. Especially when you start getting into the different fixers, and low cure additives!

[3Deep]

Just my 2 cents here why not convert one of maybe two press's to WB/DC inks and have that crew work nothing but that instead of having a whole clusterfock going at once.  Your going to get some great advice here as you've already got from some of the members here, which I think are top notch when it comes to helping follow printers.

[woodrow]

We're also in the changeover process, not completely but being plastisol printers for years it's definitely a challenge. Simplicity in art will help tremendously and I wish we would have went that route and not challenge ourselves with what we did. Ok, here it goes, we started out with what seemed like an easy DC print on black 100% cotton with foil which turned out great. Customer came back and said they wanted it on 50/50 garments, out with discharge in with HSA. So now we have an under base grey blocker Flash, White Flash, Purple, Light grey, foil adhesive Flash, Foil resist last...1200 pieces front and back! This is our 1st run with WB mind you...Print up and running and about 150 pieces in the emulsion started delaminating. Dual purpose Plastisol/Water base emulsions are suppose to be good but the EOM is critical and must be post exposed and COMPLETLEY hardened. We tried 2 different WB systems to see if the inks components were causing the problem with the same result so we're trying a new emulsion, thinner EOM at 20% so it probably wasn't fair with the first emulsion being to thick but we ran out.. We will resume printing tomorrow with the new screens.