Recommendations? Vintage white with supplies on hand

[Prince Art]

I need to mix some vintage white for use TOMORROW, and it's going on kids garments, as well as adults. We have a house formula we usually use for adults, but don't have compliance docs for all ingredients. Rarely comes up for kids shirts. The other trick is that it's on high poly fashion tees, so we want to keep cure temp @ 300 or lower, since we've had discoloration issues in the past.

Manual printing, 230 mesh, 70 or 80 duro sharp squeegee.

Main ingredients to work with:
Epic Soft Hand Clear
Epic Mixing Base
Epic PC Extra Bright White
Quick White (<It's on hand, but we stopped printing this as we had cure issues in our short dryer. Apparently it needs the full minute at cure temp, not just peaking there. So I'm a wary of using, as this is a large order.)

We've also got One Stroke ELT-S white, but I'm not inclined to cut it with anything. Even with One Stroke's own chemicals, you've got to make sure it is safe for ELT.

(Compliance docs on file for all of the above!)

Right now, my plan is to mix Soft Hand Clear as base at a high percentage, with PC Extra Bright White. But I'm shooting in the dark as to ratio. I'm NOT going for opacity. I'm going for a tonal look with a good feel.

If you've got any suggestions so I spend less time on trial & error?

[Colin]

Define "discoloration".

Do you mean bleed or yellowing of the ink due to high heat?

What are you using to make your mix now?  You may have an equivalent already listed.

Why not cut the ELT-S?  I dont understand making sure its safe for "ELT"...

[Prince Art]

Define "discoloration".

Do you mean bleed or yellowing of the ink due to high heat?

What are you using to make your mix now?  You may have an equivalent already listed.

Why not cut the ELT-S?  I dont understand making sure its safe for "ELT"...

Discoloration of the garments due to heat, not discoloration of the ink. We have a short infrared dryer, and and to ensure cure, we have to allow for shirts hitting a peak temp about 20 degrees above cure temp. When using standard 320F inks on some of the high poly blends, we've had issues with the shirts discoloring. (Darkening on the wrinkles is the most common problem, but we've had worse.) When we stick to inks that cure at 300 or lower (as Epic PC series does), we've been fine.

We've been using Rutland M3 mixing white with a curable reducer, 80% ink, 20% reducer. But honestly, I've wanted to get away from that, because we rely too heavily on printing with a light touch that doesn't completely clear the screen to get the "vintage" look. That approach is too sensitive to changes in manual pressure. It can produce visible tonal variation within the print. (And yes, this is being printed manually.)

As for ELT, I based my comments on the fact that One Stroke offers some additives explicitly for ELT, and I noticed that tech info for at least some of their "standard" additives includes a "not for low temperature ink" disclaimer. Since I understand very little about ink chemistry, and even less about ELT chemistry, I don't have confidence to mix additives/bases from the Wilflex system with ELT.

I might add that this is for a run of 1000 shirts, on a brand/color combination that we haven't used before. And, like everyone, we're on a deadline. So, I'm hoping to stick to something that pretty safe - with little doubt that we'll get a good cure (i.e., no premature washout problems), and little chance of overheating the shirts due to cure temp.

[Colin]

Double check cure temp for Quick White.

Use that as your mix with the Epic Softhand Base if it cures low enough for you.

Moving forward, talk with one stroke about a low cure super soft hand base you can add to your ELTS (we use that here for all our athletics/poly.  It's awesome)  ELTS will cure at and below 250*!

Also call Wilflex and get their recomendations on a low cure fashion soft and a white you can use for your parameters.

Give both a test at some future time.

You "can" add white pigment to Epic bases for a vintage look..... but it has very low matte/coverage.  Pigment wont have all the bells and whistles a reg white has that you have grown used to with your vintage white mix.  Also, if you try it, call Wilflex and get their recommendations for max pigment loading for your application.

[johnny]

i don't know if this would transfer over well, but what i do with matsui waterbase for vintage white is 2 parts clear to 3 parts white. you could always try mixing up a little bit of that ratio with the soft hand and mixing base just to see if it works.

[Prince Art]

Double check cure temp for Quick White.

Thanks for that. I checked, and it's 320 after all. That's what I get for working from memory on that one. I had checked the PC cure time before I posted, but not Quick.

If I mix white with the PC system using the standard Mixing Base, then added Soft Hand Clear to that, I should be in better territory for the matte/coverage issues you mentioned than using only Soft Hand as the base, right?

i don't know if this would transfer over well, but what i do with matsui waterbase for vintage white is 2 parts clear to 3 parts white. you could always try mixing up a little bit of that ratio with the soft hand and mixing base just to see if it works.

With the PC (pigment concentrate) system, the mixing base itself is not white. Hence the idea above. (In the Rutland M3 ink-to-ink system, Mixing White is the base, and we've been doing similar to what you suggested.)

[Colin]

At this point you are squarely in the realm of Test Test TEST

Moving forward, find a white ink that will cure at a low temp and find a soft hand/fashion soft/chino base type of ink that can be low cure.

Combine those until you get the look and feel you desire

Here, we have a gas dryer.  I use my regular white and I add 25%-35% Ultrasoft Primer Clear to make my vintage white.  We use a high mesh and hard squeegee, but we are also using an auto.  Allll Mileage will vary.

[Sbrem]

It's kind of funny that here we are trying to recreate what we couldn't do very well in the '70's. Blade durometer, who knows? Stapled mesh, multifilament, on wooden frames, that would not register anything on a tension meter. And, the white ink had lead in it... and, all infra-red drying.

Steve

[Prince Art]

FOLLOWUP:

1st lesson, that others may want to take note of: I found conflicting PIB's for Wilflex products. Specifically, some of those dl'ed from NazDar conflicted with those dl'ed directly from Wilflfex. (Despite all bulletins being authored by Wilflex.) Everything was the same except the cure temps for the inks/additives. I contacted Wilflex technical help, and went with what they told me. Among other things, I was told Quick White does indeed have a cure temp of 300F.

After that, I took Colin's advice, pushed the printing back a day, and took time to test. Mixed several different options, printed samples, and did a wash test.

I'm glad I did. I got a pretty nice look and feel using some LC One + Soft Hand Clear. One problem: ink was unusually tacky out of the dryer, regardless of cure temp. After the wash test, the shirt came out of the [clothes] dryer with that test print tacky again. And more faded, compared to other mixes. So, I went back, tried a print of undiluted LC One. Result: IT WOULD NOT CURE. No matter how many times through the dryer or the cure temp, ink still rubbed off on my fingers. No idea why. The batch was about a year old, brought in to sample, had never gotten around to it. But needless to say, that one was out of the running.

Final mix was a 60/40 mix of Quick + SHC. Results weren't precisely what I'd prefer (it could have penetrated the fabric more, and was a touch brighter than past "vintage" prints), but more than good enough for this job. Still had the right look & an acceptably soft hand. Had to cure a bit higher than I wanted; but we watched temps carefully, and thankfully had no issues with fabric discoloration.

Thanks again to Colin for input along the way!

[Colin]

You are welcome!

[Frog]

I had to chuckle a bit (as well as follow) this thread simply because usually a request for "vintage white" is like landing on Free Parking in Monopoly, as it usually grants a lot of leeway and makes the job easier.

[Prince Art]

...usually a request for "vintage white" is like landing on Free Parking in Monopoly, as it usually grants a lot of leeway and makes the job easier.

Normally it does! It's just that we rarely have to do this on youth shirts, and my preferred reducer doesn't come with compliance docs. Plus, the ink needed to be consistent across all garments sizes, and for future reorders. But once we got the ink sorted, we were good to go - easy-peasy. And will be from here on, I believe. (This was for a client who reorders a lot.)