Help with Discharge Red on black Bella Canvas 3001

[Raw Paw]

Hello, brave brothers and sisters of the print realm.  I have a problem.  It is driving me crazy and making me question my 13 years of screen printing experience 

In a nutshell - we have been getting totally inconsistent results with our discharge red, printed on black Bella Canvas 3001 (our staple shirt).  When printing using Red 032, we have consistently been facing the issue of the red looking dull on around 25% of the run, and vibrant on 75% of the run.

Specs - we use CCI pigments and base.  The ink recipe we have been relying on is 15% Red 032, 85% D-Base, and 3% activator.  We use 4% on our other colors, but with red specifically we use 3% to avoid the activator eating away the pigment.  We just began experimenting with using 20% pigment, 80% D-Base on Red 032, in an attempt to achieve the desired vibrancy, but it doesn't seem to make a drastic difference, or help address this particular problem we are facing.

I have attached a photo - the two swatches here are printed using the same formula, same screen, and on the same shirt.  We printed the top swatch last week, then tried recreating it this week (the bottom swatch), and were unable to achieve the same level of vibrancy.  We are currently making our own custom stock colors for both discharge and waterbased printing, which requires mixing and printing swatches of many colors, which is what has led onto this whole mess. 

In the past, this has been my hypothesis for why the discharge ink is not curing consistently to the same vibrant red across an entire run of shirts - the shirts are sourced from different warehouses, dyed differently, different fabrics, who knows.  However, my tests today more or less shattered this theory, because we are getting inconsistent results using the SAME formula on the SAME shirt... 

Variables I have eliminated
-Drying time - We were printing tons of Red 032 swatches today, in an attempt to rule out variables.  I decided to just run one of the swatches through the drier twice, testing if the ink is being cured for too long or too little of time.  The shirt we sent through twice gave us identical results to the shirt that ran through once.  Not to mention, we get super vibrant red and other discharge colors using our current dryer settings - our specific problem is consistency, and getting the vibrancy of red to maintain consistency throughout the run.
-Discharge agent - We mixed the ink with both Ryonet Green Galaxy agent and CCI agent and got the same results.
-Amount of discharge agent - We mixed and tested Red 032 with both 3% and 4% activator, and got near identical results (a dull red).
-Number of squeegee strikes - I printed a sample with one hit, no load, and a sample with a load and 5 hits, got the same dull red .

I was considering trying another brand for black shirts in particular to help overcome this problem, but after running all these tests I am more confused than ever.  I am now beginning to doubt that the bella canvas 3001 shirt is the culprit to our vibrancy issue, because on a shirt we have already printed a beautiful vibrant red on, we are now getting the familiar dull red.  Same shirt, same ink recipe, same dryer settings, totally different results, and not a clue as to why this is happening.

Has anyone else faced these problems?  This is driving me crazy and beginning to waste a ton of production time.  Thank you for your help and print on, brothers and sisters, print on

[ericheartsu]

what kind of dryer, and how long and at what temp?

[blue moon]

great question, sorry your are having trouble, but this is well thought out and explained!

how old is the ink?
what kind of scale are you using?
are the inks from the identical batches?
did the same person mix the inks?

try this. mix a batch of red and activate only a small part of it. Then later on, activate another portion and test on the SAME shirt. see what happens. you really want to eliminate the ink as the variable or prove that it is the culprit.

pierre

[Raw Paw]

what kind of dryer, and how long and at what temp?

The dryer is a Vastex "Big Red 4D" with the 54" wide belt.  The temp reads 650 on the digital display.  The shirts spend about 2 minutes in the dryer, and about 90 seconds at 300+ degrees.    I know this isn't the standard "300 degrees for 3 minutes" but we cure the shirts longer / slower than the recommended time for the dryer, and get great results with discharge (The recommended settings for discharge on this particular dryer are approx 1.5 minutes at 700 degrees).  I wear many of the shirts we print and have washed them many times with no noticeable color fading.  http://www.vastex.com/Screen-Printing-Equipment/Infrared-Conveyor-Dryers/BigRed/Big-RedV4.php

Edit to add - to test if the dryer is the culprit, we sent one of our sample shirts through twice, and compared it to the sample that only went through once, and they looked the same.  If anything, based on the above information, you'd recommend me to slow down the curing time, however, if that were the case, and the ink was getting under cured, then the shirt that went through twice would give us different results than the one that went through only once on our default settings that are tried and true.  Thank you for your time and help

[Raw Paw]

great question, sorry your are having trouble, but this is well thought out and explained!

how old is the ink?
what kind of scale are you using?
are the inks from the identical batches?
did the same person mix the inks?

try this. mix a batch of red and activate only a small part of it. Then later on, activate another portion and test on the SAME shirt. see what happens. you really want to eliminate the ink as the variable or prove that it is the culprit.

pierre

The ink is freshly mixed
This is the scale we use, it is from Ryonet. https://www.screenprinting.com/products/aws-digital-scale-2000-gram-capacity
The tests we mixed today were from the same batch of unactivated Red 032, and we were getting inconsistent results, so we remixed the red 032 and ran into the same inconsistencies
The same person did mix all the ink, and that is their main specialty at our shop

Yeah, it's throwing me for a loop.  I will try your suggestion next, in order to be completely thorough, however, we basically did that exact test today...  Started out by Mixing a batch of our Red 032, activated a small portion of it, then activated it several more times in different containers throughout the day attempting to troubleshoot, and even tried out 4% activator instead of 3%, a different brand of activator, ect.  Thank you for your time and help

[blue moon]

did you try running the bad prints through the dryer for the second time? Maybe the dryer is the problem.

pierre

[blue moon]

try printing the same shirt over and over again, 20 times or more. . . see if you get any problematic prints. If you do, that would eliminate the ink.

pierre

[tonypep]

Check country of origin to see if there is a pattern.

[ericheartsu]

Is it being tested through the same screen? Or is it reclaimed and remade?

Eom/deposit could be an issue too.

[Raw Paw]

did you try running the bad prints through the dryer for the second time? Maybe the dryer is the problem.

pierre

I ran this test yesterday and today and got the same results.  I have ruled out the ink as the culprit, the problem seems to be Bella Canvas 3001 doesn't react kindly to discharge red, in particular.  We get brilliant results with most every other color on Bella Canvas 3001 black shirts, red has just been a consistent problem.

Check country of origin to see if there is a pattern.

This is a good suggestion, the Bella Canvas shirts in my tests say "Assembled in Mexico of US components" and "Assembled in Nicaragua of US components"

Is it being tested through the same screen? Or is it reclaimed and remade?

Eom/deposit could be an issue too.

It is indeed being tested through the same screen.  What is EOM?

Here are my findings, after another frustrating day failing to get Red 032 to discharge properly...  We just printed the image on a handful of sample shirts we keep around the shop to show to clients.  As you can see, Bella Canvas is by far the worst, followed by Gildan Soft Style and Next Level 3605.  All the other shirts are giving me the color I need.  Has anyone else encountered this specific problem?  This is driving me and my ink specialist insane, but at least we have ruled out the ink being the problem, and can compensate in the future by ordering a different brand of shirt when printing discharge red.  Thank you all for your help and suggestions, I hope this test can be of some use to you all.  May your prints be full of glory, power and majesty

[ericheartsu]

did you try running the bad prints through the dryer for the second time? Maybe the dryer is the problem.

pierre

I ran this test yesterday and today and got the same results.  I have ruled out the ink as the culprit, the problem seems to be Bella Canvas 3001 doesn't react kindly to discharge red, in particular.  We get brilliant results with most every other color on Bella Canvas 3001 black shirts, red has just been a consistent problem.

Check country of origin to see if there is a pattern.

This is a good suggestion, the Bella Canvas shirts in my tests say "Assembled in Mexico of US components" and "Assembled in Nicaragua of US components"

Is it being tested through the same screen? Or is it reclaimed and remade?

Eom/deposit could be an issue too.

It is indeed being tested through the same screen.  What is EOM?

Here are my findings, after another frustrating day failing to get Red 032 to discharge properly...  We just printed the image on a handful of sample shirts we keep around the shop to show to clients.  As you can see, Bella Canvas is by far the worst, followed by Gildan Soft Style and Next Level 3605.  All the other shirts are giving me the color I need.  Has anyone else encountered this specific problem?  This is driving me and my ink specialist insane, but at least we have ruled out the ink being the problem, and can compensate in the future by ordering a different brand of shirt when printing discharge red.  Thank you all for your help and suggestions, I hope this test can be of some use to you all.  May your prints be full of glory, power and majesty

Canvas 3001 is one of the best shirts we use for discharge. Any textile though is subjected to issue with discharge, depending on where it's dyed and how/where it's manufactured. Canvas is reliably the most dependable though. Next Level is dependable as long as they are made in nicaragua.

EOM stands for emulsion over mesh. The thickness of your emulsion, will directly effect the deposit of your ink, and that's super important with color matching, and we've found particularly important with waterbased ink.

Screen Tension can also come into play with discharge ink, as it also effects your deposit.

The test pic you just posted though leads me to believe you have a mislabeled tee, or are printing on a blended tee, as that result next to all the others looks more like what you'd see when you print a discharge, especially a bright red, on a 50/50 blend, or one of them NON 100% cotton tees.

It's also possible you have gotten a re-dyed shirt. Our experience is Canvas usually doesn't do that, but it's def. possible!

[ABuffington]

Could be a lot number problem with the shirts.  We ran into this all the time and would up ordering as many shirts as possible with the same lot number, but that also is not fool proof for what you are seeing or possible sometimes.  When the rejects went through the roof we wound up making our own shirts to control the dye stuffs and all treatments through the same operation, (this is also a way to bleach to optic white if the original fabric is treated to white instead of greige goods.).  Here are my other tips:

1. ink Dams - keep the ink localized and as little surface area as possible to prevent water evaporation that messes up the ratios of base to pigment to activator.
We put them along the squeegee path, 2 pieces, one on top of frame, a shorter one attached to the mesh and emulsion, has to be done before adding ink and use a good rubber adhesive tape.  Winged flood bars only catch so much.  When we pushed the ink in the corners back into the image area, it did just what you are showing.  But you are using fresh batches, still this can be a problem.  We also put ink dams behind the squeegee stop position and taped the corners.

2. We maintained ink in the screen 3/4 of squeegee height, any more and the ink dries on the squeegee and plugs the image.  We only activated a quart at a time, used pre weighed activators and a 5 gallon master bucket that did match the color in tests.  If your tests on the same shirt are coming up different colors then I would look at oven temps and time in the oven.  If you have a donut temp gauge you can run it through with the shirt to see if some shirts are getting more heat than others.  Gas really helped us when we got a new oven.  EFG.  Electric to boost ink temp, then gas for 20', and then Electric again if needed for other plastisols we used with discharge for glitters and puffs and so on. 

3.  If you have a paint remover gun and cannot get the color with it I would lean towards the shirt being the issue.  Try clear activator on 3 different shirts from different boxes on the inside of the hem, just a drop, fold over and press with hand and send 3 shirts through at the same time.  If they all turn to the light tan greige goods the shirt is not the issue  more than likely, but we have seen orange, darker tan, and light greys if the shirts were re/dyed.  Doesn't happen much nowadays, but if you see different greige goods colors then the shirt is more than likely affecting the print.   (For those who don't know greige goods, it is the raw cotton before dyeing, usually a light tan, but can vary depending on where the yarn was sourced.

[Maff]

The test pic you just posted though leads me to believe you have a mislabeled tee, or are printing on a blended tee, as that result next to all the others looks more like what you'd see when you print a discharge, especially a bright red, on a 50/50 blend, or one of them NON 100% cotton tees.

It's also possible you have gotten a re-dyed shirt. Our experience is Canvas usually doesn't do that, but it's def. possible!
[/quote]



What Eric said here
^^This is what it looks like to me as well. Seems crazy but it looks like it was printed on a solid black 50/50. Try printing a discharge yellow on all those same shirts and see what happens.

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[lancasterprinthouse]

The test pic you just posted though leads me to believe you have a mislabeled tee, or are printing on a blended tee, as that result next to all the others looks more like what you'd see when you print a discharge, especially a bright red, on a 50/50 blend, or one of them NON 100% cotton tees.

It's also possible you have gotten a re-dyed shirt. Our experience is Canvas usually doesn't do that, but it's def. possible!

What Eric said here
^^This is what it looks like to me as well. Seems crazy but it looks like it was printed on a solid black 50/50. Try printing a discharge yellow on all those same shirts and see what happens.

Sent from my SM-G970U using Tapatalk

Agreed. Looks like a mislabeled shirt. We discharge 3001 religiously and have never had any issues. CCI pigments and base. 3-4% activator.

I don’t think I saw this mentioned but is this an ongoing issue for you (has it happened in the past as well?) or just something that came up while doing your swatch testing for stock color mixing?


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[RICK STEFANICK]

I would mix up the same red with another system or buy a pre mixed quart of another brand and print on the same shirts. That's really the only way to rule out the ink. I will say there are some really great systems out there now but I still like that sericol tex charge for reds only. In this case though it appear to be a garment issue but I have seen some crazy stuff with ink inconsistancy over the few years i have been printing water base products.