Excessive heat or chemical issue? Discolored shirts.
My contract customer got a call yesterday from her customer and they are returning about 55 shirts out of 150. It seems like some of the shirt were discolored from what looks like could be excessive heat, only on the exposed side of the shirt facing up in the dryer as the ink gets cured.
Nothing wrong with the ink or print.
The temperature was actually a little too low (today). But was set at the same temp we have been running at for a few months now. The ink temp on shirt (using a donut probe), reads at 318 and belt speed was set at 45. (This tells me that it couldn’t have been excessive heat) that caused this.
I had to raise the temp a little to get it back up to 320 for 5 seconds.
The thing is, (55 of these Port 50/50) does have a discoloration on them, but not all of them. ?? The discolorations is exactly where you might see it if it were scorched. This is not a scotch but more of a discoloration. Like a shadow. On the tops only, and on where it was folded under, is not discolored. You cans ee where the sleeve was folded under a little. So it indicates excessive heat, but it wasn’t. Like as if the heat on top, just changed the color of the thread a shade on only a 3rd of the order). All various sizes.
We got all of the bad ones back, and are of course re-printing for free and our contract customer is re-ordering at her expense but we will also knock off that garment cost on her next order. But I really think this is a Mill issue. Of course, I can’t prove that.
Now, none of our other orders has had any issues like this at all. Strange. I lean towards something different was done chemically at the mill where they would not have normally done this for the this garment that made it a little more heat sensitive.
Thoughts?
