screen printing > Ink and Chemicals
Need some sage advice about Safety Green 50/50's
squeegee:
Recently I did a run of about 300 safety green g200's (they are 50/50's), it was a left chest about 4 x 4 and a full back about 13 x 13, a heavy coverage design. The ink colors were black, flo orange and flo blue.
The customer says the flo blue on the backs of the shirts looks teal, and is swearing it's a different ink color, the fronts look right, flo blue. I'm guessing dye migration, but I haven't seen the shirts yet.
This is how we set it up, black plastisol 150s, wilflex polywhite 150S underbase, flash, 110/71 same underbase polywhite, flash, rutland m2 flo blue 150s, double stroke, flash, rutland m2 flo orange double stroke. Initially we wanted to run underbase grey in the first screen but were seeing a slight grey edge from the base which was affecting the design.
We ran 3 flashes because the flo inks needed a double stroke to look bright so WOW would have been a smearing nightmare.
I didn't see every shirt coming out of the dryer, but the ones I saw looked fine. We did the backs first, then the left chest. We had our dryer set for curing poly garments which historically gives us no dye migration issues.
Here's a snipet of the design:
I'm wondering if anyone has suggestions or experience printing safety green?
TIA
JBLUE:
I have not had an issue with those and poly white. In fact I just did a sh!tload of pink and red camo t's and the poly held the dye back with no problems. It would be nice to see a pic of the shirt when you get one.
Dottonedan:
--- Quote ---
The customer says the flo blue on the backs of the shirts looks teal, and is swearing it's a different ink color, the fronts look right, flo blue. I'm guessing dye migration, but I haven't seen the shirts yet.
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The fact that the front looks right and the back does not (indicates that it is not dye migration) unless you used a low bleed on the base (on the pocket print, but not on the back). If all were the same low bleed whites then it should be consistent. 1st, I don't think that the Safety Yellow shirts migrate or if it does, it's not a very dark color to notice that much. (if it did, however, it would most certainly turn your flo blue inks to a green).
I have and use many safety yellow tees/polos and wash them every day with no bleed onto other garments or in my wash water. (I work our church parking lot on Sundays).
I am not questioning your logic, but I don't understand why you would have two hits of white and two flashes for a Safety yellow tee. It should be enough just with one white and one flash and that white would only need to be on a 230 at most.
--- Quote ---This is how we set it up, black plastisol 150s, wilflex polywhite 150S underbase, flash, 110/71 same underbase polywhite, flash, rutland m2 flo blue 150s, double stroke, flash, rutland m2 flo orange double stroke. Initially we wanted to run underbase grey in the first screen but were seeing a slight grey edge from the base which was affecting the design.
--- End quote ---
Over all, I think you used too thin of an ink. Maybe using more opaque inks would help.
--- Quote ---We ran 3 flashes because the flo inks needed a double stroke to look bright so WOW would have been a smearing nightmare.
--- End quote ---
If you didn't have all of that white and flashes, I'd say that you were creating a green by doing that double stroke and driving the ink into the shirt. Take any bright yellow and add process blue or flo blue to it and you get a very bright green. The double stroke drives the inks into the shirt and makes it heavier. what you need would be a lighter stroke laying the ink (on top) of the shirt. Doing this enable you to also use a slightly higher mesh.
Keep your off contact (as close as possible) so you are also not using too much squeegee pressure.
tonypep:
Well you never know in these situations unless you're there examining all the variables but......
The statement that the back larger print looks teal and the smaller front looks correct suggests that possibly migration could occur if the back was printed first hence it went through the dryer twice (remember flourescents are very transparent by nature)
And.....flourescents are metameric in nature and are affected not only by the surrounding (shirt)color but the amount of (ink) color applied and the amountof surrounding (shirt color) which could fool the eye into thinking they are different. Unlikely but I've seen it happen.
So theres that plus what Dan said.
tp
squeegee:
@ Tony I did consider that the migration could have been caused by the second run through the dryer, and if the migration happened on the second dryer pass, that would be a first for me but I wouldn't rule it out as a possibility.
@ Dan, the ink was the same both sides, polywhite wilflex and rutland m2's. I have seen pretty bad migration from Safety Green, G200's on other runs, where the white ink (p/f/p on low mesh count) did take a very slight yellow hue, but nothing I would think would affect another color so serverly that it would cause it to change (blue to teal). My opinion is that safety green in a 50/50 is a bad bleeder for sure, that's why we used 2 screens of white, in addition flo colors are translucent in general so we wanted a very white base to make the colors pop.
As far as opaque flourescents, the M2's in my experience are pretty opaque, definately opaque enough and cover nicely over a white underbase in any other job we've done. What opaque flo ink would you recommend?
Also, to the comment that we were driving the ink into the shirt, I really don't think so, by the time the second white came out from the second flash it was very bright, no show through at all.
One other thing I thought of, do either of you think the heat intesity created on press by 3 quartz flashes could be enough to trigger migration?
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