Modifying your whites.

[farmboygraphics]

For 22 years of printing I've never modified a white ink.
Now for some reason I feel an itch to give it a try. Using One stroke and some International Cool White.
Just purchased a quart of reducer and going to give it a try when it starts to slow down.
I'm happy with the whites right out of the bucket, but I feel like I could be doing better on some jobs.
Any input would be greatly appreciated. :-)

[Zelko-4-EVA]

obviously the manufacturer would have the best answer but heres where i would start:

make sure the reducer and the white ink have the same or close cure temp so your flash and cure times stay the same

what are you trying to change about the ink?  climbing the squeegee, dot gain, viscosity, etc...   

for example:

we have an white ink thats fairly sticky - we add some "viscosity buster" to loosen it up so it flows better through the screen but dosent change the opacity and bleed resistance

a white ink that needs to be reduced to pass though a 230 screen - we would use fashion soft base
a white ink that we use for neck tags - we dont want it to show through the back of the shirt but we want to have some body to the ink so the rapid tag machine dosent fling the ink around - we would use soft hand clear.

i would start with less reducer that what you need - on an auto press the ink will loosen up over the print run and behave slightly different on shirt 1 and on shirt 100.   

[3Deep]

One stroke and International are the two brands I use now.....One Stroke I use the ELT/ELTS, Mia white inks, International Coatings I use the Cool white,  I will say I had less trouble using the One stroke straight from the bucket more than I have Cool white.   Cool white is a good ink but just yesterday I finish a gal halfway through a print run and open another gal total different opacity and had to print flash print, so from my years of using cool white each gal may be different from the next like being sticky, stiff, creamy, opacity but still a good ink.  I've only had one problem with One stroke a few times and that was a gal that was pretty dare stiff right out the bucket so I had to add reducer other than that it's been great for Comfort Color shirts that bleed....I will say you've been pretty lucky over the years using your white ink straight from the bucket without doing any mods