mock waterbase feel with plastisol

[Shawn (EIP)]

How to achieve a waterbase feel with plastisol?

[sweetts]

softhand or reducer additive I would think 

[brandon]

Lot of variables there. Yes, reducer for sure. High mesh count, one stroke (the goal as always anyway), correct substrate to name a few. For example, you want to attempt the feel of water base / discharge white on 100% cotton fleece with one hit of white plastisol? Good luck there. I would just say no. So it depends with the garment. And also the design itself. Some will lean towards it (one color black ink on a light gray shirt) and others will not. My two cents.

* QCM offers a "softee" base for plastisol. We don't really use it anymore as we just opt for the water base / discharge instead. But it does come out of the ink room for use from time to time.

[JBLUE]

We use Wilflex's Fashion base. Base it out 20-30 percent and its as close as you can get in my opinion. Reducer and soft hand clear work but they are not as soft as the fashion base.

[Dottonedan]

I was going to make a post some time soon about the differences (as it pertains to sim process) with inks. I'm working again with Rutland M3 series Inks.   I was not a big fan of them back in the day simply because they were "too thin". Now, I'm required to sep for a shop that used these inks. It's a different process than sepping for regular inks. Man-o-day. Thin stuff.  If underbased, they are very vibrant inks. If used straight to a dark garment, they are very hard to see and feel. You need to treat your underbase very differently than other inks. These inks are probably very good for what you are looking to do. With 100% solid coverage on a shirt, (with no underbase), these inks already feel as if they are almost not there.  If you use high mesh, then POOF. Fo getta boudit.

[screenxpress]

Not sure if this fits the question, but I did a one hit of Light Gray (or is Grey?) on black a while back using 230 mesh and not only did it have virtually no hand, but almost looked like a discharge print.  Was Cooooooool.

[RICK STEFANICK]

rutland offers a chino base that was designed for towels. works really well. call tony and get a sample.

[Shawn (EIP)]

Not sure if this fits the question, but I did a one hit of Light Gray (or is Grey?) on black a while back using 230 mesh and not only did it have virtually no hand, but almost looked like a discharge print.  Was Cooooooool.

yup "grey" is a cool color like that... one hit works in most cases on darks

[screenxpress]

Shawn, I think I mixed 50/50 Union Cotton White and Union Grey so it was a really light gray.  I was looking for something that looked like a discharge print and it worked.

[ZooCity]

It can be done but, if you compare a ultra soft-hand plastisol print to wb or discharge 10 wash cycles later you'll see immense fibriliation on the plastisol print. 

The problem is that plastisol needs to form a cured film and it's not very good at encapsulating little individual fibers.  The response in printing is to matt-down the fibers with as thin a film of plastisol as possible.  Sometimes this film is achieved in multiple layers with the end result being no little hairs sticking up out of the ink or, at least, very few.  Mostly, you get this done with an ink thick enough in body to hold down the fibers by sitting on top of the fabric.  Hence the thick, sometimes tough to work with plastisols we are all familiar with.  WB appears to have addressed this weakness by soaking into and dyeing/encapsulating the individual fibers.  {wb rookie here, so correct me if I'm wrong on that}

Now, toss in the fact that most soft-hand printing is done on ringspun because other types of Ts are kinda coarse already so there's little point in getting an uber soft hand on a shirt that feels like sandpaper to begin with.  Ringspun fibrilates like crazy.  Print a soupy plastisol on it and it sinks down below the fiber tips leaving most of them sticking up after printing or, if not, soon after being washed a few times when they break loose from the print. You can see why wb has resurged in popularity. 

We used to use QCM Softee quite a bit and I learned quickly to keep the percentage lower.  We now use varying amounts of Wilflex Epic Fashion Soft Base and Soft Hand Base typically cut into the base of an ink mix rather than added to a mixed ink to keep the pigment load up there.  There's a middle ground you want to hit with it that nets a soft hand but matts down the fiber just enough. 

The best approach is to use the artwork and shirt/ink colors to your full advantage and try to predict what you can get away with in terms of soft hand % in the ink.   Any plastisol trying to imitate wb is going to fibrilate, how you address this will dictate whether your print is a success or not.   

And keep in mind that all your prints should and can have a relatively soft hand, even that giant square of white plastisol.  It may not breathe but it oughta be soft an rubbery to the hand. 

[mk162]

I like my prints to be as coarse as possible, that way the customer knows they are there when they touch the shirt.

[Shawn (EIP)]

I like my prints to be as coarse as possible, that way the customer knows they are there when they touch the shirt.

Yeah me too and most of my customers like thicker inks.

This job is for 150 pale yellow fashion tees, 5 color print. The customer mailed me a shirt they found at the thrift store with a ink feel they want me to match. It has almost zero hand, but it is printed and looks to be waterbased. I don't play waterbase in this shop so... I bought some reducer. Hope it works out... Though I just might print the black in waterbase.

[Tagless Threads]

I feel like no matter what you do to plastisol it always looks like plastisol.

[Get Shirts]

Agreed, plasticol just cannot duplicate the organic look.

[Frog]

"organic look"?
Is this anything like the fact that "organic" shirts only require a small percentage of organic cotton to qualify?