screen printing > Waterbase and Discharge

Sonft Hand ink/ What is it?

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Dottonedan:
Some people are referring to a "soft hand ink" as if that was a "type" of ink.  Is it?  Soft hand ink has always been similar to "process inks or any thin in system like Rutlans M@'s or Unions Uni match.

Is a "soft hand ink" a water base inks?  I have heard all three mentioned in one sentence.

Soft hand ink on this screen,
Water base on this one
Plastisol ink on this one.

??

Clark:
People are adding soft hand, or fashion soft base to plastisol to get a softer hand these days.  I am assuming when the say they are using soft hand ink, this is what they are referring to.

Colin:
There are sofhand additives/bases that you can either add pigments to or add to finished inks.  The difference (mainly) are the resins that go into making these inks.  When cured the softhand/softee/chino base/fashion soft plastisol will feel much softer than standard plastisol.  When printed correctly you can barely tell the difference between them and waterbase inks.

Evo:

--- Quote from: Colin on May 11, 2011, 07:14:44 PM ---There are sofhand additives/bases that you can either add pigments to or add to finished inks.  The difference (mainly) are the resins that go into making these inks.  When cured the softhand/softee/chino base/fashion soft plastisol will feel much softer than standard plastisol.  When printed correctly you can barely tell the difference between them and waterbase inks.


--- End quote ---

Hello Colin. Nice first post!


I had a customer just recently send me a sample they had done by another printer. They used a "soft hand" plastisol that while had a decently soft hand, it was no where near the "no ink at all" feel of a laundered wb print. You could roll the print between your fingers and still feel a bit of "grip" to the ink.

So yeah, I always think of a "soft hand" print as a based-down plastisol print.

ZooCity:
What up Colin, good to see ya over here.

Dan, if I was the separating son of a gun that you are I'd be careful with how multi-color seps workout with "soft hand" inks.  They're not only more transparent but they don't hold great dot shape, can get weird applied over underbases and they can and will fibrilate like all get out.  Not that I don't like 'em, in fact I love them in a lot of ways but they have their own unique application for sure.

You know this already but with these inks you really need to consider the garment color, and especially the percentage of "soft hand" base in that ink to it's pigmentation as well as the ink color and keep the fingers crossed.  It's difficult to predict what the final color outcome is going to be just based on the ink color and mesh count.  Higher EOM alone could change the color dramatically. 

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