QCM waterbased and discharge

[Rockers]

I just noticed tat QCM have as well discharge inks. Is that any good compared to Sericol or CCI discharge?

[Colin]

If QCM has a waterbase/discharge system available then it is repackaged Rutland products and should work fine... but go ahead and just buy the Rutland stuff.

[tonypep]

Which is probably the old Pavonine from Union. I know, hard to keep track

[Inkworks]

I've had the QCM water base/discharge kit on the shelf for about a year. I think it was $150 on special. I might even crack the seals this Jan/Feb...

As a side note, I just got my new QCM plastisol colour guide now that Rutland/Union has taken over, seems they've discontinued many stock colours... Which makes my decision on which mixing system to go with a bit easier. I think we'll end up with Wilflex PC's

We'll see where the WB/Dis. thing settles out, but I think I'll be shopping for Sericol unless the QCM stuff really impresses me, I worry they'll eventually gut the QCM line and only offer Rutland/Union.

[ZooCity]

I got a gallon of QCM WB Black for like $15 bucks.  Presumably old stock and I won't be able to get anymore of the same but couldn't pass it up. 

I wonder what exactly Rutland is going to do with the QCM line then?  Little birdies, well, a little Rutland birdie, told me the acquisition was more about the pigment rollers/grinders than the ink line. 

[tonypep]

I used to homogenize my own WB inks for like $3.00 per gal. I'm guessing that the QCM line may fade away. It doesn't make sense that they would want to manage all those SKUs but who knows?

[Screened Gear]

I used to homogenize my own WB inks for like $3.00 per gal. I'm guessing that the QCM line may fade away. It doesn't make sense that they would want to manage all those SKUs but who knows?

Do you have pics of that? How much does one of those cost?

[ebscreen]

They's expensive John.

But from what I can tell, basically a superfast drillpress.

[tonypep]

About $1200

[Screened Gear]

I bet it makes one hell of a milkshake. So you just need one of those and $3 of product to make a gallon of ink?

[brandon]

Yeah, but if your running three or four autos like Tony's shop (or more) that thing would pay itself off in a few months. Or less. And you can make really good milkshakes

[Colin]

Yea Tony.  Or it's the WB-99. 

If anyone bought a waterbase kit from QCM it's repackaged Jantex waterbase.

[ebscreen]

Where does one buy the raw ingredients?

For the ink, not the milkshake.

[Rockers]

Where does one buy the raw ingredients?

For the ink, not the milkshake.

Try BASF.

[Inkworks]

Yea Tony.  Or it's the WB-99. 

If anyone bought a waterbase kit from QCM it's repackaged Jantex waterbase.

Okay, so I cracked the seals and did my first discharge base/plastisol top-coat job for someone who wanted a softer hand on some long sleeve mock necks. It went pretty seamlessly thanks to a lot of the tips I gleaned from post here. I'd say the finished product wasn't really that much softer than if I had just done it with high mesh counts and regular plastisol base though. One of the top colours was a flouro. orange, which was another reason why I went plastisol top coat as I've heard floro's can be tough to get with WB/DC.

We ran it all on the manual press to keep things simple. (2 different runs, 32 pcs. each, full backs, L/C and both sleeves, 1,2 and 3 colour) We used standard mesh 156 for the DC base and 230's and 300's for the plastisol top coats. The 300's seemed to print just as bright, but still had more hand than I expected, maybe they'll soften up after a few washes...? I could see going even a little lower mesh for the DC bases as we had to work hard, 3-4 prints, to get a good base/penetration, maybe just some S mesh will help, we have a few 230 S-mesh ready to go into production and I have some 156 s-mesh coming in to stretch up.

We flashed the discharge base to full discharge before printing the plastisol top coats as I didn't have the time to mess around and I know there can be problems with the top coats peeling off if the base is too wet when they are printed.

Any and all comments and advice on the above very much appreciated. I can see us jumping in with both feet in the upcoming year.

Also thoughts on the QCM-Jantex WB/DC kit/line up? My closest supplier (60 miles away) is a QCM dealer and great guy and I can get stuff same-day. Should I just keep going with it or am I going to want to scrap it for something better eventually? It comes with a PMS matching system and seemed to work so far,  mind you I just used the discharge base with 6% activator, pretty hard to go wrong with that I suppose. If I had to go back I'd probably just go Sericol and maybe see if I could get some CCI White up here in the frozen North. but I have the full QCM kit sitting there, I just don't want to figure it all out only to end up going with something else later.

Link:
http://qcm.us.com/water_base_mixing_system.php

Ps: my shop stinks now  Ventilation over the flash will be on the short list for the new-year.

looking forward to Tonypep's article!