Questioning the Cost Effectiveness of Discharge

[ScreenPrinter123]

So, I was thinking as we were printing a few thousand piece discharge job a month ago and a few thousand piece plastisol job last week that perhaps discharge isn't as cost effective as it may seem on the surface for jobs like these.

So, for jobs that are like 100-300 pieces, you definitely save time on registering the job (if you need to micro it with having an underbase and multiple top colors) and the inks are significantly cheaper, so DC seems to win with those jobs.

However of multi thousand piece runs, I am having my doubts and here's why:
(1) Over that many shirts any added time for registering is nugatory.
(2) While it's certainly cheaper to buy discharge inks, you (well...at least we are) are using anywhere from a 180-135 screen to get good saturation.  Whereas, with plastisol, I can use a 150 S for a base and print 310-S for top coats.  So, while the plastisol top coats initially cost more upfront, I'm using a heck of a lot less by kissing a smooth underbase with a 310-S with plastisol than if I were trying to *saturate a shirt* with a 180-135 mesh. 
(3) No mixing of inks for the many thousand piece jobs.  This is a major aggravation...even when we have that many and mix a butt load -- always end up needing to mix more and then at the end it's always throwing some away.
(4) On a plastisol print, we can run our white base as well as our top colors anywhere between 13"-25" per second without having any issues. However, in order to generate good saturation, we are running our dc's at 6"-10" -- perhaps that's too slow, but I'd imagine we cannot do the speeds we can for plastisol and still achieve great results (at least that's not the suggested method, though we've never tried to run DC that fast and do some wash tests).  This translates into more time (for those who have employees) for employees to complete a job, more time equipment is running, etc.  You shave quite a bit of time off your 7,000 impressions when the squeegee speed is that different.

So all in all, I think for shorter runs, DC takes home the trophy; but for longer runs, I think plastisol can be your better bet assuming the artwork is one with an underbase and multiple top colors...where the crossover is obviously will depend on the amount of open area on the print, # of colors, etc., but I wonder if any of you big shops have run any tests on this.

[tonypep]

Yew I have run tests yet cannot comment but heres a hint.......don't think in mesh count think in weight/volume of ink. I have addressed this in Printwears upcoming Q&A issue but you have nailed the jist of it. Question is coul/should you charge more for the added value

[alan802]

We recently did our longest and first multi-colored DC job, 2500 pieces and I'm not going to lie, I got a lot of gray hair during that run.  The backs were DC white, left sleeve DC white, but red, white & blue front.  We've done DC jobs but mostly just white, with a few reds and yellows with Sericol, so as easy as it gets.  But this 2500 piece was something different for us, using DC white with Matsui 301 for the red and blue.  I know we saved several hundred dollars in ink costs just on the white alone.  The amount of plastisol white that we would have run through would have been substantial with all the open area of the print.  The red would have been a half gallon or more, but the blue maybe a quart had we used plastisol.  We got away with using about a gallon and a half of DC white, half gallon of red and blue matsui costing under $100 in ink doing it DC. 

BUT, the screens breaking down, the constant worrying and watching every shirt with a microscope and even then having about 40 rejects due to stencil breakdown was very stressful on me.  I know with each job we do the headaches become less and less but it's really hard to get the sales staff to trust that we've worked through the problems.  They don't seem to remember back when we first started screen printing, all the rejects we had using plastisol and all they remember is the number of rejects we had on the last DC job.  During that big DC run, I kept thinking to myself that I wouldn't be stressing if we'd have just done it with plastisol and the extra ink cost wouldn't be near as much as the rejects we have to reprint.  I still think the ink savings outweighed the reject cost and we did better overall with going the DC way, but man it was a rough couple of days for me.

[ZooCity]

think in mesh count think in weight/volume of ink

Yep.  Ink for ink, DC is way cheaper, even at the increased weight/volume of use per print, especially when you compare white prints.  Quality plastisol is quite expensive now.  This is the one of the first things I tested with DC, I want to say it was around 1k pc run, and the numbers were heavily in favor of DC, in fact I was shocked at how much we saved on ink on that test run. I simply compared grams for grams at the ink's cost. It was a 1co. light carolina blue in two locations on dark grey/charcoal Ts and the comparative plastisol cost was very, very high.  Then again we run WFX Epic for plasti.

I agree but also disagree that plasti prints "faster".  For us it's faster mostly b/c DC on all but the thinner garments needs a double stroke on the air head Gauntlet, plastisol typically does not. Stroke speeds are always set as fast as the air heads can handle and still print clean and consistent with either ink.  Flood speed is neither here or there-  not too important with DC's "soft" flood as it can be as fast as you like and always set as slow as possible but without holding up the run for plasti. 

Toss in flashing and I think everything tips to DC for overall run costs but it's really going to depend on the shop. Dryer capacity might come in as a factor here for example, slowing down another print run on press 2 when DC is on the belt.

You can reel in the ink estimating for DC.  I have a simple blanket formula that has been working out very well for us and am going to get more clinical with the frequent repeat DC jobs.  You will always have ≈ 400g of waste DC no matter what though as you need at least that much in the ink well at all times for a full size print. It is a bummer scrapping that much ink cumulatively over a year.

I have to agree that very long multi color runs spanning multiple shop days are going to be a lot friendlier to run with plastisol and maybe also cheaper due to the cleanup issue with stopping a DC run. 

[ZooCity]

...and Tony I'm surprised your reply wasn't DC UB + Plasti top colors. 

[ScreenPrinter123]

Dc ub would indeed be cheaper than plastisol ub as far as the ub ink cost are concerned, but then you might have to go down in mesh count on the top colors (translating into more of an ink deposit) bc now you're essentially printing on the shirt and not on an uber-smooth-glass-like under base, and I'm imagining fighting fibrilation would be another issue to be concerned with too so the top colors would retain their vibrancy - all of which just requires a thicker deposit, no?

With the white plastisol ub I was assuming the price of a Miami smooth/superior and a sf ii, the three we've been using the most as of late, which are effectively $40/gallon, a few bucks more than our white discharge.  Guess the best test as far as ink cost alone (excluding the other considerations) would be seeing how many shirts it would take to go through a gallon of d-white vs. plastisol on the same print and a gallon of pigmented dc vs. plastisol top colors.

[ZooCity]

Well if the plastisol cost the same as the DC then I guess it just comes down to preference.  Really good food for thought.

[brandon]

Every shop is different for sure. But I know my guys and soon to be not my guys (selling my half to those who don't know) whether it be a 3,000 piece run on auto or a 50 piece run on manual love the wow with no flashing. One stroke, no mess, all good. And while yes there is some ink left over and we turn that into concrete blocks (I was hoping to make a nifty bench soon but alas I won't be here) the amount of time saved and the moral booster with the crew is priceless in my opinion. I guess it just depends on how you and the client want to approach the issue. I do know there are some nifty formulas out there where you can figure out ink usage via image size and mesh and other variables and I know Colin could chime in about that if he reads this. But I really think it comes down to time in my opinion and how much it means to you and your shop. So then whatever you are better at and prefer is your ink of choice maybe?

[tonypep]

Not allowed to divulge everything we do but suffice to say DC/UB is only for the stubborn fabrics. Straight out pigmented DC is far better once you work it out. Every once in a while we'll get the perfect storm of things going wrong but it can almost always be attributed to missing a step due to time constraints.