4 color process discharge inks

[jvanick]

Who makes the 'best' 4 color process discharge ink set...

I've got a customer that wants a cmyk on dark (gildan dark heather)...

I've only used the IC plastisol stuff in the past... can you mix that with plasticharge and have it work ok?

it's not a rush job, so I suppose I have some time to experiment, but if somebody else already has the knowledge, I'm all ears.

[tonypep]

Sericol HT DCs (Halftone)

[IntegrityShirts]

http://www.atlasscreensupply.com/ is an online retailer with shopping cart where you can get the CMYK discharge inks from Sericol.

Tony, you may or may not be able/allowed to answer, but would you print a base white with CMYK discharge or print a highlight white at the end? I have always be intrigued by the cmyk sericol inks, but never heard of anyone using them or a seeing a print sample.

jvanick, post a pic of the finished product if you can, I'd love to see how they do!

[jvanick]

while I normally don't post pics of my work... (I feel very humbled by seeing the experts work here)...

when I get it done, I'll post some up...  it'll be a few weeks, or maybe even into december... the discussion was more around 'could you' vs. placing an order right away...

BTW... I tried doing a white discharge under the IC Pro-brite cmyk ink and that didn't work at all... everything came out really wierd... standard 'discharge base' under the pro-brite works well... but I think that going to straight cmyk discharge will be the way to go...

-J

[tonypep]

Can't answer specifically but suffice to say it depends on the seps. We actually have our own formulas for process DC and have had awesome results as well as a few failures. The failures merely need to be re-sepped

[mimosatexas]

Sorry to resurrect a dead-ish thread, but I have a few jobs coming up where I would like to use cmyk (or cmy) discharge on black with either a base white or highlight white (or both), and was wondering if anyone had any tips or tricks, or details they could post, even if they relate to cmyk on white (not discharge).  I am not looking for the "answer" and will be doing a lot of my own testing to see what might work with my setup and what won't, but I always appreciate hearing from others who have more experience.  I'll post my results as I get to testing.

[blue moon]

we do CMYK on dark garments every now and then. It can be done pretty well with a plastisol underbase so it can obviously be done with DC ubase too! Of the two DC underbase CMYK jobs we did, one did not have critical color and the other was on a light garment, but both are award level prints.

If I was doing it, I'd go with DC ubase and hiwhite with regular plastisol inks. There is very little that goes on top, so the print will be pretty thin. If the color is not critical, straight DC would probably work fine with an addition of hiwhite.

pierre

[mimosatexas]

I'm playing around with the seps in photoshop and I can't see how conceptually the DC CMYK inks would ever work.  The only areas that will have proper color are the areas with a full rich mid tone color like red or green or shadows.  Any pale tone or highlight will not look right, even with a highlight white.  It seems the only way to do it would be a base with non dc cmyk inks on top.  I've played with two different images and used two sep programs and two manual methods and they all look the same.  Something like a skintone looks horrible, either much too dark or much too light, unless the white is below the cmyk, which makes the dc part of the cmyk ink pointless.  Anyone have a different understanding or experience?

[ZooCity]

Sericol makes the only ones I am aware of. 

As to running over a DC UB, there's a guy on here, dang I can't remember his handle with my tired brain, who ran Sericol CMYK over WB and liked it.

I recommend running full color DC as 6 colors, straight to the garment, no UB.

I can't speak for the CMYK DC process as we only do sim process.  That said our sim work is essentially CMYK++, not dramatically different, just expanding the gamut with a couple more colors.  If you were to sep out one of our typical sim pro jobs to CMYK instead the seps would look very similar.

[mimosatexas]

what do you mean without UB?  are you printing a white first (essentially a base) and cmyk then a highlight, or are you printing the cmyk directly, then a white on top that has openings everywhere the cmyk ink needs to show through?  One of the samples I just sepped for example had a big area of skin tone, with maybe 10% of Y and M, but mostly white.  Printing white on top would be a nightmare on a huge area like that with such little bits of ink needing knocked out to show the Y and M.

I'm just trying to wrap my head around the reason for a DC cmyk when so much of a design has primarily white with little dots of other colors to create pale colors.

[ZooCity]

The sep process is kinda flipped upside down with DC process work, either you aren't building over a UB anymore or you are using a UB white screen but it may not be going down first, which is super weird.  DC inks can blend like crazy when overprinted and stepped on.

I've posted this pic before. This is not the best example as the flesh tones on the lizard lady here are ruddy in the original art and the pic sucks as usual, far nicer to see in real life, but here's an example of DC sim process and flesh tones.  Our seps on this looked really close to CMYK over a white base, in fact I think it would have looked darn near identical as CMYK.  It has a big 'ol white plate that required a flash at some point in the sequence....can't recall and don't have the work order handy.  I may have listed the sequence in my original posting of it.  I would have preferred to use the white differently just for on-press reasons which is why I say try to blend your colors right on the shirt rather than over a base if at all possible.  White early in the print sequence will start to really gum up the picked up ink and it's a major pain if you aren't running fast, i.e., on the manual.

Sorry for any confusion on that- you can print DC CMYK over base, it may not be ideal on press though and I think there are other ways, depending on the strength of the DC/CMYK inks of course.  In this example, we were mixing our own spots and tuning the specific art.

[3Deep]

I didn't read all the post here so excuse me if this has been answered already, but why would you need to print a white base if your using DC process inks? would that not defeat the purpose of the DC inks to discharge the shirt.  I can see if your printing regular process inks on top of a white base, but that tends to make the process inks pastel if the base is to thick, been there done that.  I guess I've been in a cave because I really didn't know they made a DC process inks..I would like to see a a dark shirt printed with a process discharge.

Darryl

[mimosatexas]

you're understanding correctly, and that was exactly my question/point, that really hasn't been answered yet, at least to my satisfaction.  I understand DC inks blend, and I understand that they will bleach the shirt, but in many designs, there will be large areas of pale colors that require white to be either below the dc inks, or for the white to be printed over them in some way that is either very translucent or has tiny areas knocked out and perfectly registered above the tiny areas of cmyk that have already been printed, and considering the usefulness and inevitability of gain on both the cmyk inks and the white layer, i can't really see how printing white last will work, and as a result, what the point of the DC cmyk inks would be at all.  The photo you uploaded in a great looking print zoo, but it's on a light shirt, so areas of pale color will still work and look at least close to the original art, but printing a skin tone on a black shirt would look really whacked out without the under (makes dc cmyk pointless) or over (hard to register and compensate for gain properly) white.

[ZooCity]

I actually think that print would look nearly as good on an excellent discharging dark fabric. Seps were intended for lights- silver, palm springs pink and a heather grey seafoam and would probably need a little forethought if going on darks too...

...but maybe the answer to your question lies in the combined strength of the DC process inks on their substrate?

Whereas in plastisol printing it's the combined opacity of the underbase and strength of the 4cp inks on top. 

I will say that I wouldn't mess with true 4cp discharge except in cases where we had time to work with it and a backup plastisol plan.

[mimosatexas]

I guess what I'm not understanding is how you would get a light yellow with just the cmyk.  If the yellow is discharging the shirt, it is yellow, unless it is on top of white, which will achieve the pale yellow.  If it is on top of black, meaning the gaps between those 10% of yellow dots are black, it will be a dark yellow or brownish green looking area, not a pale yellow.  If you then print a white on top, that white either has to be very translucent (meaning you still need a highlight white screen to get bright whites, meaning you arent saving any screens by using dc), or have those 10% dots cut out of it so they show through (meaning registration will be a nightmare), but either option seems less than optimal.

This illustrates what I mean: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ef/Halftoningcolor.svg/408px-Halftoningcolor.svg.png

Everywhere in that image that is white would either be black (or another dark shirt color), ruining all the pale tones by basically inverting them, or the light tone areas have to be overprinted with white, but with the dots blocked out of the white stencil, and any misregistration or miscalibration of gain on press will leave black showing through or cover the cmyk printed before it.

I fully understand how dc cmyk dots printed on top of other cmyk dots will create the same gamut of colors as normal cmyk inks on a white base if those colors are midtones or dark (meaning no white is normally uncovered by those other inks), but it's the lighter tones that require a significant amount of white that seem to defeat the whole process.