DISCHARGE BASE - PLASTISOL ON TOP

[SOCIALRECLUSE]

Hi guys. Just looking for some advice on this please.

I have a tshirt design that I print a solid square of white discharge ink on the tshirt and then black plastisol on top.
They go through the dryer and everything looks great.. However.. on some shirts the black ink is washing off or fading fast.

Do I need to up the temp?

It seems the plastisol isnt getting cured. This is the same ink that if I print without the discharge will stay on the shirt and not wash off.

Any help advice appreciated.


Thanks

B

[sqslabs]

Using white discharge as an underbase for plastisol isn't a good idea for the reasons you've described.  Plastisol almost always washes off of a white discharge UB. 

Putting some white discharge in the mix is fine (I'm sure someone will chime in with a ratio), but most of it should be standard pigmentless discharge base.  Or you can skip that step and use a ready for use product like CCI's U-Base. 

Secondly, and mostly out of curiosity, why are you underbasing black plastisol?

[3Deep]

Only time I can see using an underbase for black ink is if we are printing black on a black/dark garment to make the black ink shine more.  We've printed discharge underbase and used plastisol for the top colors and I can't say we've had a problem with it washing off or no one has brought anything back, might be dumb luck on our part, good info to look out for in the future though.

[RICK STEFANICK]

I use a 85/15 Base/White..200 mesh, 70/90/70

[kingscreen]

Use CCI UBase or switch to an 80/20 (80 Base/20 White) discharge mix.  And most importantly, don't underbase the Black.
We stock two Black inks, one glossy, for whenever a shinier Black is desired.

Printing Plastisol on top of D-White will wash off.  Any experience of it not is pure luck, imo.

[SOCIALRECLUSE]

Use CCI UBase or switch to an 80/20 (80 Base/20 White) discharge mix.  And most importantly, don't underbase the Black.
We stock two Black inks, one glossy, for whenever a shinier Black is desired.

Printing Plastisol on top of D-White will wash off.  Any experience of it not is pure luck, imo.

Thanks for the replies. The shirt is a navy shirt. The graphic is made up of 2 colours.. ones is white and the other black. If you can imagine the graphic to that of a newpaper page.. the white discharge is printed first then the black.. the black holds all the type, images and graphics..

So printing black plastisol over white discharge will wash off?

[sqslabs]

Yes, the black ink will most likely wash off the white discharge.  I'm personally not 100% certain as to why, but I'm guessing the white pigment keeps the plastisol from binding to the fabric.  In any case, it's not gonna work out well.

Without seeing the artwork and level of detail, if my shop had to print this and the customer required a soft hand, I'd go with one of the following, in order:

1.  Knockout the text and use the navy shirt as the black in the design.  1 color white discharge print.

2. Print them butt registration, most likely black first and discharge white second.

3. Discharge underbase - flash - white softhand plastisol full base - flash - black on top of the white plastisol.

[BRGtshirts]

Can you swith to a clear DC. It should give you an off-white look that could go as an old faded newspaper..(tests will show how it looks on the actual garment)?

Also, anytime you do DC underbases you got to make sure that you're getting a really good discharge on press, before you overprint your plastisol. Otherwise, in my experience, it can negatively affect the plastisols bonding and wash durability. When we first started with DC UB's, we assumed that if the dryer was at our waterbase/DC settings (a lot longer time in the chamber vs. plastisol) the DC would still activate in the dryer.. And it did, and we got good results when they came out of the dryer. BUT, through trial and error we realized that those good looking prints did not have good wash fastness because of the discharge sending moisture into the plastisol as it evaporated, thus creating issues on down the road.

[Squeegie]

If still wanting to go with the two color print of DC white and Black...why not use a waterbase black ink?

Best of luck.

[AAMike]

use waterbase black too. problem solved

[sqslabs]

Wouldn't waterbased black turn grey?