Discharge formulas

[tonypep]

It's great to see that finally most discharge ink manufacturers are offering Pantone starter formulas. When I first started you were completely on your own. Heres how we started off. Below is a pic of Sericl GS blue both with 6% activator. The seies of dots on the left is the exact same color cut in half with binder. We would continue to cut these single pigmented colors with different amounts of binder and strike these off to be later assembled into formula notebooks. Very quickly we assembled 60 or more single pigmented colors. (BTW for best results and cleanest colors stay away from white ink or PCs in your formulas)
Next we began to make secondary and tertiary colors by combining pigments (or inks) You'll be suprised how many colors can be made with simply combining two hues (IE Purple plus Orange make great browns)

[inkman996]

Can you explain what the "Binder" is, and why it makes the blue on the left brighter?

[tonypep]

The term Binder is synomynous with Base or Clear Base. It's what's used to bind the color to the fabric. If you didn't use it the color would simply wash off. Sericol finished inks already have binder in them. PC systems use binder and pigment concentrate to complete a finished ink. The draw down process is slightly different but essentially the same. The more clear the brighter (or lighter) the color. Think of painting with watercolors. Plastisols behave more like oils or acrylics and require white for opacity and brightness. Since discharge inks displace the dye with pigment this is almost universally not needed; the exception being when printing a substrate that discharges poorly.

[inkman996]

Awesome info!

[ZooCity]

This was the biggest mindf*ck for me so far with discharge- what Tony just described. 

Once you get in the right groove it makes easy sense but it's difficult to think that your basic blue will brighten up by extending (less pigment) and not by adding white as it's so counterintuitive to what you would do with any non-DC ink.  It gets real weird when you toss in the level of activator and the garments greige color or what it discharges to at that activator level and how that is going to combine with your translucent ink to create the finished print. 

I love the Sericol forumulas as I know I'm probably getting as much pigment in there as possible to help bridge dye lots and garment changes in the run.  It's also where I enjoy an RFU system- you can add a little white to some mixes without blowing out the color as it's not hyper concentrated.