Newbie to discharge "mixing"

[Dottonedan]

So, being new to researching the in's and out's of discharge myself, what am I looking at for starters?


I have no idea what I'm doing here with mixing. Our PM says he's done DC printing (back when it smelled really bad) but that's been a long time and (we know it still smells bad today), but just not as bad is it once was.  So how do I move forward with doing this. What do I need for testing A gallon of this, a quart of that?

[Colin]

What distributors are close to you?

Are there any sales reps there - YOU trust?

From those few people, what systems do they offer?

What kind of support will they give you, or will they throw you towards the manufacturer for support and holding your hand as you test?

There are a number of discharge systems on the market.  They ALL work.  Some manufacturers formulas are more accurate than others out of the gate, and as Tony would say, most need to be tweaked.

Most beginning kits are discounted, so getting started is inexpensive.

Also, if you don't have thin thread screens already, invest in 6 to 12 for printing WB inks.  You will thank yourself later.

Depending on who you go with, you may need to pick up open time extenders or softening additives. 

I hope this non endorsing post helps

[ericheartsu]

What distributors are close to you?

Are there any sales reps there - YOU trust?

From those few people, what systems do they offer?

What kind of support will they give you, or will they throw you towards the manufacturer for support and holding your hand as you test?

There are a number of discharge systems on the market.  They ALL work.  Some manufacturers formulas are more accurate than others out of the gate, and as Tony would say, most need to be tweaked.

Most beginning kits are discounted, so getting started is inexpensive.

Also, if you don't have thin thread screens already, invest in 6 to 12 for printing WB inks.  You will thank yourself later.

Depending on who you go with, you may need to pick up open time extenders or softening additives. 

I hope this non endorsing post helps

EXCELLENT advice Colin.

Dan, we haven't really found a mixing system for DC that is accurate. It just takes alot of testing, to understand where you need to add or take pigment away.

[brandon]

Yup, all of the above. I recommend finding a brand you like, make sure you can consistently get it, and then stick with it and master it. Make your own Pantone recipes, (yes, that is a lot I know) and make your own house colors. Even then it won't be consistent on all brands of tees because some brands of tees discharge better than others. It's a lot of work but once you do it is like riding a bike.

[ABuffington]

Hello Dan,

Once you have a good color match (which can take many adjustments) documentation of press settings is key.  Consider you are laying down a low viscosity ink that is really affected by the print process.  We documented the following for each print.  Repeat printing with a complex design with discharge is harder than the first set up, so documentation saved hours and hours of tweaking an 8-10 color discharge job.
1. Color Recipe to mix inks to ball park consistency - Activator, weighed out precisely on a digital scale, always the same, for 1 quart at a time. One drop on the hem, fold over and press with hand, cure gis a fairly accurate cure color test.
2. Mesh - Tension/Count/thread diameter
3. Squeegee durometer and edge quality. Squeegees don't wear out as much with discharge, so we found our worn plastisol white base 70 duro squeegees had a dulled edge that printed discharge better.  We numbered the squeegees as well as which side A or B. 
4. Squeegee angle and speed - with discharge the color can shift with more or less ink.  We found more to be easier to match to in production and provided good color.  So we ran at slightly slower squeegee speeds to give the garment time to soak up the discharge.  Same with angle, 5-10 degrees more angle produced more consistent color.  As the inks pick up fiber both the slower squeegee speed and angle helped preserve color whereas less angle and faster squeegee speed often suffered color shift as inks dry out a little and pick up fiber.

One thing I have posted before is to create ink dams to keep the ink localized.  A pool of discharge ink trapped by tape walls maintains color far better than allowing the inks to spread out and get exposed to air.  If inks aren't pushed back into the path of the squeegee soon enough, color shift or ribbons of off color can appear in the print if inks are alllowed to evaporate without ink dams.  So ink dams keep the ink fresh.  We also slowed down the print speed.  With all squeegee speeds balanced the press would cycle immediately at the end of the print stroke and a slow flood would start.  This prevented the puddle of discharge from flowing back over the image and causing drips, or too much ink that would smear with the print.  Mesh can control this if finer, but we obtained far better color with S type mesh, or coarse 110's for large areas.

Also, estimating the amount of ink needed for a print run helps maintain color.  Stopping in the middle of a print run to match a difficult red can cause the whole print to have issues.  In worse case scenario you could wind up pulling all inks from all screens and discarding it, cleaning the screens, as the difficult color is matched.  If near an end of day shift it really kills production yields.  So we over mixed ink in many cases to avoid stopping the press.  Once colors and print are approved you want the press to run non-stop to completion.  Discharge printing is like a spinning top, if one thing goes wrong it affects another and so on until wash up of all screens and starting over gets closer to color matched print.

For many of your customers all of this attention to color match may not be an issue, but with specific pantone customers or repeat orders for retail sales or fashion, these tips made production a breeze. 

[Dottonedan]

Wow.  The more I read on this from you guy's, the less promising and rewarding this sounds.


It sounds (less accurate) for colors in the first place, then harder to repeat than plastisol, and a lot of testing to fine tune and you have to create your own tweaked color recipe.


What is the main benefit you all find with waterbase over plastisol (other than just the soft hand)?  So far, it doesn't sound like production is a any easier than plastisol printing. in fact, it sounds harder. I'm not seeing if you can reap any increased financial rewards over plastisol. I'm not trying to be anti water base/DC, but dang.  I don't wanna make things even harder than they are.

[ericheartsu]

Wow.  The more I read on this from you guy's, the less promising and rewarding this sounds.


It sounds (less accurate) for colors in the first place, then harder to repeat than plastisol, and a lot of testing to fine tune and you have to create your own tweaked color recipe.


What is the main benefit you all find with waterbase over plastisol (other than just the soft hand)?  So far, it doesn't sound like production is a any easier than plastisol printing. in fact, it sounds harder. I'm not seeing if you can reap any increased financial rewards over plastisol. I'm not trying to be anti water base/DC, but dang.  I don't wanna make things even harder than they are.

It's way harder. It makes you a better printer. You can tottally reap the rewards of it, if you know how to market it. WB/DC vs plastisol, and WB/DC will win in your clients eyes all day.

and color matching with DC, takes more effort, but it's easily attainable, and easily replicated. It's just not out of the bucket. The attached picture is a job i've printed at least 40 times. and it's insanely easy to come up with a recipe for the ink, tweak it til it's perfect, and just make it over and over again.

[ABuffington]

Yes once you get the hang of wb and discharge it will change the way you look at art and print.  Spot color over white plastisol requires well tensioned screens, just the right deposit so wet on wet works well. Plastisol is the better sim process ink, but some large spot color art is a headache on darks, so discharge is easier.  Then many spot over base colors need flashing and so on until you so many flashes you can cook an egg on the pallet.  With many of our jobs I just ran discharge dark to light and maybe a flash once in awhile to keep a gold or bright orange consistent.  In many cases you can run wet onto wet as fast as the machine can print with little flashing. Some jobs we went with smallest print area to  largest print area, the art determined the sequence.  We slowed down squeegees a bit to keep good color. Ghosting between colors is almost non existent since almost all of the ink is below the shirt surface.  I look at plastisol over base plate like printing on glass, very unforgiving in large color areas since there is no absorption of the ink, whereas discharge and wb (not HSA) is like printing on a sponge where the ink interferes very little with the next screen(s) in line.  I burnt out on solvents to wash up plastisol, so much nicer to have a 5 gallon of warm water by the press to wash up with.  Air gun over the press can help dry image area quick after a wash up.  If you have a long run of water base and long pot life discharge you may be able to get away without needing to wash the entire screem.  At the end of the day we stopped the flood on cycle outt, pulled squeegees and flood and dropped them in a tall 5 gallon bucket of water, pushed any ink to the back, washed image and sides with warm water (so quick!), then we put Saran wrap or dry cleaning bags over the ink and pressed it gently against the puddle of ink to keep it wet all night.  Next morning the correct squeegees are in the water bucket, everything melts off over night. Having the same squeegees by the head they came from assures a good color match since it's the same squeegee, same duro, same angle, same edge, rather than going to the sink and guessing which squeegee went where.  Wipe down squeegee, add ink, quick start up in the AM.

A good ink department is key.  Having a guy who can mix color by eye really helps with waterbase. He can use a recipe for sure, but the final tweaks helps if he knows color. His standardized testing method, which is hardly scientific, but it did work.  As I mentioned previously, a drop of wb or discharge on the fabric, fold over and press gave good tests before going in the screen.  You can take a drop from the screen and new batch and put both side by side and fold over and press to gauge color strength.  If he knows pigments he can add just a drop of what he needs.

All in all if I went into production again, it would be cut piece white goods with water base, easiest, fastest printing ever!  Cause you can do two prints at once, or sleeves, or any other fun engineering layouts on a large format press with cut piece.

Al

[Dottonedan]

Ok.  That sounds like there is a chance now.  Im not crying in my cornflakes. LOL.


I know a customer (holding a water base in one hand and the same print with plastisol in the other, would choose the water base.


It's just that I still see far more plastisol being printed for retail than water base on basic tees. I'm talking department store retail like Kohls, Macy's, Neiman Marcus, Sears, Belk, etc.   Like a super high percentage of the basic tee designs are still done in plastisol. So it just makes me ask the question, Can you charge 50 cents more for water base because it's softer or does that make a difference to the end user if they don't see a comparison sitting in front of them.


What makes a shop want to switch to water base?  Are they reaping more sales because it's a water base shop or are they just marketing their shop real well? Can a shop easily"make it efficient in their shop more so than if they were only doing plastisol?  Just thoughts running through my brain.

[ericheartsu]

Dan, you're more than welcome to come to our shop, and i'll probably say Danny will say the same thing. We are far from the most efficient, but we are constantly working on it.

[tonypep]

OK just chiming in here. So much depends on your shop and not necessarily the ink. Yes if the press ops are not trained or do not care about what is happening, then yes problems will arise. Most wb/dc formulas are "starters". Scary for many however, once balanced and managed correctly, then it is all about the P's Product, Policies. and Procedures.

[Colin]

Dan,

There is an SGIA WB camp on Sept 20 & 21.  Could be well worth your while.

http://www.signindustry.com/pressrelease/releases/2019-07-16-SGIA_Water-Based_Camp.php3

[ericheartsu]

Dan,

There is an SGIA WB camp on Sept 20 & 21.  Could be well worth your while.

http://www.signindustry.com/pressrelease/releases/2019-07-16-SGIA_Water-Based_Camp.php3

see you there!

[Biverson]

What makes a shop want to switch to water base?  Are they reaping more sales because it's a water base shop or are they just marketing their shop real well? Can a shop easily make it efficient in their shop more so than if they were only doing plastisol?  Just thoughts running through my brain.

I'm toying with the idea of moving to WB. Probably not completely, but we'll see. My market isn't necessarily demanding it, but I want to offer more. Some of the reasons are 1.) I want to be a better printer and print shop 2.) softer prints 3.) to run my shop more efficiently, and  4.) to get good at something that sets me apart from other local shops.

I've got some Virus coming in on Monday and am excited to work with their WOW inks. I like that on most all of their videos and printed they specify exactly how they printed it, down to the squeegee durometer, angle, strokes, mesh count/diameter, etc. Having a 7 color press (6 if I put head 7 up and 4 if I use both flashes) makes me rely on revolver/cycle mode too much. I've got a good stock of Thin Thread and have even been putting them on my Newman's - haven't popped one yet!

I'm most worried about the durability of my screens/emulsion. When I have run WB few and far between I don't have too much luck. Breaks down after a bit or when I wash it out. SAATI PHU2, but it's probably my process. Never used stencil hardener either.

If like to hear the reasons other shops switched to WB other than it's more eco-friendly.

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