Burn Out Tees

[T Shirt Farmer]

Can you guys school me on printing burn out fabric. I have not attempted it before and know some of you have. Any advice is much appreciated.

Thanks!

[Socalfmf]

#1  they suck
#2  ink does not really stay where it is burnt out...
#3.  they suck

that should cover it

[alan802]

Don't try to do pfp types of designs or really bold spot colors.  You can do them, it just doesn't look all that good.  When your ink deposit is thicker than the shirt, it's not a good combination.  You can underbase and print top colors no problem but the more distressed/vintage prints look the best on that type of shirt.  Use higher mesh counts for your underbase if you do have to UB because your flash times need to be low or you'll burn the shirts.  Thinner ink deposits work best so don't just try to print anything the customer wants.  I did have some sample prints on burnout tees but a customer has them right now showing them to her employees.  If I get them back soon I'll take some pics.

I haven't tried any discharge or wb inks on burnouts, but I'm sure TonyP has and probably some others here.

[Doug S]

#1  they suck
#2  ink does not really stay where it is burnt out...
#3.  they suck

that should cover it

I agree,  we had a customer recently that orders frequently and told us to order whatever type of shirt we wanted to print on.  One of my part time help decided to order burn out tees because she thought they were cute.  Printing on them isn't nearly as cute believe me.  It was just a one color white print and of course everywhere the white hit that was burned out, didn't look as good as the rest.  Also, they are very easily scortchable.

[ScreenFoo]

Just had a couple in one of those 'bag of stuff' orders--but I was lucky, and it was a thin line design that looked pretty good.  Totally agree with the three point list.


Anyone play with the Matsui OP-30PS?  Sounds like the way to do stuff like that--and way cooler than printing plastic on an already-burned-out tee.

[Doug B]

  The "burn out" is chemically removing portions of cotton from 50/50
fabric. Just pretend you are printing on 100% poly. You will still have an
uneven print because some of the print will be on poly and some on
cotton.

[tonypep]

Bold, clean vector prints are not really suitable for these. WB on light colored burnouts (not discharge) work well. I'm doing a tonal  organic distressed print now with diluted plastisols. The HSA inks also work but I still have issues with the ink drying in the screens. Beta testing the Sericol vs shortly. These decorations must be reverse engineered from the garment backwords.

[woodrow]

They sure are popular but a bear to print on, typically we try to stay in the 160-230 mesh range with 50/50 based plastisols. Trying to foil them even tougher, distressed art is the way to deal with the unevens that happen because of the process.

[head north]

Got asked to print these on burnout tees (purple and black).  We haven't printed on burnout before.  Those of you who have, do you think this image would turn out ok?  This is just a sample but sums up the design pretty well.

[mk162]

you now what looks best, turn it inside out and print the inside with a lot of pressure to force the ink through

I've had good luck with them.  I printed burnouts last week that looked great.  PFP.

[Gilligan]

you now what looks best, turn it inside out and print the inside with a lot of pressure to force the ink through

I've had good luck with them.  I printed burnouts last week that looked great.  PFP.

Interesting idea... do you end up with any kind of ink buildup on the platens?

[mk162]

a little, but not much at all.  it's better than athletic mesh.

[Sbrem]

We print a lot of them with 140 mesh, some pfp, but it depends on the ink/shirt combo of course. We have a customer that has a going yoga clothing business, and they use a lot of the thin shirts, so there are really just, well, thinner.

Steve

[JBLUE]

We do a lot of them as well. Try to keep the inks to trans colors that way you dont really have to flash. I avoid doing a base white at all cost. It just does not work well on the shirt.

[Donnie]

I ran a sim process on a few and the print looked interesting. The ladies liked them, you have to be careful with the heat.