low bleed additive? Is there sucha thing or do I have to buy the ink?

[blue moon]

I have some basketball jerseys to print and would like to print direct without an underbase.
Does anybody make a low bleed additive I could add to my ink?
are there any other options?

[Frog]

I can't say no, but I have never heard of such a thing. If these are poly and you are printing white, you even need to consider one step further and getting a poly specific ink.

Good buzz has been going around about the new white from Xenon for this.
Though labeled "low bleed" (the usual designation for inks meant for 50/50 and other blends) folks have reported good results on pure poly.

Many poly-specific inks lose some printability.

[sportsshoppe]

One Stroke..... Works well, they really have a red that print flash print and ya can't tell it is not underbased. The only problem I have had was 50/50 button ( Eagle black in color ) that I used there athletic gold on and it looked like poop in 2 days. Have not found anything that will print on them and last. Base would work but on my inline machine I cannot put a base so I iz screwed. But it works well on everything else.

[sportsshoppe]

I tried to modify after futher reading the first post..... No I don't know of any additive but if Killer was here he would say " Put some Puff in it" 

[blue moon]

yeah, I will have to underbase. Oh well . . .

[Frog]

News Flash!
Another thread has uncovered a manufacturer with this product! Thank you Tony P

Lancer Excaliber

[Sbrem]

It looks like it's recommended for the Excalibur inks, but I would suspect it would work with other plastisols. However, I'm not sure if "low bleed" is low bleed enough for 100% poly...

Steve

[Frog]

Good point, Low Bleed is usually the term for 50/50 ink, whole Poly specific inks generally proudly display Poly in their name.

Then again, with a lot of fleece being 50/50, this additive could be pretty cool to keep around. Keep it for emergencies, to reduce the number of whites you stock, or just that odd color that you hardly ever need as low bleed.
Lancer's Excaliber inks are nice, but their problem is distribution. I can get it out of Los Angeles, but like so many products, if I can get something similar locally with no shipping charges, I probably will.

[Colin]

Any low bleed additive that is currently on the market, will only improve bleed resistance by 10%-25% at most.  This is due to the inherent nature of the fillers, plasticizers, and resins that are already within the ink.   

Our research has showed that it is most effective when put into a multipurpose ink that already has good to great low bleed qualities, as the chemical support is already in place.  When put into a cotton, or marginal bleed resitant ink, it does not perform as hoped.

You will be much better off buying an ink designed for the job at hand.

[Frog]

Cool, a controversy!

I need to get a Lancer/Excaliber tech here and you guys can duke it out, but if so, remember Play Nice! 

[ftembroidery]

I recently used a white poly ink by Rutland (P/F/P) on a bunch of those District Threads Camo Tees from SanMar.  Now admittedly, they are 100% cotton, but they are the camo dye that bleeds like there's no tomorrow.  Even the catalog description says special consideration/handling is required if screen printing.  They came out great and stayed that way for several days, so I turned them over to the customer.

[Colin]

lol Frog    I always play nice.  I went through their MSDS, and thanks to my long term interactions with my chemists, I'm pretty sure I know what's in there.  My advice would be to watch out for possible ghosting and you will probably see a small amount of loft to your final print. 

But yes, as per my post above, you will see an improvement in your bleed resistance, but you will get better results adding it to an ink that already has a minimum of good bleed resistance.  If you need it on poly materials, I would get a poly ink.

[tonypep]

BTW can't speak to the District Threads specifically but I'll wager they are not dyed but either rotary or belt printed yard goods that are then cut and sewn. Which means the camo pattern is waterbased ink. And that ink can bleed through like a mother.
Quick sidebar we used to do a s-ton of 101 Dalmation kids goods on cut pieced goods that had been belt printed with waterbased black paw prints. The plastisol overprints usually consisted of a large puppy head shot with a large amount of white in the graphic. Well it was a challenge getting those paws to not bleed through on the puppies face I can tell you. Thats pretty much where the concept of an underbase gray came about but of course we just made our own.
But wait........turns out at some point either the belt printer or ink manufacturer converted some (probably a drum) of waterbased pink into black for the paws. The paws certainly printed black but when overprinted with white plastisol the pink came through in spades no matter what. There were weeks of blame trading and name calling but in the end Disney made the call and had us return something like 10 pallets of merch and made the contractor replace them.
No moral I suppose; just a story to share with your morning coffee.
Happy Friday tp

[bimmridder]

If it were me printing this (and that's not saying much), I'd use something like Wilflex UB Gray or Rutland Dyno Gray. I'm sure most ink companies have something similar, I just don't know them all. This stuff stops the worst of the worst bleeders I've come across. It's also much easier to work with than it was a year or two ago.

[BorisB]

Cool, a controversy!

I need to get a Lancer/Excaliber tech here and you guys can duke it out, but if so, remember Play Nice! 

We tried low bleed additive from Excalibur with Wilflex GNS and Excalibur 500 series. Which is about same line of ink. It didn't improve bleeding resistance to acceptable level.  We achieved best results with Wilflex underbase grey and same product from Printop.  But way better than this are WB inks which we use for Transfers. Mostly they are special silver inks. In Europe they are called "Subliblocker" inks.

In one of really high end Transfers printshop i saw special black ink used as bleed stopper. It was a special ink mixed with carbon.  But they wouldn't reveal me anything. Anyone familiar with this?