[theory] What makes white ink so hard to print? Part 4

[ebscreen]

Used Quick for years.

Then titanium dioxide went up two dollars a metric ton so of course Quick tripled in price.

We go through 2-3 fives of white a month. For ~$600 difference I'll deal with StreetFighters quirks.

[Screened Gear]

You guys just said the same thing I told Pierre earlier in this post, but why don't we have the same problems with color inks, seem to me we never complain about the color inks unless its mixing ink color or DC.

Darryl

Thats an easy one. We don't expect as much work out of color inks. Color inks we only print on light color shirts or over a "white" underbase on dark colors. White we expect to print on dark colors and cover perfect and do it smoothly. To even have a chance of doing this they pack a ton of pigment into white inks. So now we have a thick high pigment ink that we need to push through a mesh that in most cases needs to be higher than the ink is good at because we want to print super high detail prints.

[JBLUE]

You guys just said the same thing I told Pierre earlier in this post, but why don't we have the same problems with color inks, seem to me we never complain about the color inks unless its mixing ink color or DC.

Darryl

You do not hear those of us that use Quick White complaining. Only a few that complain about the price tag. I bet if they go back and look at the cost on time spent F'ng with the SF2 they would see that the savings is not anywhere close to where they think it is. Not only do you have to factor that in but also the loss in quality of the print itself.

[ZooCity]

I actually wish all our plastisol spot color printed like our white.  The white's easier, more predictable and holds it's body correctly on the auto, the colors are often a pain in the ass, especially over a white base.

[Colin]

Ahhhhh..... color......

you want correct color shade or opacity?

Shall we throw in the ability to print wet on wet too?

[ScreenPrinter123]

I actually wish all our plastisol spot color printed like our white.  The white's easier, more predictable and holds it's body correctly on the auto, the colors are often a pain in the ass, especially over a white base.

Ditto this plus the fact that whites print with much less pressure.  Not sure what problems people are having with SF2 as it prints pretty easy for us.  Just went through a 5er of it the past few days because we could not get Superior in time.  Superior has been the best bang for the buck for us and the only aggravation is its squeegee climbing, but the much more expensive Tidy acted the same and did not give any better results with a much higher price tag.  But again this is our shop with our variables so without laying all of that out this is probably not all that helpful.

[Screened Gear]

I actually wish all our plastisol spot color printed like our white.  The white's easier, more predictable and holds it's body correctly on the auto, the colors are often a pain in the ass, especially over a white base.

That doesn't sound right. How much pressure are you printing your top colors with? What angle? What ink is it?

[alan802]

I love printing white ink.  We can print white ink faster than most of our colors and with less pressure.  Since the VAST majority of our jobs require white ink as a standalone or underbase, I decided a long time ago I wasn't going to struggle with it anymore and tried my best to tame the wild beast.  For the first few years it was not fun, as a matter of fact, it was hellish on some days.

THIN THREAD MESH

[alan802]

I've been thinking about switching back to the superior because it gave us great results at a cheaper price but it wasn't near as consistent as the Tidy.  All 60 gallons of the Tidy we've used have been identical and the superior had a few pails that were off from the standard which wasn't that big of a deal but the Tidy is one day away and $15 more per gallon and not a ton better but still a little more opacity and faster flash but almost the same matte down and print speeds.

[ZooCity]

Ahhhhh..... color......

you want correct color shade or opacity?

Shall we throw in the ability to print wet on wet too?

I want it all.

I actually wish all our plastisol spot color printed like our white.  The white's easier, more predictable and holds it's body correctly on the auto, the colors are often a pain in the ass, especially over a white base.

That doesn't sound right. How much pressure are you printing your top colors with? What angle? What ink is it?

Wilflex Epic.  The standard base had rheology drop issues with automatic printing.  I was warned about it by others and it's a b. when it happens.  You'll be printing away and all of the sudden the opacity goes to hell b/c the ink thinned out.  The Opaque Base appears to have solved this and we have some Amazing Base which specifically states that it's solved it but we haven't ran the amazing.  I wish to god Wilflex would make a line of "Quick" spot colors that printed like the white or, better yet, a quick base.  We try to mix our house colors that involve white with Quick as the main component in fact. 

Back on topic, all I'm saying it that I find white plastisol ink easy to print, love having it on press.  At least I do now considering all the thought that's gone into doing it.  Like Alan and everyone it took a lot of study for me to lock down the right procedure that I could teach to our staff, it's still a work in progress getting the main points driven home to everyone.  What Pierre is studying is very important for a shop that has the good looking white print but needs to do it faster in production I think, do I have that right?  It's the next step I've been taking here and I'm slowing getting us there, re-teaching my lead printer how to get that fast stroke to clear, but I'm not changing inks unless I hit a wall with our current. 

[ScreenPrinter123]

Only used about 20-25 gallons of superior (small shop syndrome) so far and no bad batches yet.  Were flashing today at 1 second and possibly could have sped it up but since the pallets were staying at 150 just ran with it so flashing has not been an issue.  Did not spend much time with Tidy because after some tweaking it did not produce better results than Superior so we just used up the 5 we got and continued using Superior

White ink on dark shirts prints faster and with less pressure than colors on white shirts to get enough opacity.  Colors on an underbase is a whole different story as you can really lighten the pressure and jack up the speeds.  S Mesh and a little time and then cracking the white ink mystery changes everything.  It helps when you print more white than anything else, so much so that we feel most confident in setting white up on press and knowing exactly how it will perform.