Fashion Base or Soft Hand Plastisol

[mimosatexas]

I really haven't used soft hand or fashion base inks as I have steered basically every client who would use them to waterbased and discharge inks instead, and they all love them.  I have a client who I printed a run of discharge gray and waterbased black for a few months ago, and he is complaining about the final prints.  He brought in what appears to be a discharge underbase with soft hand plastisol shirt he bought retail and wants the same feel. The final print has a hand, but is definitely matte and soft, though it is cracked all to hell and really not that vibrant compared to my standard results with discharge. I still haven't seen the original problem shirts, so I can't explain what his issue is with them, but I got tired of showing him samples of wash tested vibrant discharge samples with the colors of his new design so I just want to run the job as requested.

Can I buy fashion or soft hand as a base, add some percentage of it to a standard plastisol color and print, or do I need plastisol pigments or a rfu soft hand ink in the desired color?  I will probably just dc underbase and print with high mesh for the colors using standard inks unless I can just add something to my current ink system.  Thoughts?

[ebscreen]

Can I buy fashion or soft hand as a base, add some percentage of it to a standard plastisol color and print,

Yes. Chino base from Rutland is a good one, there's a bunch of others. Read up on the percentages, curable one's can be added up to a ridiculous
amount to make a super transparent (and easy to print!) ink. Gotta have all ends covered, plastisol still has it's place in our arsenal.

[Frog]

I use soft hand bases from Union and IC with inks from Ultrasoft to Mixopake in varying degrees. Along with reduced hand and opacity, you do give up some resistance to fibrilation as well.

[mimosatexas]

Sounds good.  I was mostly worried about whether or not it would knock down the vibrancy too much.  Based on the print he brought me, I don't think he cares about the fibration etc.

[Underbase37]

I'm sure everyone is similar but, with Wilflex, soft hand & curable reducer are very different. For that faux WB look go with curable reducer........ either one will affect opacity but if you're going to DC/UB you shouldn't need to worry about it..........with curable reducer you can reduce just about any plastisol ink to the consistency of WB.........you will also get a similar opacity tho.

Murphy37

[mimosatexas]

tried adding 50% "fashion base" to standard inks and it got the ink runny, but it still had basically the same hand and same shine as a standard print with the same specs.  Single stroke through a 280 on light shirts, no UB. 

I've tried the curable reducer in the past and it basically did the same thing.  Not really impressed.  I'm going to try to get samples of some other options like the rutland chino base I guess.

I'm not sure if they even make it, but I was hoping for something that both gets rid of a substantial amount of the hand, or literally makes the ink feel soft vs stiff AND mattes the ink.  Do I need to add suede/dulling AND some other base to get the desired effect.  I feel like there is enough of a market for this to be an all in one product by now...

[ebscreen]

By and large the idea is to reduce the ink to be able to pass fine mesh counts and then drive it into the shirt.
Try a 230 and heavy pressure, might need two strokes manually.

[sqslabs]

Not sure what brand you're using, but we've had really good success with QCM Softee Base and it can be mixed up to 90%. 

[Colin]

You can add ANY AMOUNT of base (softee, Chino, etc) to your inks that you want.  They are all curable on their own.

The ONLY thing you want to be aware of is how disperse your pigments will become = Opacity changes.  The more you add, the more your inks will become translucent and eventually have close to no opacity.  These bases are BEST used with a pigment type mixing system.  This allows you to dial in the ink color/richness of color shade that you want.

As for shine:  You need to have the ink driven into the shirt.  If this means you use a blank screen after a 1 color print to drive the ink further into the garment, then I recommend you do so. 

My experience with adding any dulling agent to the ink is it changes the feel of the cured garment - gives it a bit of a hand - it is a touch stiffer.  Remember we are expanding the ink film that has been pushed into the garment.

Side note on hand/stiffness of a soft hand print.  The resins used in the different bases cure out to a softer durometer.  We are all familiar with durometer hardness with the different squeegees we use.  These bases cure out closer to a 50 durometer squeegee (its actually much softer) that the typical 70 durometer for standard plastisol that we are used to. 

What this means for hand:  The ink will have some stickiness/grip to it.  For kicks and giggles, go do a print flash print sample of Softee/Chino/Fashion base etc and see how it feels when cured.

As for fibrillation........ yea..... nothing on the market traps the fibers as well as we would want.  To truly trap the fibers you need to encapsulate the threads which means a stiffer hand...  So, if that is your goal, you will need to sacrifice some softness of the print.

Hope this helps!

[mimosatexas]

By and large the idea is to reduce the ink to be able to pass fine mesh counts and then drive it into the shirt.
Try a 230 and heavy pressure, might need two strokes manually.

I used 280 and very heavy pressure.

I like the idea of the smoothing screen as someone mentioned.  Maybe this would be a good use for the roller squeegee.

Has anyone compared different brands, like rutlands chino vs the QCM softee etc?  If not I am going to go ahead and get samples of all of them.  I just wanted really impressed with what I saw on this first test.

[mimosatexas]

You can add ANY AMOUNT of base (softee, Chino, etc) to your inks that you want.  They are all curable on their own.

The ONLY thing you want to be aware of is how disperse your pigments will become = Opacity changes.  The more you add, the more your inks will become translucent and eventually have close to no opacity.  These bases are BEST used with a pigment type mixing system.  This allows you to dial in the ink color/richness of color shade that you want.

As for shine:  You need to have the ink driven into the shirt.  If this means you use a blank screen after a 1 color print to drive the ink further into the garment, then I recommend you do so. 

My experience with adding any dulling agent to the ink is it changes the feel of the cured garment - gives it a bit of a hand - it is a touch stiffer.  Remember we are expanding the ink film that has been pushed into the garment.

Side note on hand/stiffness of a soft hand print.  The resins used in the different bases cure out to a softer durometer.  We are all familiar with durometer hardness with the different squeegees we use.  These bases cure out closer to a 50 durometer squeegee (its actually much softer) that the typical 70 durometer for standard plastisol that we are used to. 

What this means for hand:  The ink will have some stickiness/grip to it.  For kicks and giggles, go do a print flash print sample of Softee/Chino/Fashion base etc and see how it feels when cured.

As for fibrillation........ yea..... nothing on the market traps the fibers as well as we would want.  To truly trap the fibers you need to encapsulate the threads which means a stiffer hand...  So, if that is your goal, you will need to sacrifice some softness of the print.

Hope this helps!

All great info!  I am definitely going to keep testing.  I know it is a bit of a tangent, but what are people's preferred plastisol pigment systems?  I do like that I can use the same pigments for discharge and waterbase can definitely see the benefit of a pigment system for plastisol where I can mix my own standards and add them to whatever base I need at the time.

[ebscreen]

I'd have to ask the ink dude/printers, but by and large, to me, the reducers only come in two flavors.
The kind you can pour, which will obviously reduce viscosity a lot, and the kind you can scoop, which
will make an ink more buttery, but not liquid like. Chino, Sofftee, and your generic Curable Reducers
fall under the first, most fashion bases and softhand reducers fall under the second. We have Chino, Sofftee, and curable reducer
here, and while all have similar properties, each has their own niche.

Colin that's incredible info on how bases cure out, I would never have thought of that, and no salesman
would ever know that to tell me.

[mimosatexas]

Would you mind going into the differences when it comes to the final product and how you might print them differently when it comes to chino, softee and curable reducer?  It sounds like you have done the testing and I'd love to avoid the trouble if possible.

[ebscreen]

Scientific testing, no. Head banging experience aplenty.

Shorthand:

Curable reducer we use mainly for the purpose of decreasing viscosity in too thick inks,
where a reduction in opacity would be offset by the ability to clear a given mesh.

Chino we use when we're doing vintage type work on darks or softhand on lights. It maintains
viscosity slightly better than curable reducer. I'd say sofftee is probably about the same but I'd
have to ask.

Fashion base we use when we know we're doing one of the above and are starting from scratch,
IE Wilflex Epic PC's and fashion soft base. It's also good for softening/reducing opacity on a pre-mixed ink
without reducing the viscosity as much. Great for when you need to clear high mesh but don't want
tones to blow out, etc, similar to some halftone additives.

Largely your choice will depend on the qualities of the ink you are modifying and where you want to go
with it.