Still Looking for that Magic White Ink for Fleece...

[Donnie]

I am pretty happy with One Stroke LB premium for all my tees, but it ain't the sharpest tool in the shed for fleece. Got to beat the piss out of it and make damn sure it's stored near a f'ing blast furnace in the winter for it to be worth a damn on fleece. Have some decent luck with Rutland Snap white.  What are you all using for fleece?

[jsheridan]

Their is no magic white..
Stop looking for it an make it. Get some reducer and start creating different mixes until you find the one that fits your shop and printing techniques.

The answer on fleece is NOT to put a thick print, but a thin layered one. The use of a blank smoothing screen directly after the flash is a must to make it all smooth and flat.

[ZooCity]

The last set of hoodies I printed we ran Epic Quick White straight out of the bucket, 150/48 UB, 225/40 highlight.  One of the better looking prints I've done on fleece given the overall area.  I think you need to drop a load of ink on the first pass and smooth it down with a thinner layer on the second.  I also think you need a metric crap-ton of off-contact when printing on fleece. 

Generally speaking with white ink I don't touch it unless it's going into the "fashion white" bucket then it gets some fashion soft. 

It never hurts to warm it up prior and keep it warm during printing.  I think it does more for 'printability' than stirring can.

Just my experience thus far.  We always use a singular white that gets used straight, based down with fashion soft (softee when we used qcm) and then an additional low cure temp white.  That's it.  Printing White is about having your parameters nailed down, if you have too many varieties you either won't nail those variables down or you'll spend way too much time doing it.  I say find a good one and keep it constant. 

I thought QCM 159 was a good white too but everyone else on here didn't care for it.  That stuff did tend to make an expedition up the squeegee but it was very bright, opaque, held marvelous detail and fought dye migration pretty darn well.  Trouble was (is?) that every bucket was a little different.  You don't need to add the variable of inconsistent formulation into the situation. 

If Epic Quick cured at 290 and was just a little bit brighter it probably would be something like a 'magic' white.   But I'm glad it's not because magic be the devil's work. 

[Nation03]

I hear you on the one stroke. That stuff is like cement when the temp drops in our shop. Since I print manually my trick is to heat up the fleece before I print the white. Only for the first couple of them though. Then the white loosens up... but it is still too thick. I had good results with qcm 158 and I had excellent results with IC Ryonet white. I'm going to try Union Ultrasoft white next, I'm sure there is no bleed resistance, but on certain fleece, I'm sure it will work nicely. I need to pick up some of this fashion soft base also.

[tonypep]

Epic Quick is Ok but I have switched to RT Streetfighter. Great for blends and cotton and great price. Phthalate free also.

[Denis Kolar]

Not as much experience with screen printing here, but as far as white ink, I love how the WM Plastics ultimate white prints and feels.

[alan802]

I went through every single white ink that One Stroke offered recently and nothing really stood out, but it sure wasn't bad by any means.  I've been using Rutland Snap for a few weeks now and adding a touch, maybe 5% of qcm 159 to shorten it up a tad.  This has been a great combination.

[Clark]

I went through every single white ink that One Stroke offered recently and nothing really stood out, but it sure wasn't bad by any means.  I've been using Rutland Snap for a few weeks now and adding a touch, maybe 5% of qcm 159 to shorten it up a tad.  This has been a great combination.

Alan,

I went through about 10 gallons of the snap white the last few weeks and I love the stuff.  The only issue I had with it was it drying in the screen when running at high speeds a station or two after a flash.  It gave me absolute hell on a couple big jobs...so bad after a few hundreds shirts we were having to throw away the ink in the screen, refill with fresh ink from the bucket, and use screen opener.  Other than that it is bueno..have you had any problems with this? 

[Donnie]

So, Alan I take it that the "south of the border" supplier of white is still dried up.

Probably the word "magic" should not have been used in the same sentence with any brand of ink. Fleece printing is synonymous with cooler weather and I think therein lies the biggest factor with problems with ink.  My 5 gallon buckets are setting on the floor where it is typically the coldest.  One Stroke is a bitch when cold. Like Alan, I have had much better luck with Snap White on fleece. A heated box for ink storage would be a great invention.....

[terryei]

I can remember back 10 years.  We printed nothing but white ink.  I've been through at least 5 different brands.  You can get many opinions.  Somebody told me a long time ago.  Learn how to print white ink on many substraites and the rest of the business is easy (except for the customers)
Get some cheap fleece, make a small design, get some sample inks, and cureable reducer, and print, print, print.  You'll get there.
Terry

[alan802]

Alan,

I went through about 10 gallons of the snap white the last few weeks and I love the stuff.  The only issue I had with it was it drying in the screen when running at high speeds a station or two after a flash.  It gave me absolute hell on a couple big jobs...so bad after a few hundreds shirts we were having to throw away the ink in the screen, refill with fresh ink from the bucket, and use screen opener.  Other than that it is bueno..have you had any problems with this? 

I haven't had that problem yet with this white, but this problem you speak of was fairly common, especially in the summer months.  That's really the only drawback to quick flashing whites and inks in general and it sucks for sure.  Since I've really began to try and keep our pallets from getting too hot, ink drying in the screens after the flash has decreased dramatically.  I bought a temp gun and on longer runs with many colors I'll keep a close eye on the pallet heat and keep dropping the flash time throughout the print run.  I was pretty amazed at how hot my guy was getting the pallets.  When I was running the press I'd always change the flash times accordingly as the print run went on but he'd keep them the same all the way through and our pallets were getting up to 180 degrees during longer runs.  That is almost, if not hot enough to gel some of your quicker flashing whites without even running the flash unit!  I have no real idea of how hot the pallets should be during a print run but I think 170-180 is too damn hot and I've been trying to keep ours in the 140 range and our flash times get significantly lower when I get up to and above 140.  When our pallet temps were 180, our flash times were around 1 second and that was with a 110 mesh underbase with a significant ink deposit.

Does anyone else monitor pallet temp and have any numbers to share with us, as well as flash times when you know your pallets are super hot?

Donnie, the opportunity is still there, but I really don't like to rely on a white ink that is a week away, and it's a pay before delivery type of deal as well.  I'm treating it as a last resort and making sure there isn't a white ink that I like to use that is only a day or two away.

[ebscreen]

Just a sidenote on pallet heat, one of the few drawbacks to honeycomb pallets is how fast they heat up and cool
down. Hard to gauge and maintain temp/flash times. Stopping to pick lint or whatever can mean reupping the flash time
on sensitive jobs and cold days.

Always thought it would be a cool feature for auto's to have a programmable automatic stepdown/up of flash times.
Or one that reads pallet temps, like our old namesake was describing.

[Gilligan]

I wouldn't imagine that would be hard to program in.  Temp probes that could measure would be cheap.  Then you just program in a curve that would react accordingly.

Get on it Rich!  Btw, name it after me! :p

[Homer]

Wilflex White Buffalo. works on fleece, t-shirts, prints well on the manual and auto, very creamy, 230 mesh down to a 160. .  and it's not expensive. love it. 

[alan802]

Wilflex White Buffalo. works on fleece, t-shirts, prints well on the manual and auto, very creamy, 230 mesh down to a 160. .  and it's not expensive. love it. 

Thanks for the reminder Homer, I forgot I was going to get a gallon of that.  I'll give it a go by the end of next week.