Author Topic: Any CCI DC WB users have a killer Royal Blue formula they care to share??  (Read 4806 times)

Offline Itsa Little CrOoked

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I used to use Matsui and their 300 formula was just excellent. But I've never done any Royal Blues with CCI, my current system, that weren't yawners.

I do have a little Fluoro Blue from CCI, but its DULLSVILLE Deluxe. (Maybe I am missing the ZFS ratio???)

Need help, please.

If somebody can fix this, I'll take back everything bad I've ever said about this forum.  ;)


Offline mimosatexas

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I wouldn't call pantone 300 royal blue.  It's a little bright, maybe a light royal?  I have always used 286 when someone asks for royal blue...

Offline Itsa Little CrOoked

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Ok.  I'll stipulate that, but we have High School custy for whom the 300 was terrific. Then I stopped Matsui.

Your 286 would work. How much Activator? Pigment loading? Is it bright?

Offline jvanick

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we use 286 as our royal blue as well here.

(sorry no help on CCI mixing as we're all Matsui)


Offline mimosatexas

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I also use matsui :D  sorry!

Offline Itsa Little CrOoked

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Job is printed, Blue was okay.

I mixed a little CCI Reflex Blue pigment into my CCI D-Flo Blue and activated it @ 4% ZFS.

The percentage was about 1.6% additional pigment load of the Reflex Blue. No time to wash test, but at only 1.6% added pigment, it should wash just like the D-Flo when properly cured.  This particular job got some foiled elements mixed in, so plastisol was out for this one. Foil resist doesn't work very good for us. WB Discharge resists foil, everytime.

I still wonder if lowering the % of activator can maximize the brightness of blue Waterbased Discharge. It matters with red, FOR DEFINITE SURE.

Offline Screened Gear

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Job is printed, Blue was okay.

I mixed a little CCI Reflex Blue pigment into my CCI D-Flo Blue and activated it @ 4% ZFS.

The percentage was about 1.6% additional pigment load of the Reflex Blue. No time to wash test, but at only 1.6% added pigment, it should wash just like the D-Flo when properly cured.  This particular job got some foiled elements mixed in, so plastisol was out for this one. Foil resist doesn't work very good for us. WB Discharge resists foil, everytime.

I still wonder if lowering the % of activator can maximize the brightness of blue Waterbased Discharge. It matters with red, FOR DEFINITE SURE.

You can do up to 30% pigment load they say. I can't imagine using that much in any ink. Most i have done is 20 percent and that seams like a ton.  The less activator the less bright the blue will be to a point. I do 4 percent with my blues and have no issues. Red is a special case since the activator will eat the red pigment. That is why most red formulas, that work, have high pigment loads. Its really sacrificial pigment to the agent gods.  I always do tests for color and modify the pigments to make sure the final print is as dead on as I can get it. Most of the time the CCI formula is close but needs modifying for the items I am printing.

Offline Itsa Little CrOoked

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Screened, do you have a Royal Blue you print regularly?

What I wound up with was okay, but some of the CCI colors are almost stunning, like the D-Flo Pink. The D-Flo Blue printed right out of the can doesn't exactly make me wet myself...at least not with 5% activator. 

Offline Screened Gear

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Screened, do you have a Royal Blue you print regularly?

What I wound up with was okay, but some of the CCI colors are almost stunning, like the D-Flo Pink. The D-Flo Blue printed right out of the can doesn't exactly make me wet myself...at least not with 5% activator.

When I started doing DC I thought I was going to pick like 12 colors and use those as my basic colors to offer. I never did that. I make new colors almost every job. They are all pantones. The only color that I don't color match is red. I have a formula for reds that is a good red. I used to do a ton of dischage work but I am back to doing more plastisol now. I am way behind and the educating the customer takes too long. Just easier to print the old no fun ink.

Offline Itsa Little CrOoked

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Interesting you should say that.  I'm doing more plastisol as a percentage of our output too. It is easier than Waterbased Discharge for some work. We are probably 75 or so plastisol jobs out of a hundred nowadays, but it used to be about the reverse of that. We might even be 80% plastisol at this point.

But for intermixing foil with color...there's nothing as good as waterbased.

Offline tonypep

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Sericol RS blue RFU out of the bucket. Add base/white to lighten. Seriously good product

Offline dirkdiggler

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Sericol RS blue RFU out of the bucket. Add base/white to lighten. Seriously good product

Yes!
If he gets up, we'll all get up, IT'LL BE ANARCHY!-John Bender

Offline Itsa Little CrOoked

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Sericol RS blue RFU out of the bucket. Add base/white to lighten. Seriously good product

Yes!


Okie Dokie. Just ordered a gallon to try out. Thanks!

I don't know why you can't just pick a product line and go whole hog with every color in every circumstance, but it doesn't seem to work out like that. The only WB Red Discharge I've ever been consistently happy with is the Sericol Texcharge Yellow Shade Red, spiked with Matsui's MFB Red Pigment. We were ALWAYS happy with Matsui's 300 formula for our go-to royal blue, but we've dumped most of our Matsui stock in favor of CCI. Maybe we should just develop a color pallet and order pigments and bases a la carte style...only stocking what we KNOW works.

Offline mimosatexas

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Screened, do you have a Royal Blue you print regularly?

What I wound up with was okay, but some of the CCI colors are almost stunning, like the D-Flo Pink. The D-Flo Blue printed right out of the can doesn't exactly make me wet myself...at least not with 5% activator.

When I started doing DC I thought I was going to pick like 12 colors and use those as my basic colors to offer. I never did that. I make new colors almost every job. They are all pantones. The only color that I don't color match is red. I have a formula for reds that is a good red. I used to do a ton of dischage work but I am back to doing more plastisol now. I am way behind and the educating the customer takes too long. Just easier to print the old no fun ink.

I really wanted this too and at one point even mixed up a couple quarts of standard colors which ended up sitting mostly unused for way too long.  Doesn't help that colors shift in DC mixes over time, even unactivated, and pigments tend to clump a bit.  I have been doing less and less DC work just because plastisol is so braindead easy and fast in comparison.  I even like cleaning up plastisol more since I don't have to immediately clean every single thing after a run or risk things getting stained and ruined.

Offline Itsa Little CrOoked

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I really wanted this too and at one point even mixed up a couple quarts of standard colors which ended up sitting mostly unused for way too long.  Doesn't help that colors shift in DC mixes over time, even unactivated, and pigments tend to clump a bit.  I have been doing less and less DC work just because plastisol is so braindead easy and fast in comparison.  I even like cleaning up plastisol more since I don't have to immediately clean every single thing after a run or risk things getting stained and ruined.

Yup. And almost no ink waste to have to deal with. It usually goes on the shirts, not in the trash. If I did a ton of plastisol mixing for SimPro (which I don't...) I'd gel the waste in deli cups in our toaster oven and toss them in the dumpster. Almost no stanky air to have to breathe, compared to DC. That toaster oven is dedicated to mugs. 200° for about 10 minutes gels the ink in a deli cup enough to make it a dumpster friendly solid. That's what I do now anyway.

Still, I'm stuck on WB DC for some things.  In our shop, I don't see it going anywhere, anytime soon....