Discharge Newbie

[prokegler]

Hello,
I've been screen printing for 8 yrs now and have yet to tackle wb discharge. I have tried wb with little success getting inks to be vibrant. Therefore, plastisol it has been. I would like to do more than athletic type printing and get into more high end looking designs. From looking at prints like NASCAR, Sprints, Drag racing etc. this type of printing is my desire. I know a lot of it is in the artwork itself, but trying this with white plastisol under basing just isn't the desired look and feel I want to achieve.

So, I have a regular flash dryer and a regular bbc dryer, no forced air. Is it a must for both to be forced air to get the water out of the print to get the correct results. Also, for plastisol, I have my regular time and heat settings and I'm hearing that a discharged print must stay in the chamber longer to get it to dry correctly. If this is true, then my shirts would burn up at the temp I currently use for plastisol.
I would appreciate any help or suggestions I could get or even if there is a you tube video anyone could direct me to for answers my questions.

Should all screens be coated with WB emulsions? Can 4 color process be printed using discharge without a white additive.
Does anyone have any info on a good photoshop video for adding hi-lites and shadowing to normal vector art.
Thank you in advance for any info you can share to not only me but those out there that are in the same boat as I...

[Itsa Little CrOoked]

I don't know what you mean by a bbc dryer, but I did WB DC for 3 years with a 6 foot electric conveyor dryer and manual printing. You can do it, but you'll have to mess around with dryer settings and do test washings. Big numbers cause eventual stencil breakdown. I do enough of it to have converted over to Diazo for everything, but for quite a while I used a pure photopolymer with a temporary hardener. It worked okay for short runs.

If you wanna jump in whole hog, get a gas dryer. Otherwise you'll be walking a tightrope balancing temps, dwell, and ambient conditions. I still do it nearly everyday, but eventually I hope to upgrade my equipment. My auto has helped, but the dryer is a bottleneck. If you intend to be a high volume DC shop you'll have to drop some coin.

Do some experimenting off schedule. Don't sell a big job thinking you can learn while doing actual $$ work. It might do okay and it might just bite you. Just my opinion.

All the Manufacturers offer sample kits. Jump on in, the WATERbase is fine! Like my grandpa used to say, "It'll learn ya."

And welcome to the forum!

[Frog]

I don't know what you mean by a bbc dryer, but I did WB DC for 3 years with a 6 foot electric conveyor dryer and manual printing. You can do it, but you'll have to mess around with dryer settings and do test washings. Big numbers cause eventual stencil breakdown. I do enough of it to have converted over to Diazo for everything, but for quite a while I used a pure photopolymer with a temporary hardener. It worked okay for short runs.

If you wanna jump in whole hog, get a gas dryer. Otherwise you'll be walking a tightrope balancing temps, dwell, and ambient conditions. I still do it nearly everyday, but eventually I hope to upgrade my equipment. My auto has helped, but the dryer is a bottleneck. If you intend to be a high volume DC shop you'll have to drop some coin.

Do some experimenting off schedule. Don't sell a big job thinking you can learn while doing actual $$ work. It might do okay and it might just bite you. Just my opinion.

All the Manufacturers offer sample kits. Jump on in, the WATERbase is fine! Like my grandpa used to say, "It'll learn ya."

And welcome to the forum!

Here, crooked, BBC dryers.
http://bbcind.com/product-category/screen-print/conveyor-dryers/

It will, of course, depend on which BBC dryer he has, but we already do know that it doesn't have forced air.
At any sort of  real production level, forced air will help bring a consistency to the results.
As pointed out, at the least, forced air really, really helps with waterbased inks help remove the vapor, remembering that WB inks "dry" while plastisol "cures"

[3Deep]

I also do discharge on an 8 ft dryer with no forced air but I got my speed and temp dial in for it so yes it can be done, far as emulsion goes we use HXT from CCI some people put a little diazo in it, but I just expose for a little longer and it has worked well for couple hundred shirts with no break down.  Some of those NASCAR prints are very nice but are rough as all get out at least the ones at Wal-mart I touched are.

darryl

[Itsa Little CrOoked]

Here, crooked, BBC dryers.
http://bbcind.com/product-category/screen-print/conveyor-dryers/

It will, of course, depend on which BBC dryer he has, but we already do know that it doesn't have forced air.
At any sort of  real production level, forced air will help bring a consistency to the results.
As pointed out, at the least, forced air really, really helps with waterbased inks help remove the vapor, remembering that WB inks "dry" while plastisol "cures"

Pretty short dryer in that webpage. Thanks for the link, but I dunno....

Hey Andy, someone had a thread or a post about a dryer that was super short and they did a TON of Waterbased Discharge and at a fairly eye-opening pace. I can't remember.... Was it a Workforce? I'm too pre-occupied to do a proper search today. I'm backed up from 2 (two!) pieces of equipment that died on the same day yesterday. Do you happen to know what dryer that was??

[3Deep]

I've seen the Vastex dryer do discharge and they are very short tunnel dryers.

[prokegler]

Well, as you can see by my timely reply that I have almost forgotten about WB Discharge. Well, at least for the time being.
I was only thinking of getting into WB DC for the soft hand. Sometimes too many irons in the fire cause burns and headache!! Anyone have a Tylenol and some Salve???
My dryer is the BBC Lowrider electric (24" wide 6' long)....
Just finished my first Sim Process 6 color... Plastisol!!! I'm satisfied for my first try!!

Thanks everyone for your knowledge. Sorry it took so long for thanking you!!

Danny