Plastisol White Between a Lo Bleed and Performance

[ZooCity]

We run three whites here:  Wilflex Sprint, Quick and Performance for cotton, blends and poly respectively.

A month or two back a bunch of NL 6210 Black Ts migrated on us running the same 'ol trusty Quick white we've ran for years.  Took about overnight or so for the dye to migrate.  Wilflex confirmed nothing wrong with the batch of Quick.  Vendor/mill never reached a conclusion but did refund our client for the shirts.  We reprinted using Performance white as the UB, problem solved. 

Going forward, I'm more and more paranoid about migration with the NL gear and even some other brands.  It seems like this is becoming an issue where for years it was not.  Cannot think of a single variable that changed on our end and our cure process is very gentle for plastisol with a slow, even trip up to 320˚ cure. 

So we've een running a lot of performance white UB instead of quick with standard plasti on top.  Works fine but performance white is designed to be cured at 290˚ not 320˚. 

Does anyone know of a excellent white ink that's essentially a lo bleed on steroids and has a standard cure temp?

[mimosatexas]

I use a poly white for everything these days.  Just makes it less stressful.  There are a number of options out there that print pretty much like a cotton white, that while they may not offer enough bleed resistance for something like a digital camo, will be plenty safe on normal shirts and 50/50's etc.

[sqslabs]

Those solid black NLA CVC's are the worst shirts on earth.  I banned them from our shop a while back.  Toward the end we were running two poly white UB layers and a top white just to get them to look halfway decent.  If anyone has figured out how to get a good looking print on them, I'm all ears.

Every other color in the CVC line prints fine in my experience.  But they're also heathered.

[Frog]

Are you guys with the NL problems paying even more attention to dryer temps (or more importantly, fabric temps) than usual?

[mk162]

We run any problem shirts with .357 from OneStroke.  We have yet to find an ink that prints as well and blocks as well.  We use it on everything from Comfort Colors to poly and everything in between.  We run Epic Amazing White for non-bleeeders.  I can't swing using .357 on everything, it's darn near $700 a 5 when you pay for shipping.

That being said, it won't stop the bleeding on the camohex shirts from SanMar.

[sqslabs]

Are you guys with the NL problems paying even more attention to dryer temps (or more importantly, fabric temps) than usual?

In my case, not enough.  And that may be a big part (if not all) of the problem.  But these solid black CVC's are the only ones we've had major issue with.

[ZooCity]

We did take a look at flash and dryer temps but nothing out of the ordinary there.  If we're running just plastisol we actually set the sprint dryer at 320-335˚ so it's a gentle cure for sure.   And these are just 40% poly. 

Never had a single problem with the CVC black running quick white until the aforementioned.  Maybe something changed at the mill(s) dyeing them?

To be fair, we noticed here and there that other brands' 50/50s in black that used to be no prob with a standard lo bleed are slowly migrating, i.e. we see production samps migrating over months whereas that wasn't a thing in the past. 

I'll take a look at OneStroke.  Shipping lead times may be problematic for us though.  Is OneStroke ink consistent bucket to bucket?  That's my #1 requirement honestly and it's why we almost exclusively run Wilflex.   

[mimosatexas]

The one stroke inks are really, really nice.  I think Bravo Flex may be the best ink I've ever printed with honestly out of all the dozens and dozens I've tried.  The only issue though is you have to buy from them, and they are super expensive compared to inks that are almost as nice and much more readily available.  That said, I do keep a gallon of Bravo Flex White on hand for anything that is just being a pain in the ass due to stretchiness or migration, etc.

[RICK STEFANICK]

I have noticed a difference in the quick white all the way around this last 10 gallons we have. We now run a barrier base instead of poly whites then run the quick white on top. The results are excellent.

[Prince Art]

I was just thinking of starting a new thread to gripe about Next Level, and then saw this.

Starting this year, we've had problems like never before with NL and Bella+Canvas. Canvas has given us more migration issues, which I chalked up to new fabrics. The big issue NL is giving us is being overly heat-sensitive, especially with triblend.

Just last week, we had to replace bunch of 6010 shirts, due to discoloring during cure. Colors were premium heather & vintage royal. We have a short dryer, so we have to settle for a steeper arc than preferable to get a full cure & maintain decent production speeds. Normally, almost everything we print is safe if we don't let it peak above 380 (max) - we typically hit in the 340-360 range for about 15 sec, w/ full chamber time at about 55 sec. For this run, since it was NL triblend, we were very careful to make 360 the max, and then only for a few seconds. Didn't matter; some - but not all - of the greys darkened in areas, and the blue darkened on all of the wrinkles - maybe half an inch higher than the rest of the shirt at most.

While were trying to fine tune this (lowering temp, adjusting speed, etc), the blues kept giving us blotchy discoloration - even when they weren't going above 340! (And I've cure a lot of American Apparel triblend a lot higher & a lot faster in the past.) So we got the customer's approval to swap all blue shirts for grey. (Thankfully, the blues were an afterthought, and they were cool about it.) The greys behaved better, but shirts were laid totally flat, belt was slow, shirts didn't go above ~330, and the blower was on. (Using the blower on plastisol was new, but seemed to help.)

Regarding ink, we've been experimenting with various stuff from One Stroke. One of my favorites is Aquasilk white; it's got a good mix of flex/softness + coverage. It resists "average" bleed fairly well, but I wouldn't use it for truly problematic dyes. Tomorrow we'll be running their ELT (low temp) white on some red NL 6010s, so we'll see how that goes. (FYI: ELT black is not fun to reclaim - won't fully wash off screen, resulting in poor emulsion degradation, which= gummy "boogers" when you pressure spray.)

Oh yes, we had to wash & dry one of the red 6010s this morning (thanks to busted tape on the box) - afterward, it had turned a slightly darker shade. (Yes, it was fully cool.)

Sorry for a meandering post. I'm really just trying to say that Yes, I think somethings up with the garments these days; and that while dye blocking inks may be one part of how to address it, dealing with the heat side of it may be another. It seems to me that some of the shirts can barely stand to reach the temp plastisol cures at.


And...

Are you guys with the NL problems paying even more attention to dryer temps (or more importantly, fabric temps) than usual?

Yes, way, way more. I've gotten away with a lot of "slop" in curing for years, but not as of this year, not w/ NL & BC.

[Colin]

What emulsion are you running?

It might be a chemistry incompatibility.  The plasticisers might not like each other....

[ZooCity]

I agree that it seems like the fabrics out there, soft and nice to wear though they are, aren't being sold with us printer's in mind.  We have a lot of dryer capacity and a ton of control with our big, high air flow gas dryer and I'm thankful for that but....

We still have to flash and even low cure temp inks don't seem to flash fast/low enough on many of these fabrics to avoid scorching. 
So you drop the intensity down and flash long/low and your production rate goes down. 
You need a barrier/double ub to block migration and now need to flash between all top colors instead of wow printing, down goes the production rate again. (unless you have a press with 4 flashes on it or can magically print wow on 2x ub)
You need a high performance ink that costs 2-3x more than your standard low bleed, down goes the margin on that nice big order. 

This week we're running a few thousand prints on a mix of NL cvc, tri, fleece, all bright spot colors and it feels like all of the above has been nipping at the profitability and ease of running what would otherwise be a dirt simple set of jobs.

[Underbase37]

Definitely seems to be an increasing problem.

NL isn't the only one out there with dye set issues. This seems to be worst in some solid black and oddly some grey.

From what we've seen in these colors it looks to be a problem in the yellow content of the dye......
( We've seen similar issues with over-dyes )

The problem is snowballing as pieces coming from the same location seem to have dye shifts, makeing this harder to pin down or rectify.



Murphy

[Prince Art]

It's a conundrum: we're getting more business simply because we print these shirts. New customers asking for "that exact shirt." Usually NL 6010. But replacing large percentages of an order because what worked last year doesn't work this year indeed puts a bullet in profitability. As does slowing down to a snails pace just to keep everything safe. (And slowdowns surely have a magnified effect for larger shops like yours, Zoo. Babying 100 shirts is a pain, but not as bad as babying several thousand!)

I'm pretty much at the point that, until we figure out a solution, there are certain designs we'll probably start refusing to print on the worst offenders. (Ie, multi-color, multi-flash, opaque, detailed prints.) We may just steer customers to higher end cotton, when possible. We've also been considering upcharging some of these styles, as insurance. But that could hurt us, too - people are already paying a lot for these shirts.

I wonder- Has anyone had better experiences with any of the other fashion blends? Anvil? Tultex? US Blanks? Royal? NL & BC are what people are asking for by name these days, so we haven't done much of the other. We used to do mainly American Apparel for triblend, with no real problems. But we were doing mostly "vintage" style, 1-color prints then - don't have much data on multi-flash w/ AA, and don't know if the shirts have changed recently, either. Anybody having an easier time with other brands?

[ZooCity]

Yep, the batch our supplier comped yellowed after about 24 hours. 

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