At what point do you used inks made for poly??

[Scobey Peterman]

If I had a 50/50 t-shirt I would use ink for t-shirts.  But now I am getting shirts made of 65% poly and 35% cotton.  Customer has a green shirts and wants a gold ink on it.  Should I use my ink that is made for 100% poly??

[rusty]

Its better to be safe than sorry.  I use poly ink for any thing with at least 50% poly. I had a job go sour when I used regular white ink on blue canvas tri-blend shirts. I think I ran them too hot and I ended with a camouflage blue looking white print. Was a great day.l

[3Deep]

Union has a low bleed poly  Yellowgold ink that prints great without an underbase  EF LB poly. cures around 280 and covers great

[kirkwad]

We use a Low Bleed white for printing on 100% Cotton up to 60/40's & Tri-Blends. If you use a low bleed underbase & have a cotton or low-bleed top color you should should be good. However, garments aren't always dyed the same so it would be wise to err on the side of caution & just print 100% poly for at least the underbase.

If you ever print on Comfort Colors or pigment dyed garments, always use a Grey Blocker or Black Underbase & 100% Poly inks for top colors. This has nothing to do with your question, I just always bring this up in case people don't know. We had to eat a big pile because of dye migration on Comfort Colors & I don't wish that on most people.

[ebscreen]

Oddly we use it more now on blends and less on %100 polyester!

A lot of the new performance fabrics don't bleed, and a lot of the blends that used to not
bleed now do. Gildan 18500, AA F497 etc.

Color plays a big hand as well. You do this for awhile and you
can just look at a garment and know if it's going to bleed or not.

Anything super sketchy gets a grey blocker, which I'm a big fan of.
A neutral colored base makes a lot of top colors way easier.

[ZooCity]

Agreed.  Rules have changed for bleed and white plastisol. 

We do a performance ub, either white or a mix of the white and the blocking grey depending on the task at hand, on a lot of blends now with standard plastisol on top.

Wilflex rebooted the performance white as LC for Low Cure but ironically it can now cure at a higher temp as well so it's made for a good ub for standard plastisol on top.   Before, the perf ink would bubble a little at the higher std cure temp.

[Prince Art]

This doesn't directly answer your question, but... When dealing with 65% poly/35% cotton, and with triblends, it has been my experience that cure temp is a big factor to watch. I've said this many times over, but for printing white on these blends, our go-to is One Stroke's ELT-S. Other colors are either low-cure out of the bucket, or get Low Cure Additive mixed in. It's really helpful to keep cure temp around 300, and consider a peak of 320 as the ceiling of your "safe zone." (And if you're not dealing with a short dryer like we are, you could move that down about 10 degrees.) With this approach, I have rarely had to worry about a strong blocker base.

[Stinkhorn Press]

we print 95% with a poly white ink. joe clarke's synergy poly is easier to print well with than many other cotton inks.
we only switch to cotton ink for runs over 200 pieces. the cotton lays down a little smoother, flashes a little quicker, BUT takes a bit longer to dial the flash in perfectly so isn't worth bothering with on small runs. poly all the way.

[Biverson]

we print 95% with a poly white ink. joe clarke's synergy poly is easier to print well with than many other cotton inks.
we only switch to cotton ink for runs over 200 pieces. the cotton lays down a little smoother, flashes a little quicker, BUT takes a bit longer to dial the flash in perfectly so isn't worth bothering with on small runs. poly all the way.

Same here. Joes also got a new version of his poly out that floods much, much better than his previous version. I’m especially enjoying it since I got a free 5er of it in a giveaway he was doing!


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