Barrier Grey Underbases on "cotton-feel" 100% poly shirts aren't printing good

[BRGtshirts]

Everyone, question for you..  we are printing an increased amount of "cotton feel" shirts that are actually 100% poly. They have a texture and feel as if they were a cotton shirt (even have some fibrillation), but again, 100% poly. When we print on these we're using a barrier grey underbase as I don't trust these garments regarding dye sublimation. We then print a poly white over the barrier and topcoat colors over that if need be.

My question is this: do other people do the same (using the barrier grey)? I ask because for us the barrier grey ink prints really poorly on these shirts. It's extremely hard to get a nice smooth print and as a result is causing issues with the print quality. Wondering about tips for the base layer. We already add some poly white to our barrier grey to make it more printable, so I don't want to mix more poly white into it to make it easier to print, as I don't want to take away its blocking capabilities.

[Colin]

What I always did was use a smoothing screen after the flash and use enough pressure to force the fibers into the ink.  Since the barrier grey will flash very quick, timing is critical and sensitive.  You may also need to use more pressure than you would for regular white ink.

If you can, thin thread mesh will help a lot with a smoother and cleaner deposit - but it is not a miracle worker.

Hope this helps.

[Maxie]

I had trouble with the barrier base as well until the Rutland rep recommended that I thin it down.
You can thin it a lot and it will be much easier to print and still works as a barrier.
I heard that some people add white to make it lighter.

[BP]

We use rutland inks and I mix the barrier with 50% poly white and it prints like a dream.

[mk162]

The cotton feel poly shirts are almost impossible to get to print well.  A smoothing screen is your best bet frankly.

[Logowear]

We print the Sport-Tek PosiCharge Competitor Cotton Touch Tees using One Stroke ELT-S white without a barrier base.
We haven't had any issues, although they are PosiCharge.  We printed a few extras to wash and wear. So far so good!
I think they print as good or better than a cotton tee.

Colin.....Yes, using S-Mesh.

[3Deep]

One Stroke ELT-S is our go to ink for printing bleeders straight out the bucket, been a wonderful ink for comfort colors.

[BRGtshirts]

Thanks for the posts everyone. We have never used the One Stroke inks so maybe someday I'll test some out. We are already using S-mesh and mix our barrier grey 50/50 with poly white.. but I think the smoothing screen could be a positive change.

IMO, these cotton-feel poly shirts are terrible to print. I feel like the fibers really like to stick to the ink in the screen, making a nice clear pass even more challenging.

[mk162]

We've never seen a bleeding problem on the posicharge stuff using 357 white.  But the hand on the cotton touch ones can be awful.  We have 700+ of them to print this week and we are running a smoothing screen just to knock the fibrillation down.

[BRGtshirts]

We've never seen a bleeding problem on the posicharge stuff using 357 white.  But the hand on the cotton touch ones can be awful.  We have 700+ of them to print this week and we are running a smoothing screen just to knock the fibrillation down.

I hear it. Good luck!