Will a 1 color discharge work well enough for this?

[Dottonedan]

Will a 1 color discharge work well enough for this?  My new printer I'm using is saying
"I can't do halftones with discharge and it won't come out good'.

It should be just a 1 color PMs cool gray 2 with some halftones fading into the shirt color for the shadows.
With me not being (that experienced at discharge), I thought maybe she's saying that she can't get a good enough deep saturation with 1 color mesh. I say slap it on a 110 mesh, print it heavy and use a 25 line screen halftone just to get that fade in.


The bottom type is what we are needing. It has some halftone fades in it.


How would you print this?  What mesh and what % of activator might be needed?  Next Level BLACK tees.

[dirkdiggler]

I say YES!

[ebscreen]

230 mesh 50 lpi either double stroke fast medium pressure
or account for big dot gain in seps and hit once heavy pressure.
Easy peasy really, though if your printer isn't comfortable I don't
know how hard I would push.

And Next Level has occasional issues with discharging fully. Which reminds me,
we just had a run of Gildan 5000 Black Mediums from Haiti I believe that did not
discharge correctly. Obvious kelly overdye in that case.

[ZooCity]

What eb said.  Your printer isn't paying attention if they think halftones don't come out "good" with discharge, no offense.  DC dots are the jam.  They may simply need to choke back the fill if they are getting gain.

We would get that look with clear DC base, maybe a splash of white in there at 4-6% activator, 224/40 mesh at 45 lpi, depending on how consistently the garments are dyed.  Dye lot variance is a b. sometimes.  Running a fully activated, fully pigmented grey will definitely help overcome any variance but will be a little more difficult to print and have a stiffer hand before washing.

[blue moon]

not a big  fan of next level, we've had all kinds of issues with them. Even the 100% cottons bled on one of the orders . . .

pierre

[tonypep]

one screen DC halftone pic is blurry

[tonypep]

Oops

[tonypep]

and this also 1 screen

[brandon]

Yes it will. Everybody above is correct. Honestly in my opinion it is easier to print that design with discharge than plastisol anyway but that is just me. This is a cool gray 1 with a red as well but you get the point. Crappy pic but cool shirt

[Parker 1]

55lpi on 230
70white/ 30base with 6% activator

[brandon]

not a big  fan of next level, we've had all kinds of issues with them. Even the 100% cottons bled on one of the orders . . .

pierre

Yeah, just be careful with them and make sure you get their discharge friendly line. They have two lines of blanks, discharge friendly and the not so friendly

[Dottonedan]

All great info.  I was pretty sure they could. Don't know why the push back. I've seen them do sim process discharge before that look "good" but not fantastic. You'd think they could do this.

[dirkdiggler]

just did this one the other day.  plenty of halftones.

[tonypep]

Nice. Flo green?

[ebscreen]

I've seen them do sim process discharge before that look "good" but not fantastic.

I'm gonna present an unpopular opinion here, but many times sim-process looks (and works) better
with plastisol. An underbase allows you to create dynamic contrast out of a single color.

That said, for large vector work involving gradient type blends, discharge is king.