A Blog about printing, generally
I'm going to add a bit of meat to the bones of printing in a small way,
i.e. why stuff happens/reasons things sometimes don't come out as expected.
Also some stuff we're doing that is of interest (I think)
i.e. why stuff happens/reasons things sometimes don't come out as expected.
Also some stuff we're doing that is of interest (I think)
Subimation
This machine is so cool...
Our latest trial with the Sawgrass subli-printer.
A few months ago our friend Lorenz introduced me to Steve at Redmax; a really interesting and knowledgeable man, who, along with his team, are doing ace things with Ducati's, as well as other makes.
There is some seriously neat engineering ideas and execution on show.
The UK is still the home of innovation and design.
Thought I'd give the Subli-printer a trial with a mug each for the team, and here's the result!
I did different images so there's no mug confusion...
Find Redmax at:
redmaxspeedshop.co.uk/
A few months ago our friend Lorenz introduced me to Steve at Redmax; a really interesting and knowledgeable man, who, along with his team, are doing ace things with Ducati's, as well as other makes.
There is some seriously neat engineering ideas and execution on show.
The UK is still the home of innovation and design.
Thought I'd give the Subli-printer a trial with a mug each for the team, and here's the result!
I did different images so there's no mug confusion...
Find Redmax at:
redmaxspeedshop.co.uk/
Ink
As I have lived so long I remember when it was all plastisol, oil based inks' round here for garment printing.
Very good they are too but you can get some thick prints and printing large areas on a dark green tee with a plastisol white underbase because there's yellow and red in the design gives a seriously cardboard-like feel plus you can get pinholes - little dots of white where the top layer hasn't stuck to the underbase - in the colour layer which happens sometimes due to the colour being too thick but often for no reason. Up until fairly recently there wasn't much option to an all plastisol print
Now waterbased ink holds sway with modern crosslinkers and improved chemical make-up they're very much more user friendly and give far better prints on dark fabrics than was possible not so very long ago. They don't however mean a wholesale junking of plastisols, they still dry in the screen faster than light and need a lot of cure time, plus they still do things like pinhole if printed on a white underbase in spite of being very thin compared to plastisol.
They are just extra tools to give options for the best possible print we can produce.
The trick is to use the tools properly. A discharge print will look absolutely fantastic on a navy 100% cotton reactive dyed tee, hardly any feel to the print once washed, even/consistent colour on large printed areas, better than we could ever get with a plastisol chiefly due to what's called fibrillation which is another topic to be explored.
On a black tee it might not be so neat, as recycled fibres are used in lots of cases the dye used in those may not be reactive, if the fabric isn't bleached to remove any dye present and re-dyed with a reactive one those fibres won't discharge so you get patchy areas, we've had some sizes of tees discharge brilliantly, other sizes, same make, look exactly the same, same print run, etc, are much duller. Only explanation is the material's not as reactive.
One way we use to counteract that is use a discharge underbase and plastisol on top, a sort of hybrid to use the current parlance, so you get the bleaching out of dye by discharge even if it's not perfect and print plastisol on top, that being opaque masks any differences in the discharge on the fabric whilst having a fairly light colour in the discharged fabric to stop fibrillation being a problem which helps colour vibrancy enormously.
Very good they are too but you can get some thick prints and printing large areas on a dark green tee with a plastisol white underbase because there's yellow and red in the design gives a seriously cardboard-like feel plus you can get pinholes - little dots of white where the top layer hasn't stuck to the underbase - in the colour layer which happens sometimes due to the colour being too thick but often for no reason. Up until fairly recently there wasn't much option to an all plastisol print
Now waterbased ink holds sway with modern crosslinkers and improved chemical make-up they're very much more user friendly and give far better prints on dark fabrics than was possible not so very long ago. They don't however mean a wholesale junking of plastisols, they still dry in the screen faster than light and need a lot of cure time, plus they still do things like pinhole if printed on a white underbase in spite of being very thin compared to plastisol.
They are just extra tools to give options for the best possible print we can produce.
The trick is to use the tools properly. A discharge print will look absolutely fantastic on a navy 100% cotton reactive dyed tee, hardly any feel to the print once washed, even/consistent colour on large printed areas, better than we could ever get with a plastisol chiefly due to what's called fibrillation which is another topic to be explored.
On a black tee it might not be so neat, as recycled fibres are used in lots of cases the dye used in those may not be reactive, if the fabric isn't bleached to remove any dye present and re-dyed with a reactive one those fibres won't discharge so you get patchy areas, we've had some sizes of tees discharge brilliantly, other sizes, same make, look exactly the same, same print run, etc, are much duller. Only explanation is the material's not as reactive.
One way we use to counteract that is use a discharge underbase and plastisol on top, a sort of hybrid to use the current parlance, so you get the bleaching out of dye by discharge even if it's not perfect and print plastisol on top, that being opaque masks any differences in the discharge on the fabric whilst having a fairly light colour in the discharged fabric to stop fibrillation being a problem which helps colour vibrancy enormously.
Fibrillation
I mentioned fibrillation in the previous paragraphs. It is fibres in a fabric that when printed onto get stuck in the ink layer, some sticking through the actual layer, others being visible near the surface. Some ink whether oil based or water based does sink into the fabric, waterbased and discharge ink relies on that so it's inevitable that fibres will be in the ink layer.
It appears the ink layer isn't thick enough but it is just loose or stray fibres. You can see the difference by printing onto a very smooth material such as soft shell polyester, or paper for transfers, ink doesn't sink into the surface, it's too dense. All the ink remains on the surface.
One way to stop it is to have a second ink layer, as the first flattens the fabric so the second has a smoother surface to cover, but the more ink layers the less crisp a print is, the more spread you get as ink sneaks under the stencil edges.
Discharge ink is a good foil for this as it chemically changes the colour of the fabric so it doesn't matter too much how rough it is as the ink will change the colour when it cures. So on a black tee if we print a discharge underbase and flash dry it that will at least take some if not all of the dye out so the colours printed over that will have a fairly light material shade to cover, stray/loose fibres will be a lighter shade and so much less visible if they are in the ink layer.
This is why I always recommend a 100% cotton garment or particular makes, polyester doesn't discharge at all so you can't use it as an underbase, however some brands' hoodies have polycotton mixes but the facing is cotton, AWDiS in particular take a discharge ink well, they also don't dye migrate. Dye migration occurs when dye is transferred from the material into the ink layer, next topic.....
It appears the ink layer isn't thick enough but it is just loose or stray fibres. You can see the difference by printing onto a very smooth material such as soft shell polyester, or paper for transfers, ink doesn't sink into the surface, it's too dense. All the ink remains on the surface.
One way to stop it is to have a second ink layer, as the first flattens the fabric so the second has a smoother surface to cover, but the more ink layers the less crisp a print is, the more spread you get as ink sneaks under the stencil edges.
Discharge ink is a good foil for this as it chemically changes the colour of the fabric so it doesn't matter too much how rough it is as the ink will change the colour when it cures. So on a black tee if we print a discharge underbase and flash dry it that will at least take some if not all of the dye out so the colours printed over that will have a fairly light material shade to cover, stray/loose fibres will be a lighter shade and so much less visible if they are in the ink layer.
This is why I always recommend a 100% cotton garment or particular makes, polyester doesn't discharge at all so you can't use it as an underbase, however some brands' hoodies have polycotton mixes but the facing is cotton, AWDiS in particular take a discharge ink well, they also don't dye migrate. Dye migration occurs when dye is transferred from the material into the ink layer, next topic.....