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Fashion Trends Part 2

Part 2 of 5 about fashion trends in the screenprinting world. Hanes reports increasing interest in the soft fabrics of their Nano collection, whether t-shirts or hoodies. This is true of both unisex and women’s shirts. Thinner fabrics are gaining traction, and their lightweight Nano hoodie has particularly been a favorite. Folks seem to know…

Soft Prints – More and More Tools

More and more tools become available to give customers what they want. You want a soft print on a fabric that had dye migration problems and it also has to stretch and by the way, keep it bright white? No problem. Well… usually there are some compromises, but you have to deliver at least close…

Silicone Ink (i.e. Ink as Insurance Policy)

Silicone ink is like insurance, you hate it but sometimes you just have to have it. As with many things in life, you have to take the good with the bad with silicone ink. It is expensive to buy the ink, roughly three times the cost of plastisol inks. However,  ink isn’t the main part…

Hockey Jersey

Sometimes printing on polyester is a wonderful thing. We used a Rutland Barrier Base and Super Polywhite on this red 100% polyester hockey jersey. Red poly turning white ink to pink is the worst, so we took care on this one. Besides using the right inks we were careful not to overflash and we turned…

Misprint Monday– Printing on Polyester

Any experienced printer will have at some time used the wrong ink, or printed on a fabric that perhaps caught one by surprise. It is a sickening feeling to see your beautiful bright white print slowly turning pink with nothing to be done about it. Dye migration is a terrible thing. Today’s Misprint Monday print…

Printing on Polyester – Part 4

Here are some tests on a range of maroon colored polyester shirts. This is the test explained earlier, a drop of plasticizer and then a white fabric heated to 320 degrees F for 30 seconds. The nine shirts are a spectrum of results. Even shirts that don’t have much of a dye migration problem do…

Printing on Poly – Part 3

As outlined in the earlier posts, you can heat up the polyester garment in question with a heat press and a drop of plasticizer will cause some dye to transfer to a piece of white jersey. Pretty much all fabric will transfer some of the dye, but it is a matter of degree. The more testing…

Printing on Polyester – Part 2

Printing on Poly, real world shirt issue: 1. On left: plasticizer test, 320 degrees for 30 seconds heat transferred to white square. That’s quite a bit of dye on the white. If we had done that test before printing a sample we would have saved ourselves some grief later. 2. On the bottom is our…

Testing Polyester Fabric for Dye Migration – Part One

Ok, you have a shirt and it has some or all polyester content, what do you do? Too many printers I see P & P it. “P & P” is what I call “print and pray” and no matter what religion you do or don’t follow, I would keep prayer out of your printing operation.…

Boost Your Skills With Silicones

Like it or not, the ability to print with silicone ink is going to have to find its place in your tool box. The pros are: it’s super stretchy zero dye migration on polyesters it’s cheaper than an insurance policy when you need to print on a $150 stretchy polyester jacket. The cons are: short pot…

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