Screen Printing Forum

I'm looking to change the brand of white plastisol I use (Blackhawk) because, although it has great opacity (and it's cheap), after a couple of coats it is bulletproof and uncomfortable to wear IMHO. What's a brand that has decent opacity but has a softer hand after a print/flash/print app?
I print almost exclusively on 100% cotton.

JEff

Rutland M2 is good so is International's 711.

Are you printing straight from the bucket?
Are you you mixing it a bit first?

Try basing it down with a soft hand additive,
moving up to a higher screen count and
and using a sharp 70 duro blade.

For a long time I printed straight from the bucket, but lately I have been mixing in the soft hand and that works pretty good...A friend of mine had on a brand new shirt the other day, snow white print, that you could barely tell was there when you felt it, and ever since then I been trying to figure out how they got it like that.

Guess I'm gonna go trolling for samples and thought I'd get some ideas on where to start. Thanks.

JEff

Could be that it was a discharge print.
They work well but introduce a whole
different set of parameters.

That's pretty cool stuff. Never really looked into it before. Looks like it's kind of like printing with some sort of bleach?

Just got a bucket of soft white from Rhonda @ Melray. Prints great straight from bucket, good opacity, excellent hand.

Rutland SNAP White, we used for NIKE, has a slight blueing agent to make it seem whiter. Creamy for Auto and Manual printing.

I've been useing Wilflex's Bright Tiger. I haven't seen the opacity I had hoped. The best white ink I have ever seen (in 20 years of exp) is Hayden's white. Hayden apparently used to formulate for Rutland. His ink was so smooth and completely opaque........and expensive. I have not been able to warrant a change from the Tiger Bright due to distribution and purchasing. is Hayden still around? Is his still better than the mass produced distributors?

Ink is part of the issue, but to get soft white prints on darks, you need to address other issues. Take a look at "Screen Printing's Best Screen" on www.youtube.com. You need a Newman frame, 110 or more coarse mesh, 50 micron capillary film, sharp hard squeegee (I use a 75-90-75), and cardboard on the neck of the platen. We get bright white images on one hit, no flash. The capillary film is under the mesh and controls the thickness of the ink,and therefore opacity. You need retensioned mesh that is very high tension to prevent driving the ink into the shirt. The bullet proof comes from driving ink into the shirt. With the ink in the shirt, the color of the shirt shows thru the ink film. So you are not happy with the image. Then you flash and print again but that builds up the thickness of the ink and creates the bullet proof print. Better is to shear the ink and lay it on the surface of the shirt in a thickness (50 micron) that blocks the color of the shirt. Our white images are soft, because they are thin. They are white, because we don't drive the ink into the shirt. As for ink, never put soft hand in white going on darks, because soft hand reduces opacity. We don't want to reduce opacity. We use only Union Ink, and we blend two whites so we retain the opacity, but make the ink more printable than an opaque white straight out of the bucket. If you want to know more, drop me a line at roger@rjennings.com. Check out the videos. You will find them most interesting. Roger

Go with International Coatings. Do stay away from Rutland, they change their whites monthly and have never had a strong candidate in the white plastisol field.

I am in the finishing stages of opening my second screen printing and sign making shop and decided to go with One Stroke Inks almost exclusivly. I had heard great things about them and ended up giving them a call. Joyce talked with me a bit, told me what they had to offer and sent me some ink samples. She was friendly, helpful and knowledgable -- I talk to her whenever I need something. They even carry screens, squegees, chemicals, etc. I have a stock built up on those, so I do admit that I've not bought anything from them except inks, but needless to say I've been extremely impressed with their service and their inks. They work extremely well.

For the $, we like Wilflex White Tiger. There are better out there for sure but be prepared to pay up!

I really like QCM's xolb-159. 158 is their most popular white, but the 159 is softer and brighter. It covers the shirt weave nice and flat, it flashes faster than any union, triangle, or icc white I've used, making it the best cotton underlay white ever. However, it's not as bleed-resistant as it says it is, so for 50-50's I like Union's no-bleed diamond white.