When I first got started, I ordered a full screen printing kit which included lots of 1/2 litre tubs of water-based inks and I've been using these up til now. I ordered from the same place and asked for them to supply me 2 litres of the same white opaque ink as they'd sent me with the kit. To cut a long story short, I finally received the ink after nearly two weeks and it's not as solid as the original ink and it has lots of air-bubbles.
I've spent all afternoon trying to get a decent print with it and not a single one came out acceptable. For example, a white print on a black t-shirt looked grey even after layer and layer of prints.
I've attached a sample pic of a scrap t-shirt that has a print with the new ink on the left and prints with the original ink on the right. You can probably see that the print on the right looks very solid compared to the new print.
It looks to me as though I've been supplied with non-opaque white ink. Can anyone comment on this just so I know I'm not going mad.
While I can see where you may be upset, to me that particular design looks just fine with the current ink (the other one would look good with it also). The designs have the weathered look so the thinner less opaque ink works well with them imo. I would definatly call the place you got it though since they did give you the wrong ink and I am sure they'll hook you up somehow.
It probably the same ink just from a different lot/batch. If you keep getting the same inks over and over you will notice a slight difference every now and then.
Check the ink name and number and compare to your original ink. I would suggest in the future ordering the inks by name and numbers rather than what i ordered the last time. This will help to not have this issue in the future
It's definitely water-based. I add a air-drying catalyser to cure the prints without the need to heat-cure them, which I believe is the only way you can do it with plastisol.
The problem is that the print on the left took several layers of ink to get it to that level, and the one I'm most concerned about is the print of white on black, which for the particular design I've been trying to produce needs a nice clean opaque print. I took photos to show you how bad it looks, but my camera compensates for it and makes the prints look really good.... typical!!!
The place I get them from I think must just buy the ink in bulk and them re-package it in smaller pots, which they hand label. Mine just says 'WB White T Opaque Ink'. They're too unreliable... they lost my original order and I ended up waiting nearly two weeks for it. I've got a few customers who are losing their patience and it's really annoying me.
Does anyone know where I can get a good water-based ink in the UK which I can use with a catalyser?
I believe Nazdar carries waterbased inks and has a distribution in your area? (not totally sure but I believe they do) Nazdar
and Welcome to PolyOne Corporation
OK, so I bought some ink from another supplier and although it appears thicker than the previous batch, I still can't get the really nice, opaque print that I could with my first batch and the supplier of that ink still refuses to respond to my attempts to contact them.
I have absolutely no problems printing with the black ink, but although I offer all my designs in light-coloured tees, such as white, grey and natural, nearly all my sales are for the dark ones.
Which leads me to my current position.... with several customers having waited (very patiently and thanks to offers of additional free t-shirts) for weeks longer than they should have, and having pulled my listings from ebay in order to get the issue resolved, here are my options as I see it:-
1. Quit! Give the people their t-shirts (if I can sort out the printing) or give them their money back - although it's crossed my mind lots of times, I'm not a quitter, I enjoy bringing smiles to peoples faces and giving them a laugh with the tees and I've sunk a fair amount of my own money into this that I don't want to see go down the drain; or,
2. Make all my designs only available on light-coloured shirts so that it's easy to print them - I think I'd lose out on potential sales because there's a trend for darker (particularly black) shirts at the moment; or,
3. Abandon the water-based ink methods and go plastisol - I've read on this forum that many printers find plastisol much easier to use and get more consistent results than with WB inks and they don't clog the mesh, another current problem for me, but that's for a different thread. Would mean that most of my supplies such as inks, emulsion, cleaning solutions, etc would be rendered useless and money lost (unless I can sell them on ebay) and would also mean replacing them all as well as buying some form of curing equipment. On the upside, from what I've been led to believe, I could do coloured prints on dark shirts without having to do a white undercoat first!
4. Ditch screen printing and go for something like DTG (which has some major attractions in terms of being able to sell personalised tees at fairs, exhibitions, etc., but still has issues with dark shirts as well as initial costs unless I can source some kind of finance/lease deal) or heat press (initial outlay for having the transfers screen printed first and purchase of heat press equipment).
So, you see my dilemma... any thoughts and ideas would be most grateful.
On the upside, from what I've been led to believe, I could do coloured prints on dark shirts without having to do a white undercoat first!
Of course you CAN do it (and people do), but colors on a dark shirt without a white underbase will not be very bright or true. I guess if you are looking for a muted dull color, then it will work great. But if you are looking for a true red, yellow, or whatever color... you will need a white underbase.
Abandon the water-based ink methods and go plastisol [...] Would mean that most of my supplies such as inks, emulsion, cleaning solutions, etc would be rendered useless and money lost
Not really. For one, some of that stuff might be compatible (there are emulsions that work with both plastisol and waterbased for example). For two, just because you were to switch over to plastisol, doesn't mean the transition has to be instantaneous - you could keep doing some designs in waterbased until you'd used up all your supplies.
Plastisol printing is not that difficult. It's just the unfamiliarity that you have to battle. Usual plastisol inks are heat cured at 160 deg. C. Some special ones are called low curing in the sense that you can cure it at lower temp, about 130 deg. C (i'm more familiar with this unit of temp, nway, conversion to deg. F is (deg.C x 2 = A; A x 1/10 =B ; A-B= C; C +32 = deg. F)
for some table printers they used a heat gun .
or you can used your iron at home.
either way, you need to reach the temp needed to cure the plastisol.
I've been using plastisol ever since i've started printing and sometimes i also used water based but I dislike the general bad smell of WB inks due to it's solvent content so I stick with plastisol.
I actually came across the scrap t-shirt in the photo at the top of the thread this morning and the print on the left is now almost as opaque as the print on the right. The ink obviously cures much brighter and more solid than when it's first been applied.
I also noticed that some of the print on the right had begun to crack, which is OK on distressed style designs but not on 'clean' designs. Also, on lady-fit tees, they're really meant to stretch which means that the cracking is going to be more prominent.
I think I'll probably go plastisol. I'm having a nightmare with my screens at the moment so I think I'll get them re-meshed at the same time - sort of like a fresh start.
In terms of plastisol inks, do I need to look for extra opaque white ink again and is there usually much difference in texture between the white and the black inks? Also, will I need to look at different thread counts? I'm working with 90T at the moment.
I think I've been sold the wrong ink :( 
