georgeosagie

Why is it necessary to cure ink/what happens if ink is not cured? Also,I heard some people use house hold pressing iron set at a reasonable temprature to cure ink locally.How possible and effective can this be?Thanks for any comment

 

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Fluid

Plasticol inks need to reach 310-320 degrees in order to cure (DRY). If you do not cure a plasticol print it will wash off the shirt.

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zagadka

we accidentally gave a customer a shirt with uncured ink and it peels off in the wash...as he put it, it looked like "alien skin".

i've never used an iron, but i don't think it would really work well. irons aren't uniform in temperature across the surface, and that would result in an uneven cure...which could result in above story.

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darwinchristian

Quote: Originally Posted by Fluid Plasticol inks need to reach 310-320 degrees in order to cure (DRY). If you do not cure a plasticol print it will wash off the shirt.

i keep hearing different things on this... 320 seems to be the magic number for cure temp but... how long must the plastisol be exposed to this temp? i have heard 60-90 seconds at 320, i have also heard as long as the ink temp reaches 320 it doesn't matter if it's reached for one second or one hundred.

i suppose the 60-90 seconds thing is to be sure that all of your layers of ink have reached 320? for example a black print on a white tee would need far less (heat) exposure time than a black tee with a p/f/p white and a 2nd or 3rd color and so on...

i just had to reprint an order of 24 shirts due to improper curing/ washout and basically ran my dryer at the point just before the white ink would turn yellow (on a black shirt) and thankfully the customer hasn't called back yet to say his reorder washed out again.

i tried using heat strips recently but am afraid it will only tell me when surface temp reaches 320 or 330.

any good rule of thumb out there? man, there are so many variables.

 

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georgeosagie

many thanks to you all.But Richard,I dont use plasicol ink.I only use water base ink.Does it need to be cured too.What temperature is idael for this? I started screen printing very recently and i have never cured once.I have washed some of my printed shirts my self several times because i wear some of them.It does not wash off really, speaking from the experience i had while washing.But the water becomes colored a little and the ink sometimes stains other parts of the shirt while washin.

 

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Fluid

You didn't state waterbased in your first post. In order for waterbased inks to cure all the moisture (water) in the inks need to be removed. Most likely humidity played a big role in this run that got mucked up.

We dont use waterbased inks accept with discharge and still run through our gas dryer

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splathead

Quote: Originally Posted by georgeosagie many thanks to you all.But Richard,I dont use plasicol ink.I only use water base ink.Does it need to be cured too.What temperature is idael for this? I started screen printing very recently and i have never cured once.I have washed some of my printed shirts my self several times because i wear some of them.It does not wash off really, speaking from the experience i had while washing.But the water becomes colored a little and the ink sometimes stains other parts of the shirt while washin.

What do the instructions say for your water based ink? Union makes some that they claim will hold their color by just air drying a certain length of time. But I believe they suggest 30 days for the best results. That is just not practical for commercial production.

We heat press our water based inks. We have done wash tests with and without heat pressing and the heat pressed garments hold their color better.

 

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