Hello,
I have a weird problem. When we were printing our first set of shirts, we accidentally grabbed a shady bottle of white ink, which may have been old. We heat set (using a Simplicity quik press 100 for 1m) and we were guessing it was okay, but when we washed a shirt to test it out and a bunch of the ink washed out.
We obviously don't want to sell these shirts the way they are. Is there anything I can do? i.e. trying running them through a cycle in the dryer first...heat set for another minute...etc?
We were using waterbased inks on american apparel.
I would re-dry (cure) all your remaining shirts from that run, and then just make sure you are properly curing your shirts going forward. asking your customers to dry the shirts before wearing is probebly not a good idea.
I would re-dry (cure) all your remaining shirts from that run, and then just make sure you are properly curing your shirts going forward. asking your customers to dry the shirts before wearing is probebly not a good idea.
yea, didnt think so. just trying to cover all bases.
does it matter if the shirts are inside out or placed regularly in the washer?
You cannot cure with a dryer. It doesn't get hot enough.
With waterbased inks, you could heat set with a very hot iron, but it wouldn't guarantee the white print wouldn't crack or fade. Use a heat gun to dry it well, then iron. That's what I would do, back in the day. Then I got a flash cure unit. Now I have a conveyor belt oven. White WB inks have to be cured, they can't air dry generally like other WB inks (like black ink).
Time to go back and heat set them all again, making sure you use the heat settings recommended by the manufacturer (the setting temp and time varies between manufacturers)
Generally if the waterbased ink is too "old" it will be almost dry and stiff. If it seemed normal then it probably is fine.
Waterbased benefits greatly from being allowed to air dry before being heat set (obviously if your laying a white base then you just "flash" or set the white. (All the waterbased inks I use, white opaque and normal are all air dry then cure (Perhaps Stuart can add some more on the brand he used that requires heat setting and won't air dry, they may need a different process)
Not all waterbased inks will air dry. Research the needs of each ink, contact the manufacturer if you need to. Some WB inks are designed to air dry, even the opaques, but not most. I use Matsui inks and put everything through a conveyor belt oven immediately after printing.
But yeah, heatset again. I didn't cure a big discharge order properly a couple months ago, and spent hours putting the shirts through the oven again, slower and deliberately, making sure everything was cured properly.
You can always do a stretch test on opaques to see if it's cured properly. Pull the print and if it cracks, it wasn't cured properly....
Suggest customers dry shirt before washing? 
