Gocnagai

I'm printing a 4 color job and one of the colors is coming off in the wash. I wanted to test one and it seemed o.k. so I started production. I tested another later and noticed the ink was flaking. I looked back at the other and the same. one color is the main failure...but there is another that looks kinda bad too.
So...is it:

1) Is it too little curing (can you cure to much)?

2) Could it be that I did only one pass on the colors in question, where as I did at least two on the others. They all looked fine before wash.

3) A bad batch of ink?

4) Most important question is what can I do to fix them or I will loose "my shirt" on this job.

THANKS,
Christian

 

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jepaul

Goc I'm new here as I am a transplant from usscreen.

Couple of things.

Is the ink/inks that are coming off the same type of ink as the others? Low Bleed, Athletic, General etc? Different types of ink will cure and different temperatures. Not a big difference but could be the issue.

Is the ink that is fading off printed on an underbase and the others not? If that is the case you didn't properly "flash" the underbase before printing the the top coat. Or you did do it right but didn't let it cool down enough before putting the top coat.

To answer the question about whether it is possible to over cure an ink the answer is yes. But you could propably know this as the shirts would be to hot to even touch when they come out. We had a fan motor break one time on our oven that we didn't know about and the shirts came out undercured. We kept turning up the heat until the ink actually began to come off on the underside of the shirt on the belt.

As far as saving them have you run them all back through the oven again and then tried a wash test?

 

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studog79

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Gocnagai

Thanks all, I think that I did under cure because the two suspect colors were the darker ones, the ones I applied last so they got less cure time over all than the other two.

Before I got your replies I looked in the "how to print t-shrts for fun and profit" and it said that you couldn't over cure plastisol, that you would scorch the shirt first. No offense but I hope that it is right because I moved my flash dryer down to two inches (which I had it closer to 4, too high according to the book) and cooked the S%!t out of it.
It started fuming a little, and I just thought that it was evporation and kept goin'.
If I was smart I would have done a wash test before I did that to them all. But...they look 100 times better. The colors really came out, so I'm thinkin that they will be ok now (fingers crossed).

Thanks again for the help. I'll let you know how they end up after a wash.

 

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Gocnagai

I guess another question is what are the washing requirements for plastisol? I ran them through as I would most of my other laundry, warm/cold. I would think that it would be ok in that temperature.

 

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Gocnagai

UPDATE...
Everything came out perfect after the extra curing...Thanks all!!!

 

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