As the topic title describes, I have black shirts with white lettering on them and a coupon of random letter come off during the first wash. It's as if the ink isn't bonding to the cotton on the shirt. I am using Gildan 100% cotton tshirts. I've done extremely complicated design with small dots all over the place and not a one of those come off, this is something new to me and no one can seem to answer this. Example: did a run of destressed shirts with 4 colours and those have seen at least 30-40 washes a piece without any of the design coming off...
Could curing the ink on the shirt to long be causing this problem?
Thank you.
Last edited by ScabdClothing; July 20th, 2009 at 09:48 PM.
Reason: added more info
sounds like it could be not curing the ink long enough at the right temp could be the problem. Did you do a stretch test after printing and curing??? If the ink does not crack then it should stick.
I have the curing process taking 50 seconds and every shirt was stretch tested and passed. That is what baffles me. Should stick but doesn't. I'm wondering if it has to do with how much ink is being laid down from the 110 mesh screen. I'm used to using nothing less then 230 screens.
I'll go back and heat all the shirts I have left. I've rolled out around 50 of the shirts and thr customers except 3 have not had problems. Just don't want this becoming a habbit.
hhhmmmm is it humid in your area right now??? I am in tucson humidity is high...not sure if that could be any contribution but only thing I can think of if curing at the right temp and time...
If you have your dryer calibrated for a 230 mesh layer of ink, it's entirely plausible that you would need to bump the time up for the thicker layer from a 110.
I checked it when I first got it in, which was a couple of months ago and everything has been fine until now. So my guess is that I am not curing it long enough I guess. Seems strange since I have to watch out when it comes to doing the white text on the red shirts since it almost looks like it wants to burn the shirt. My "dryer" is sitting 3.25 inches above the shirt. Which is what it was at the old place I worked at and never had problems there. Although they did have a conveyor oven and that is something I don't have.
Could it have to do with leaving the shirts "stuck" to the pallets? I don't "pop" them up or "loosen" them from the pallets before the curing period...
Missed the reply. Yeah for 230+ mesh I never had problems curing for 30 seconds and never have had any issues. So I thought 50 seconds for 110 would be good enough, but yeah white ink is so thick that might be causing some problems with the cure times. I'm going to "recure" all the ones I have left to see what is going on. Going to also do some test prints with other colours to see what's up. Got to figure this one out. Thanks for the input so far.
This Can happen if you do a Print flash print. A lot of times if you completely cure the first layer and then print over the top of it. The second layer will not be part of the first layer print and when you wash the garmet that layer likes to peal off the first layer. So Make sure that the first print is not cured all the way, It is only supposed to be cured enough to be
Well I purchased a different brand of ink, and it seems to be bad ink. No matter what or how long I cure it, it comes off the shirts. It's hit or miss rather it does or not. So, I mixed the ink to make sure and it still did it. So I went back to the ink that I got from Ryonet with my startup kit and it's perfect.
Always something, right? But thanks for the help tho. Now I'm having to ship out hand fulls of new shirts to those people that got shirts that fell apart. At least with the people I deal with they are understanding.
Design coming off tshirts 
