[skdave]

I collected 12 or so printed shirts at the SGIA show 2008.
I cut the printing in half and washed and dried the same side over and over.
The first group is after 4 cycles as described.
Kormit blue shirt
Flexi-jet white shirt

More to come

 

[splathead]

Re: Wash test of sample gathered at SGIA 08

Wow, not very encouraging. A lot more fading than I would have thought.

Hope you have the new Brother for darks samples?

 

[skdave]

Re: Wash test of sample gathered at SGIA 08

I do and it is in the seventh wash cycle right now.

 

[stix]

Re: Wash test of sample gathered at SGIA 08

Dave,

Are you going to post the pics of the Brother?

Thanks in advance,
Chris

 

[skdave]

Re: Wash test of sample gathered at SGIA 08

The picture with the light bulbs is thr shirt off of the Brother GT 782
The other one is Flex jet sample .
Both have been washed and dried 8 times and look great.

It is hard to tell the difference between no wash halfes and the halfes that have been washed 8 times.

 

[skdave]

Re: Wash test of sample gathered at SGIA 08

I will continue this test tomorrow and the above two will be wash till they start showing wear.

 

[Solmu]

Re: Wash test of sample gathered at SGIA 08

I'm guessing you don't store rocks in your washing machine, so for it to look that bad after four washes is pretty scary. Surprising then that the Flexi-jet holds up a lot better on darks than on lights (although it's still not going to win any prizes). That's a really useful comparison.

 

[Rodney]

I wonder why the light garment samples faded so much but the dark garment samples seemed to wash better.

Maybe that's why people are doing pretreatment on lights as well?

 

[zhenjie]

It is definitely fibrillation affecting the flexi white t-shirt print. I think they chose the wrong t-shirt!

That brother print looks incredible! I wouldn't be able to tell which was the washed half at all.

 

[zoom_monster]

I wonder why the light garment samples faded so much but the dark garment samples seemed to wash better.

Maybe that's why people are doing pretreatment on lights as well?

True, If you were to do 4 color process screenprint direct on a t-shirt you will get defibrilation also. Pretreatment may help (as a clear underbase helps in screening). 4CP gets better color gamut with a lighter ink film thickness. Same story on DTG, you can always take the saturation level up by using more ink (more passes, higher levels) but you may lose levels of intermediate colors in the process. The quality of the shirt matters as well. Printing on white base give smoother surface and brighter white than a textured (knit) of a t-shirt. A great example I use with customers is to print on t-shirt and on a sheet of photo paper. Until dtgs start printing opaque spot colors on fabric, this issue will have an effect on the final result.

 

[zhenjie]

Was the Flexisample printed using the 'new' Dupont CYMK inks? Doesn't seem to be much improvement over the old inks if that was the case. Would certainly like to hear from Flexi distributors and maybe shed some light on it.

 

[skdave]

I have now wash and dried 13 times and I for one am very impressed with the results. I will post more pictures when I finish 16 cycles.

 

[martinwoods]

Thanks Dave for all the testing.
I for one appreciate it very much

Keep up the good work. Hurry and do more laundry

 

[rwshirts]

I have a light and a dark print from Anajet. The light seemed to fade a bit after the first wash, but the black printed shirt held up fine. It may be in the pre-treatment??


RW

 

[Mistewoods]

I wonder why the light garment samples faded so much but the dark garment samples seemed to wash better.

Maybe that's why people are doing pretreatment on lights as well?

It is possible that the Flexi-jet samples were done with different ink sets. AA sells both the DuPont and the AA inks. Fibrillation does appear to be a contributing problem on the white shirt. AA generally pretreats the show samples, at least they have in the past.

I don't have many fading problems with my Flexi-jet on whites and I do not pretreat. The difference could be accounted for by either t-shirt quality, proper curing, my different ink set or all of the above.

All the wash test samples with white ink look good except the Kornit. Very nice wash tests. Thank you for sharing them.

 

[WholesalePrint]

The brother print looks promising but ink cost is a bit of a concern.

 

[brentonchad]

Comparing the prints on white to what I have seen with inkjet lately I am not sure I can make a business case for spending 10K. The darks do look good but you would have to sell a lot of singles on dark (compared to using plastisol/screen print which is cheaper on larger quantities).

Or am I missing something here?

 

[JeridHill]

Comparing the prints on white to what I have seen with inkjet lately I am not sure I can make a business case for spending 10K. The darks do look good but you would have to sell a lot of singles on dark (compared to using plastisol/screen print which is cheaper on larger quantities).

Or am I missing something here?

The first thing I had to do as a screen printer is the the screen printing mentality out of the situation, but not entirely.

Start thinking small quantities. How many small runs have you turned away because there were too many colors to print or just too little shirts? This is where this type of printing excels by leaps and bounds.

Larger runs, simply outsource to a screen printer or print them yourself with screen printing. Digital is not always the best choice, but you can convert quite a bit of your work to digital.

Some can pay for their printer in a week, others a year or more. It all depends on your business structure and determination.

 

[brentonchad]

From what I am seeing is that the inkjet transfers with the right setup (~$1K) can produce the same quality whites. There was one post here not too long ago with the JPSS paper and 12 washes (some with bleach) and there was very light fading. Much less than the pics shown here.

And maybe it's different for others - but in my market I have to produce most of the artwork. I have rarely had a client bring in something that is printable. So how do you handle this when your making only five shirts - even if I could do the shirts reasonable, the art charges would drive them away.

I would love to have one of these machines but I haven't been able to put the numbers together to make it work.

 

[sunnydayz]

I have to say that I started out using transfers and from experience, the transfers were no where near the quality of my dtg. That was my main reason for buying it, I wanted a better product for my customers. I see some say that they think the transfers are good for them and that may be. But if you ever have a chance to print the two and compare them, there is a major difference in the quality and feel.

My dtg works well for me because it fits my business plan. I do alot of retail and small orders which it fits perfectly for. That is the whole thing, is it needs to fit your business. If it doesnt you may not be happy with the cost of the machine, if you cant support it.