[btrclothing]

Hello I'm new to the Tshirt making business as well as this forum.
I've been having problems with the color bleeding out after the first wash.
I use photo trans plus paper printed from a Brother mfc-5840 using lc41 ink.
I use an Insta heat press on Hanes beefy tees.

The shirts were allowed to dry for 24 hours before washing.
They were washed inside out in a cold gentle wash with no bleach etc.

I printed a shirt a week or two before to test and came out fine in the wash, so I am very confused as to why this new batch isn't holding its color.

Should I increase the pressure or temperature on the press? I have no idea where to start with this.

Thanks to anyone who can help me out I've lost enough shirts already

 

[mgparrish]

Hello I'm new to the Tshirt making business as well as this forum.
I've been having problems with the color bleeding out after the first wash.
I use photo trans plus paper printed from a Brother mfc-5840 using lc41 ink.
I use an Insta heat press on Hanes beefy tees.

The shirts were allowed to dry for 24 hours before washing.
They were washed inside out in a cold gentle wash with no bleach etc.

I printed a shirt a week or two before to test and came out fine in the wash, so I am very confused as to why this new batch isn't holding its color.

Should I increase the pressure or temperature on the press? I have no idea where to start with this.

Thanks to anyone who can help me out I've lost enough shirts already

Your washing issues are due to using dye inks. Using pigment inks are the best practice for tshirt transfers.

 

[btrclothing]

The initial test shirt we printed a week before starting production on the new line of shirts came out fine in the wash. Could it be any other factors besides the ink?

 

[mgparrish]

The initial test shirt we printed a week before starting production on the new line of shirts came out fine in the wash. Could it be any other factors besides the ink?

If using dye ink the factors for bleed are wash temperature, soak, and how long they garment remains damp before putting in the dryer. Dye inks are always water soluble and pigment inks are made from non water soluble very very small pigment "particles". Dye inks are the wrong chemistry for washability, you cannot change the laws of chemistry.

Since the factors for bleed are wash temperature and soak etc it may be possible for you to control and to pass your washing testing, but what will happen with your customers? Will they always wash in cold water and never forget to take out of the washer immediatly and put in the dryer, or not allow a long soak cycle in the washer?

 

[charles95405]

As long as you use Brother or Canon or HP printers with dye ink you will have intermittnet issues with washing. That is why most of us use Epson printers and pigment inks. Maybe you could find pigment ink for your printer...but the Epson system and nozzles seem to work best

 

[btrclothing]

Ok so for the brother printer we also have MIS Heat Transfer Ink from inksupply.com. Do you think refilling the cartridges with this ink would fix the problem?

Additionally, we have a Ricoh Aficio sp c232sf laser printer that when fed heat transfer paper, prints perfectly in color yet comes out somewhat mangled. It also looked like the paper was mildly melted. Preferably we'd like to use this printer because of the speed, could there be another paper we could use that would come out fine with this printer?

Thanks in advanced we're going through a lot of trial and error with what we have.

If necessary I also have an Epson Stylus nx420 for my home computer as a last resort. Would the standard ink in that be fine or should I try replacing with the Heat Transfer pigment ink?