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Multi-Color Print, Trap with black ink looks too shiny

2553 Views 4 Replies 4 Participants Last post by  mikelmorgan
I am printing a multi-color job on light shirts, some of the order is on dark shirts where the black ink will be replaced by white, but here is the issue I am having:

There is one spot on my artwork where the two colors are touching, black is the top color, process blue is the bottom. I have set up a trap in the artwork for ease of registration. The process blue, which is an opaque plastisol (because will also be printed on dark shirts), is printed first, and the black second, and partially overlaps the blue ink.

The problem is that where the black is printed over the blue, the black ink is really shiny compared to the rest of the print, so there appears to be a shiny black outline around the trapped areas of the blue. Is there anything I can add to my black ink to dull it down a little? I have some puff additive that I thought I would try, anything else? I don't have time to order anything, so hoping I could use a technique or supplies that I currently have to help with this.

Any suggestions/advice would be appreciated. Thank you!
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I would either trap the underlying colors completely to make all of the black shiny, or butt register everything so that the black isn't on top of any other colors.
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Thank you, looks like I will be making another screen, oh well
i agree with Justin.
There maybe another solution. Are you printing the blue then flash drying it then printing the black? this would give the black a shine for sure if it's falling on a flash dried ink. I don't think you'd get such a shiny black if you printed wet on wet.
wet on wet should fix the problem. But you may need to lessen the trap if you do this. Also try a higher mesh screen or add a curable reducer to the ink may help.
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