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314 Posts
Hello TSF Members....
OK... Let me just begin by stating that I really wanted Firebird ink to be the Champion of our white ink dreams. And filling up the Freejet 330TX's ink lines with Firebird's new Holy-grail type goodness gave me chills... Having said that, here is our personal experience with the results we've received with Firebird Ink's White Ink.
Experience level: I have been dabbling in the DTG world almost 3 years. I didnt get serious until about 1.5 years ago. Went to training at Freejet headquarters. Learned a lot, etc... After spending time daily with printing over a year's span, I have mastered quite a few areas of DTG printing and our Kothari RIP. And feel very confident with the longevity and washability of our DuPont Artistri based prints. I like to beat up our test tees (testes) and make sure I personally know the limits of our product.
Before we moved to Image Armor PT, we used to experience significant "cracking" after wash testing on our DuPont product. Our prints would look fantastic right after the heatpress, but would suffer the wash cycle. Image Armor has almost eliminated this problem, and had a huge improvement on our finished product. We were proud to offer our product from then on.
After hearing all the hype about the new Firebird White, we were of course very interested in testing it. After all, people were saying it has a "screenprint-like" quality, and what DTG user would pass that up right? So we bought some FB white, flushed the lines and started printing.
Day one: Did some UFC promo shirts that looked fantastic. Didnt do any destructo tests on them, as we were just taking them to a local fight shop for approval. They loved the samples, so did we..
Day two: We finished a small order with the Firebird product for another company. An all flat white design, they looked really sharp and we sent them off as wholesale. I did a brutal "stretch test" right after they cooled down from the heat-press and I gotta say, I was very impressed. I thought: "Holy Crap.. there will be no need for screenprinting services anymore". Those prints were done at 2880x1440 and were very thick. I destroyed a couple of those samples and the print showed no signs of wear or tear... Real strong and flexible.. Again, before the 1st wash cycle though.
Day three: I wanted to make a video of the brutal stretch test I'd been conducting with Firebird white, because I haven't really seen one anywhere on the web, and thought others might be interested to see exactly how far things can really go with the FB White. I was so impressed by the immediate results the ink gave, hot of the press. But I wanted to wash the shirts on regular wash cycles first.... to be as realistic and thorough as possible...
. This is where my story starts to take a dive... (I seriously hear this sound when I think about it)
After pulling the Firebird product out of the 1st wash I noticed right away that the white underbase had cracked horribly. And that every different design (had 3 completely different designs on each shirt, to see differences in how it reacted) was equally cracked and severely altered... Way worse than my worst prints with DuPont in the early days. So needless to say, it was a great disappointment to us. I tested several more T-shirts this week - Gildan - FOTL HD6's - Jerzees Hi-Densi-T's - and a couple others we had laying around. All really great shirts to print on normally.. Pretreated them with light, medium, and generous treatments of Image Armor PT.. But still they all cracked badly and and didn't last one wash. Mind you, they all looked fantastic and stretched like screen prints right after the heatpress... Our heatpress is a GeoKnight 20 and is probably the best I've used. I am also one of those geeks who aims a temp gun at the heat plate surface to make certain the temp is correct. We cure at 330 degrees like most do, and I have tried the Firebird at pressure settings ranging from 1-9 on the Geo.. Curing at 60 seconds as prescribed..
I have talked to Firebird Shawn a handful of times via phone and he and his peers seem like great guys, they are very informative. Just to ask them basic questions. But to get results like these, and using a process I've become very familiar with, has made me think its time to go back to DuPont for white. I should also add that we've been using DuPont CMYK on top of Firebird White, and it is not washing out at all... So that was a plus since we were curing at 30 secs less than DuPont prescribes.. The DuPont is fine at 60 secs, for those who were wondering.. I actually laughed at the first sample out of the wash last week, I quickly said it had to be user error and that I overlooked something in the process chain. But 40 shirts later? I don't know guys - I have become pretty adept at DTG printing as I print everyday, and fine tune everyday... The DuPont stuff we were doing was pretty close to perfection with the IA Pretreat... And I really wanted to love the Firebird White, probably more than most people. I think might heart has cracks in it now...
Has anyone conducted Stretch/Destruction tests on their FB White product yet, "after" the wash test? Because before the wash, the product is friggin phenomenal and looks amazing. After the wash cycle though, the shirts look like the walls of a dilapidated Victorian home in Detroit -badly cracked... Please tell me I am forgetting to do something so I can achieve and experience what others are claiming. I am hoping I am wrong about Firebird Inks. Take a look at my post wash samples...
Thanks TSF.
The UFC Promo stuff - They looked great (pre wash, post heat press)
OK... Let me just begin by stating that I really wanted Firebird ink to be the Champion of our white ink dreams. And filling up the Freejet 330TX's ink lines with Firebird's new Holy-grail type goodness gave me chills... Having said that, here is our personal experience with the results we've received with Firebird Ink's White Ink.
Experience level: I have been dabbling in the DTG world almost 3 years. I didnt get serious until about 1.5 years ago. Went to training at Freejet headquarters. Learned a lot, etc... After spending time daily with printing over a year's span, I have mastered quite a few areas of DTG printing and our Kothari RIP. And feel very confident with the longevity and washability of our DuPont Artistri based prints. I like to beat up our test tees (testes) and make sure I personally know the limits of our product.
Before we moved to Image Armor PT, we used to experience significant "cracking" after wash testing on our DuPont product. Our prints would look fantastic right after the heatpress, but would suffer the wash cycle. Image Armor has almost eliminated this problem, and had a huge improvement on our finished product. We were proud to offer our product from then on.
After hearing all the hype about the new Firebird White, we were of course very interested in testing it. After all, people were saying it has a "screenprint-like" quality, and what DTG user would pass that up right? So we bought some FB white, flushed the lines and started printing.
Day one: Did some UFC promo shirts that looked fantastic. Didnt do any destructo tests on them, as we were just taking them to a local fight shop for approval. They loved the samples, so did we..
Day two: We finished a small order with the Firebird product for another company. An all flat white design, they looked really sharp and we sent them off as wholesale. I did a brutal "stretch test" right after they cooled down from the heat-press and I gotta say, I was very impressed. I thought: "Holy Crap.. there will be no need for screenprinting services anymore". Those prints were done at 2880x1440 and were very thick. I destroyed a couple of those samples and the print showed no signs of wear or tear... Real strong and flexible.. Again, before the 1st wash cycle though.
Day three: I wanted to make a video of the brutal stretch test I'd been conducting with Firebird white, because I haven't really seen one anywhere on the web, and thought others might be interested to see exactly how far things can really go with the FB White. I was so impressed by the immediate results the ink gave, hot of the press. But I wanted to wash the shirts on regular wash cycles first.... to be as realistic and thorough as possible...
. This is where my story starts to take a dive... (I seriously hear this sound when I think about it)After pulling the Firebird product out of the 1st wash I noticed right away that the white underbase had cracked horribly. And that every different design (had 3 completely different designs on each shirt, to see differences in how it reacted) was equally cracked and severely altered... Way worse than my worst prints with DuPont in the early days. So needless to say, it was a great disappointment to us. I tested several more T-shirts this week - Gildan - FOTL HD6's - Jerzees Hi-Densi-T's - and a couple others we had laying around. All really great shirts to print on normally.. Pretreated them with light, medium, and generous treatments of Image Armor PT.. But still they all cracked badly and and didn't last one wash. Mind you, they all looked fantastic and stretched like screen prints right after the heatpress... Our heatpress is a GeoKnight 20 and is probably the best I've used. I am also one of those geeks who aims a temp gun at the heat plate surface to make certain the temp is correct. We cure at 330 degrees like most do, and I have tried the Firebird at pressure settings ranging from 1-9 on the Geo.. Curing at 60 seconds as prescribed..
I have talked to Firebird Shawn a handful of times via phone and he and his peers seem like great guys, they are very informative. Just to ask them basic questions. But to get results like these, and using a process I've become very familiar with, has made me think its time to go back to DuPont for white. I should also add that we've been using DuPont CMYK on top of Firebird White, and it is not washing out at all... So that was a plus since we were curing at 30 secs less than DuPont prescribes.. The DuPont is fine at 60 secs, for those who were wondering.. I actually laughed at the first sample out of the wash last week, I quickly said it had to be user error and that I overlooked something in the process chain. But 40 shirts later? I don't know guys - I have become pretty adept at DTG printing as I print everyday, and fine tune everyday... The DuPont stuff we were doing was pretty close to perfection with the IA Pretreat... And I really wanted to love the Firebird White, probably more than most people. I think might heart has cracks in it now
...Has anyone conducted Stretch/Destruction tests on their FB White product yet, "after" the wash test? Because before the wash, the product is friggin phenomenal and looks amazing. After the wash cycle though, the shirts look like the walls of a dilapidated Victorian home in Detroit -badly cracked... Please tell me I am forgetting to do something so I can achieve and experience what others are claiming. I am hoping I am wrong about Firebird Inks. Take a look at my post wash samples...
Thanks TSF.
The UFC Promo stuff - They looked great (pre wash, post heat press)
