[Brian-R]

I used white ink (white only, no color ink was used) on a royal blue t-shirt and the pretreatment stained the shirt. I noticed that the stain was there after curing but thought that it would wash out since it was just pretreatment, but it didn't wash out. It is a very noticable stain. Definitely not a marketable product.

I guess I need to ask if a royal blue shirt even needs pretreatment. And if it does then I must have done something wrong if others are pretreating medium dark shirts successfully. Any ideas?

Thanks

Brian

 

[raise]

Anytime you use white ink you must use the white ink pretreatment. If you are printing color (CMYK) only on a shirt you can forgo any pretreatment if you choose to.

Is it possible that too much pretreatment was sprayed on? That is only time I've seen when I get stains from the pretreatment solution.

 

[sunnydayz]

I agree, it sounds like too heavy on the pretreatment. Try first spraying a light mist of distilled water first before spraying your pretreat. This tends to soften the edges of the pretreat and make it blend better.

 

[DAGuide]

The hardest color of shirt to pretreat is any bright color. This is why so many of the veterans now stick to only printing certain colors of shirts that they know they can successful do. You are going to have to do some experimenting to determine if you can get a product that is sellable for your customer. Try taking some of the pretreatment and dilute it down with distilled water (not regular water). Start with 90% pretreatment and 10% water and then go down from there until you don't see the stain. Then do a wash test to see if you have enough pretreatment to get good washfastness. If you find something that works for you, make sure that you know what settings you used (i.e. use a permanent marker and write it on the shirt).

Hope this helps.

Mark

 

[adrenaline]

I mix my prespray 50 / 50 with water. 500ml preapray and 500ml water. Also we do a quick mist of water before we put on the prespray and allow it to start soaking in to the material. Alot of new materials will not take anything wet and it seems to need a bit of coaxing along to get it to soak in. If it does no want to soak in and sits on top (alot!) this will also cause staining and you will also have problems when curing. Some colours (bright colours) change colour after curing and look horrible most of this is just taining and will disapear within a few minutes of hanging after the curing is complete

 

[allamerican-aeoon]

Pretreatment is pain in a tooth. I study on Pretreatment whole lot for supporting to build Pretreatment machine and I made pefect one with understand below. There are so many myth and tricks.
But
1. any water which can drinkable will be fine.
2. mix with 10-20% is fine. No mix is OK too.
3. after water spray can be help (spread wider) or hurt (makes too weak and uneven) also.
4. Most important is consistancy. That is all. Since we are human we cannot do same all the time. Some do better some cannot. Even better peoples product is not same. We cannot send out all different print shirts
5. left mark is over spraied and heat pressed to hard with heat press or not used Parchment paper. Let all water vaporized.
6. all you need is Spary with consistance, roll it with sponge, heat press without pressure. DONE. Guaranty!!!!!!!
7. I am offering free preteating for you on limited time. you pay shipping and handling. less then 1/2 doz per company. We can handle 1000/day/1 worker. sales@screenprintsupply.com

 

[allamerican-aeoon]

Anytime you use white ink you must use the white ink pretreatment. If you are printing color (CMYK) only on a shirt you can forgo any pretreatment if you choose to.

Is it possible that too much pretreatment was sprayed on? That is only time I've seen when I get stains from the pretreatment solution.

Who's pretreatment are you using?

 

[adrenaline]

I found that some sponge rollers can pull fibres back up on the way out of the roll. I use a sponge brush and it works a treat. Brushing straight down with a sponge brush pushes down the fibres and pushes the pretreat into the shirt as well.
As said above pretreating is the biggest time waster and incistancy bearer in printing. Bring on a good preatreat machine which does the whole job and the same job every time. Alot of people do over spray and do not cure properly and this causes some major issues with curing, washability etc etc. Once you get it right you will be ok. A machine will do a better job though as it can be fare more exact.

 

[sunnydayz]

I found using a paintbrush to brush down the fibers works great. I tried the foam brushes and notices that it left the little foam particles on the shirts. I did not notice these until I did a lighter color shirt, and then I got worried about the foam fibers getting into my printhead so I switched to a china bristle brush that doesnt shed at all and works great. I too just brush straight down.

 

[Brian-R]

Are you diluting the pretreatment as described above or are you using it straight?
Do you apply a light spray of water before pretreating?
And I think I read someone saying that they give a light water spray after pretreating and before
curing pretreatment.

Thanks

 

[sunnydayz]

The way I do it is too lightly mist the garment with distilled water, just so you see a small amount of beading of the shirt, brush that down, spray full strength pretreat just until It looks like a slight graying on the shirt, brush that down and then dry with quilan parchment paper. I never dilute my pretreament.

 

[adrenaline]

Try 50/50 you can go mental with it and never over do it LOL. I nevr have had a prob with 50/50 and it seems to soak in well> I have done 50 /50 from day one. I might try a 30/70 mix 30 H20 and 70 pretreat and see what happens. I does take a little more drying but works not much and seems to do the trick for me and we do alot of colour shirts and I mean over 80% of our jobs are full colour on darks and are for screen printers with no complaints as yet. Always a first time though LOL. Have a good day