Discharge printing textiles and T-shirts
Discharge screen printing is one water based solution for light prints on dark clothing or textiles. It ticks the environmental printing boxes, but it is not without it’s limitations. Firstly we would not use this method for printing orders of less than 50 T shirts, the reason being the ink has a shelf life of less than 24 hours when mixed, this means there is waste on small orders or in a situation where ink use cannot be predicted accurately. Ideally we like to see print runs of 100+ for this process. Another draw back is in its ability to reproduce accurate colour across a range of different materials, discharge ink is a bleaching agent which when combined with pigments will colour the shirt, unfortunately the underlying colour of the garment to be printed is rarely white and will affect the final print, the underlying cotton colours that are most often found are pale blue, pale cream, pale pink, all will have a grey tone to them. Quite often black T shirts can be stock that has been re-dyed, so a T shirt may have been coloured red originally and later changed to black, a batch such as this can be problematic when using the discharge system.
It is not possible to use discharge printing on synthetic materials, an 80% cotton content would be the minimum requirement in our opinion. True whites are hard to achieve, and good bright reds are also very difficult to make permenant and these are things to consider when designing for this process. Greens yellows and blues are bright and permanent. Although an organic solution for screen printers discharge printing will need a wash before wear label.
Despite all the draw backs of this technique there are some circumstances where it excells, the final print has no discernable texture to it after the first wash and can be ironed over.
Ahh discharge printing, exposing the underlying colours of t shirts is always good fun. You just never know what you are gona get!
At least Mother Nature will be happier.
Roy Nottage´s last blog post..You Must Practice Drawing Every Day
Another interesting article – you certainly know your stuff. Good luck for 2009.
Leave a comment!
Discharge Printing »
Discharge printing textiles and T-shirts
Discharge screen printing is one water based solution for light prints on dark clothing or textiles. It ticks the environmental printing boxes, but it is not without it’s limitations. Firstly we would not use this …
Organic »
New organic products for 2011
A big change for Advertees in 2011, New website is very near completion with more emphasis than ever on T shirt printing, and all inclusive deals. Lots of new products have become available this year, …
screen printing »
Making way for new auto.
The arrival of our new 8 colour automatic is getting closer, but preparation for the machines delivery is nigh on impossible with our current workload.
The new machine will bring much needed added capacity, and make …
Speciality inks »
Soft feel T shirt prints and foil
When screen printing Mixed Martial Arts T-shirts soft prints are nearly always a requirement. Screen printed foil T-shirts are currently a common request.
So we are now offering foils using a phthalate free adhesive, when used …
t shirt printing »
Screen Printing of Water based inks
May has been a very busy month for us, this blog has only seen one post at the beginning of this month, as printing T shirts has been required from waking to sleeping. Our new …
True process or CMYK »
Mr Chuffiewuffie full colour organic T shirt prints
Some projects are simply a pleasure to work on, and Mr Chuffiewuffie and friends was certainly one of those jobs Advertees enjoy. These illustrations by Rob Wills seem to spread a little bit of happiness …
Using Index printing »
Index Separation Method for Screen Printing
There are several ways of achieving this, including transfer printing and direct to garment (DTG) printing. The most commonly used techniques for screen printing however, are index and simulated process. The following is an insight into index separations.
We have taken this photo of a handsome rooster and opened it in Adobe Photoshop.
water-based »
Port Eliot 2010 T shirt.
This weekend Port Eliot Festival plays host to a huge variety of creative talent, and as usual there seems to be something of interest for everyone.
Unfortunately for Advertees a consequence of this event is that …
WP Cumulus Flash tag cloud by Roy Tanck requires Flash Player 9 or better.