‘Not only are standard polyurethane/polyester boards made from petrochemicals, but the production of them releases incredibly harmful chemicals into the environment. Put this with their typical lifespan and it is clear that there is definite room for improvement on how boards are made.‘

It looks like the James Otter approach to this problem has been without compromise in all repects, the finished boards look amazing and have now been thoroughly tested on our Cornish coastline. In addition to producing an incredible product there is (at the time of writing) an invitation to the customer to be a part of the creation process. In my opinion it would be well worth making the most of this opportunity.

I would like to think that one day I might get to own one myself, although this would require finding the time to use it, getting back in the water again is high on the agenda but screen printing, right now, seems to be taking up every waking moment. Speaking of which the T shirts….

An obvious choice, Earth positive Organic T shirts screen printed using water based inks. Only the best for Otter Surfboards.

As far as Advertees is concerned we always take the position of promoting the best organic T shirts, and the most environmentally friendly options for screen printing T shirts. Unfortunately many of our customers are not able to justify the extra cost for a variety of  legitimate reasons, and we totally understand that for 90% of our customer base an organic, fairly traded product is simply not within budget. For similar real world reasons we are unable to offer a ‘certified’ organic product as the expense of eliminating the possibility of cross contamination (fibres and dust from none organic T shirts) is simply not an option presently.

So it is refreshing to find a company that does not compromise (as we do) and requests a product to match their own in terms of sustainability.

Neals Yard remedies offer a range of  ‘organic natural health and beauty products‘ . This phrase is very familiar, the cynical among us, and those people who are are little weary of green washing, may be doubting this claim as they read it.  But in this instance we (Advertees) are assured by the sincerity of a company who are willing to spend a little more on promotion and merchandising because of a genuine belief in sustainability over cost. Neals Yard Remedies use the following  phrase ‘This passion, and our firm belief that it’s down to all of us to protect our precious planet, is at the heart of everything we do’  and in our experience this has proved to be true.

The T shirts supplied for this job were from earth positive, the water based inks used to print this design were supplied by grafco. It was printed at 85LPI using newman screens and a mesh, the inks used were supplied by screening west a UK supplier of grafco inks.

Although not certified, Advertees can supply T shirts printed to the highest environmental standards, it is our policy to advise clients that screen printing on to dark coloured T shirts is not, in our experience, an environmentally friendly option, despite the claims of some organically certified T shirt printers. Advertees does provide a quality non formaldehyde water based discharge printing solution, but we prefer to reinforce the following. Printing on light coloured T shirts in water based inks has far less environmental impact!

Water based screen printing inks were used to print this T shirt for our web of life, an obvious choice for these scientists who are presently researching the effects of an alien moth on our conker trees. Okarmas 100% organic Tshirt is a substantial premium weight shirt which has excellent print properties.

For those requiring organic T shirt printing on a budget we have an offer on the earth positive range of  T-shirts. Advertees specialise in water based T shirt printing.

The more use we make of water-based inks, the more we realise some of the benefits offered from a production point of view. In the first 2 months of 2010 we have seen significant growth in customer enquiries specific to water based inks (and surprisingly further enquiries from fellow screen printers) .

This is an incredibly positive start to the year, even to leave the environmental benefits out of the equation, screen printing with these products sees added customer satisfaction and a very high rate of return custom. Many of the prominent online T shirt printers have now stated they offer this service, lets hope this continued growth in interest and use of water based inks will lead to faster product development, and availability.

We have been using a fair amount of NF super white of late too, the ready mixed white is a definite improvement on previous whites we have used. Promotional T shirt printing using organic T shirts, and water based inks is now getting easier in terms of shirt, and ink availability. Manufacturers are doing a great job of supplying improved products for this market. We are hopeful the efforts in product development within this area will be maintained through the current economic climate. These ‘green’ agendas, are bringing improvements in environmental and ethical standards within the T shirt and ink manufacturing industries, we also believe these efforts are bringing an improvement to overall print and product quality.

Screen printing light colours on to dark T shirts is unlikely to become environmentally friendly any time soon (our recommendation to anyone who has a strict environmental policy is to print on to lighter T-shirts using clear water based inks) but discharge screen printing is one of the options being touted as a better alternative to plastisol inks. The majority of manufacturers supply a solution which contains small traces of Formaldehyde, they also uses heavy metals. These formulas are notorious for their unpleasant odours, and the required wash before wear label is a no no for most retailers.

Magnacolours have produced an alternative to these products, a discharge ink free from Formaldehyde and heavy metals. The NF formula performs very well, t-shirts printed with this ink can be worn immediately, the print has a soft hand and good colour. We have used then when printing by hand and on the auto, they are very user friendly in both situations. The draw backs are the same as those experienced when using products that use Formaldehyde . Very long curing times are required (but no flash curing, so not necessarily less energy efficient), and we think there is also an unpleasant odour, despite the manufacturer claim “No harmful or distracting odors in the workplace”.

The ink only has a limited life of 4 hours, but an organised workshop should have no problem dealing with this. The lifespan of the ink does create waste, if ink use cannot be determined accurately. We think discharge is not a suitable solution for smaller orders. This is a shorter working time than traditional ZF formulas.

So overall the Non Formaldehyde inks seem to be the right choice when discharging T-shirts.

Some of the reasons to choose NF discharge.

• No formaldehyde added during discharge process.
• No harmful or distracting odors in the workplace.
• Garments can be worn immediately after printing-without washing or warnings.
• Super soft finish with excellent color fastness and durability.
• PVC, Phthalate and APEO free formulations. Meets all key international environmental
standards, see Technical Data Sheets for details.
• Superb discharge and color development on suitable garments.
• PC color mixing system support.
• Low viscosity inks print easily on manual and automatic presses.

Delivery of a new gas dryer has held things up a little this week, but all being well we should be up and running again by the weekend. Once this oven is fired up we will be able to process water-based orders far more efficiently. T shirt prints such as theweboflife.org.uk will be done in half the time, this design was printed on Okarma organic cotton T-shirts using Grafco clear water base.

Environmentally sound T shirt printing was the request from TANC. So we supplied the Earth Positive T shirt, printed using an opaque water based ink. Find out more about open cast mines and plans for new coal at the TANC website.

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.

Christmas is now getting closer, and as it does the food industry goes into overdrive. This year we have been very fortunate to recieve chocolate in thanks for our T shirt printing, the above photograph is of a partly decimated box of organic handmade chocolate which had to be wrestled from staff for the benefit of this blog. This organic handmade chocolate is highly recommended by the Advertees team many of whom will be making the journey to St Ives to make purchases in the very near future.
We were also treated to the most amazing cornish fruitcake a photo of which had to be taken from the cornish fruitcake companies own web site, as I was too slow with the camera, staff polished off this treat in record time. Another 10 out of 10 from Advertees staff.

This years Screen Actions, is a two day event for young people, combining workshops, screenings and partys, last year saw 300 young people take part from schools all over Cornwall.

Board shorts is the Festival’s board sports film event, held at the Sandsifter Bar in Gwithian on the 8th November. As well as screenings there will be live music from Mark Kermode’s skiffle band The Dodge Brothers and local DJs Sir Vinyl of the Fattest.

This is a great event and although I am unable to make any of the screenings this year, we were fortunate enough to be able to supply some printed organic T shirts, we used water based screen printing inks for all the designs. The designs were created by A-Side a graphic design and illustration studio based in Falmouth Cornwall.

Suftwisted are in the process of a radical change, an interesting site is threatening to emerge from twisted towers in the very near future. The killer site is going to take bevel, emboss and shadow photoshop filters to the next level, no text or photograph will be left untouched.

In depth profiles of team riders can be found at the site already if you are willing to take the time to find them, but no sign of any merchandise for sale so far, the twisted merchandise is becoming very exclusive kit, and as a result the price is being driven sky high.

2011 update: Surtwisted remains in limbo, merch as illusive as ever, Tont Plant currently in Sumatra meditating on what the next incarnation will be. Can’t wait to find out what it is.

You can visit the twisted blog and have a go at name this spot Competitions, which are run on a semi regular basis, or even enter the tri annual shelf fest if you feel up to it. Better still, buy yourself a surftwisted T shirt! If you can figure out a way to purchase the Twisted merch, there is presently no online shop or retail outlet, you will need to track down Tony Plant, and if you are lucky, he will give you a screen printed organic T shirt in return for some cash. Good luck if you choose to pursue this.

Too many good reasons for textile water based inks

Plastisol inks are practical but.
Any printer who is confident in printing with textile water based inks does not find any good reasons to use plastisol inks, except perhaps, when the printer has finished the water based inks in his storage. The solution to the problem of waterbased inks, is to become confident with water based inks.

Water based inks are also less expensive and for many printers

Plastisols can be left in the screen, and with the can open, so printers can be lazy, they can stop their productions for a cigarette. When using water based inks it is better to start the production and finish it (although there are several kind of retarders and many tricks in order to avoid the screen clogging).
Water based inks are not for lazy printers but for practical business textile printers. This is also the case for any graphic screen printer.

A better print quality brings greater rewards

It is possible to recognize two-three kind of markets for textile screen printing: promotional, fashion-promotional, fashion.

Promotional can be done with plastisol, fashion-promotional with plastisols too (but possibly with water based inks for the final printing quality), fashion is printed almost entirely with water based inks in order to achieve the final printing quality, plastisols have a “look”  and for high fashion plastisol printing does not help to sell the printed fabrics at higher prices.
A T-shirt for promotional can cost 5 pounds, for promotional-fashion can cost up to 20-25 pounds, for fashion up to 50 pounds or more with the Armani, D&G, Versace or many other brands on. It would seem that it would be possible to catch more business (£££) with water based productions than with the plastisol productions. Also the promotional prints can be made with water based inks, especially as the standard water based inks are less expensive.

A non water based culture of screen printing in the UK

In UK it is rare to talk about water based inks, there is very little in the way of waterbased screen printing culture or manufacture (we are not saying no culture) the UK T shirt printing industry has focused all development time and budget on plastisol inks, meaning any comparison from water base inks VS plastisol are made from an old kind of water based ink to a new kind of plastisols, or nearly new kind of plastisol, because in UK there is also the contradiction to print on organic cotton with plastic-plastisols with phthalates, that according to independent and upgradate studies many kind of phthalates are very dangerous for children and banned in Europe, but phthalates cost nothing and there are margins as with the petrol…

A none water based culture also means screen printers need to re learn screen printing, different squeegees, squeegee angles, squeegee pressures and more, and the pre press department requires different screen meshes and a different approach to colour separations.
In countries like Italy and France (also Germany), there is a strong and important fashion industry, there is much more water based production too. It is strange to see that the plastisols with phthalates are not banned in UK, considering that they are in the most of the UK textile screen printing market, when in Germany, Italy, France they are banned by EU norms and there the textile printing market is mostly with water based inks.

Evolution of the new water based inks

Before the plastisol inks invention there was only one option of water based inks, and it is wrong thinking that the water based inks are still with the same product of 20 or more years ago. Fashion and promotional industries do not need plastisols, waterbased is a desirable alternative. Now there are water base inks (mixed) that do not dry onto the screen and there are water based inks that cure alone without curing unit (plastisols cannot dry alone, they need an expensive technology with radiant panels, water based inks need just hot air… although for a longer time). Also, it is possible to reach much more special effects with water based inks than with plastisols.

Eco-friendly and child-friendly

Plastisol mean plastic, water based inks and related specialties are definitely nearly natural products. Not only the textile water based inks are without phthalates and bio-degradable up to 80%, but the standard water based inks are according to the more severe norms for exporting all over the world (the more severe norms are in Europe, Oekotex standards for babies too), are EN71/III compliant for children toys too, are not flammable (plastisol are) and of course safer for the printers too. The screens have to be washed with water if the inks are not left onto the screens for ages, none special chemical is required, just a water-proof emulsion. And it is good and natural choice to print onto organic cottons with water based products.

More quality with the water based inks

With the same screen mesh it is possible to reach finer details with water based inks than with plastisols. The final prints with water based inks are with softer feel, more natural colours (special colour are possible too), any kind of inks and specialties are mixable together and it is possible to reach thousand of combinations and special results (for this reasons they are the unique choice for fashion industry). So you can reach more results with water based inks than with plastisol… there also are the water based inks for synthetic fabrics and nylon too, and they work!

All the possibilities need to be understood, tried and tested

it is not possible to change in a day from plastisol to water based inks. Water based inks are more difficult to use for a beginner, because they are for textile printing professionals. And this can be where old prejudices resurface.

Old pre-judicious on water based inks

They dry into the screen: False, if you use the standard inks with a retarder (there are also are non standard specialties that do not dry); also in Tunis (North Africa) there are water based printers. If they can print there you can print here in UK, easily. But… have you never heard about a water based printing course in UK, probably not.

Water based inks need more time than plastisol to be cured: this is true, but if the curing process is right they resist longer than plastisols into the fabrics; plastisol are mostly fixed mechanically over the fabrics, water based inks go deeper into the fabrics, for this reasons the prints are softer and they need to be cured deeply, in other words for longer until the natural water is totally evaporate from the fabrics leaving the pigments to be visible without any plastics around. But there are also additives available which can cure the inks without any use of heat at all.

They need more time to be cured so they are less productive than plastisol: false, without retarder it is better not to stop the production at any time, the automatic machines have to be optimised, so the printer is more productive. The curing units have an easier technology (hot air, not the more expensive radiant panels technology as for plastisols) and usually they are bigger and longer, so you can charge more materials on the same belt.
The most important investment for water based ink productions is a good and long curing unit, and this costs, but you save money at medium time with many new applications and less expensive inks. Anyway, a good curing unit is not less important than a good screenprinting machine, and any screenprinting professional should not choose easy to cure inks – generally at lower quality (and the phthalates speed up the curing….) … because they cannot afford a right curing unit costs.

Massimo…

Having outlined a few of the main differences between plastic and water-based inks in a previous article we can now take a look at some more factors which can help us make decisions about what inks to use for our T shirt printing. Water based inks require better time management. Drying in the screen is one of the biggest draw backs of  waterbased screen inks, for the big workshop running large orders it is helpful to be able to leave a complex multicolour set up on the machine overnight, if a screen gets damaged it may take time to prepare a new one and get the press running again, the last thing a busy shop running to deadlines wants is to have to strip the entire job down wash out the screens and set up again because of one hold up.
And for the smaller operator it is equally frustrating, lone operators often need to leave the press to talk to customers and answer phone calls, they do not want to have the stress of getting back to the screens before all the detail on even a single colour job is lost to drying ink. Precious time is easily lost washing out screens drying them and setting up again. None of these problems are had when using plastic inks, so what incentives do we have to move more print jobs to water based inks? One possible reason is health

All solvents are potential health hazards, they vary in their levels of toxicity, and can penetrate into the human body by three paths:

The respiratory tract

The skin (through unprotected contact)

The digestive system (only if swallowed!)

Limited exposure to most solvents is not going to damage your health, depending on the individual solvent. However, the affect of solvents on health should not be ignored, as continued exposure can lead to any of the following:

• Irritation of the skin, eyes and mucous membranes

• Respiratory problems

• Headaches, dizziness, nausea

• Light-headedness

• Effects to the nervous system

• Blood, liver, kidney diseases

• Carcinogenic effects

The degree of damage on human health varies but for screen printers the duration and frequency of exposure is very high.
These products have an equally negative impact on the environment, and some inks manufactured in the UK and America still contain ingredients which are banned for use in European products. I think most screen printers are possibly aware of the health hazards, but when faced with the prospect of slowing the press down most T shirt printers will put these issues to the back of their mind, especially with the tight margins we are often required to work to.
The problems of a water based workshop can be overcome, waterbased inks have improved tremendously in recent years, and the quality and the variety of the prints that can be achieved should see them being considered for more jobs, more frequently.

Despite all the rain, general gloom  and the end of summer things have remained busy, so a the second installment to the epic waterbased articles project goes on hold, and in its place a late arrival outside the workshops, nearly all the sunflowers here are long passed their best, and then out comes this little beauty, and a little blue sky to top it off. Looks like Tony Plant may get the Pit Pilot cover with an Indo shot too, well done Tony and respect to surftwisted. Catch up soon.

T shirt printers loving flowers.

Hopefully we can outline some of the benefits of T shirt printing in water based inks, and explore some of the possible reasons many screen printing companies are so reluctant to advertise or use these inks. Here are just a few benefits we feel waterbased inks have to offer.

• Environmentally sound non spirit based formulas
• Breath-ability on large prints
• Soft and sometimes imperceptible hand
• Very long lasting print
• Diverse range of special effects

and to make sure we represent the choice of screen printers who do not like to use these products, some of the negatives

• Shorter shelf life
• Ability to dry in screen if left
• Breaking down of screens on long runs
• Mixing of pigments and binders time consuming and messy
• Longer cure times required

This is a small list in regards to both the pros and cons, and the reason we are dealing with this complex subject in more than one part. Firstly we want to know why waterbased inks were ditched so readily by the screen print industry in favour of plastic inks?
Plastic inks were a major breakthrough and the answer to all the major problems screen printers were experiencing in their workshops, the industry adopted these inks for faster production times, enhanced opacity on dark garments, the ability to leave complex multi colour jobs set up on a machine overnight and faster curing times, the benefits were there for small scale business and the major manufacturers alike. By the time I came to screen printing in the 1980′s waterbased inks were never used for T shirt decoration, and it was not until coming to work for Advertees in 1991 that I discovered water-based inks. I was surprised to learn that in some instances, even prior to recent advances in ink technology, these inks could produce far superior results to plastic. So fast forward 17 years and very slowly the notion that plastic may not be good for us and the environment is beginning to take hold, yet weaning us off this wonder stuff, I think, is going to be a long and difficult process.

Three colour waterbased index print on organic T shirts.

A partnership of the zoological society of London and Global Tiger Patrol is 21st Century Tiger. Raising funds for wild tiger conservation globally and supporting more than 30 projects across six countries, their contribution is now over £1 million. The 21st Century Tiger web site is full of information and a must to read.

While some T shirt suppliers  suprise us with mid year price increases, others, namely Earth Positive look like closing the price gap on the non organic brands. As many companies start passing on rising fuel and energy costs to the consumer, Earth Positive will start to see a return on their investment in alternative energy sources. Meaning organic Promotional T shirt printing will not cost the earth.