Wet to wet/ heat press set

[pseudosu]

Hi Forum and Johnathan,
First a big thanks to Johnathan. I've been watching your videos and going through the forum and your site and you are unbelievably helpful. Your videos are actually making me consider making the move to setting up my own manual shop (yep-- garage gal). Sorry if these questions are really basic. I have been searching your forums, other forums, google, etc and watched tons of vids etc trying to obtain as much info as possible to help me to determine how to set up my shop if I go forward with this. I'm interested in using water based inks, and the enviro-safe solvents & chemicals.

I've read you can print wet to wet when doing multi-color designs using water based inks, and seen this done using a discharge on an automated machine. But I have read conflicting reports about trying to do this on a manual machine, say a six shirt press. When I've seen this demo'd on a vid, they've been trying to flash the shirts between colors, and it looks like this would take so long the ink would dry in the screens and stick etc. I can't tell if the flash is really necessary, or if, because this was a Ryonet vid (I think- I've watched so many they are all melding together now), they really just want to sell flash units. I read on another forum you can print wet to wet (although follow-up commentary disputed this), hanger dry the shirts for a couple of days, and cure with a heat press. This sounds much simpler and less expensive, assuming you plan for an air drying area with easy access, maybe even using a print drying rack.

I would be printing basically my own line of shirts, on my own timeline, not doing high production. Does anyone have any tips/opinions/experience that can help me determine what equipment i'd really need? (I know I can't afford the kind of forced-air dryer Ryonet recommends as *the best*, and really don't want to stand there pointing a heat gun at every shirt for 2 minutes (minimum) at a time either. Ideas? Thanks so much-- what a great resource this site is!

[pseudosu]

Hi everyone,
I though it might help if I posted a link to the video I saw that has me wondering if this could possibly work using a manual set-up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r91pFlO6wwo

I know they used a dryer to activate the discharge, and of course the automated press changes a lot. I'm just curious if anyone has ever tried this manually-- the wet on wet thing. The more I'm learning it seems like it would be really hard to stick to all water based everything. I want to be able to print on breathable fabric too, like activewear, and it sounds like that will only take plastisol. Anyway, interested to hear any feedback. Cheers.

[Catspit Productions]

I don’t do a lot of discharge or water based printing. I would think you should be able to print wet on wet manually with discharge printing due to the way it works. Some people suggest discharging out the under base with a flash but I don’t think that is always necessary.

Automatic presses are much better at printing than manual presses and therefore they are actually capable of more types of printing and printing styles than a manual press may allow.

Most of the time when you want to print wet on wet the artwork is critical for success. Unfortunately, I can’t teach you that. It takes experience to know how to set up artwork properly for screen printing. But I can say often when we print wet on wet we leave a small line space between colors.

It helps reduce over printing and wet inks mixing to blur or become muddy. And it allows for the ink to naturally fill in the space. This could help you with wet on wet but with discharge inks you can print discharge wet on top of discharge.

That’s pretty obvious by the video you shared

If you’re using standard water based inks then you may need to flash depending on how much the inks pick up on the subsequent screens. In this situation the artwork will be the most important factor in your ability to print wet on wet combined with low pick up inks. Same for plastisol inks.

[pseudosu]

Thanks Johnathan,
I'm seeing printing really is an art form in and of itself. I would not even be contemplating approaching it myself if not for your helpful videos.

[Catspit Productions]

Awesome! I appreciate the kind words

You're very welcome. Good luck, let us know if you need any help anytime.