Hi all!

I am a newbie to the screen printing process and things have been going quite well.

I print shirts w/ plastisol inks and it so wonderful to work with this ink! We've added baby bibs to our line-up and in my research, decided to use water based ink for the imprint. While the bibs mostly turn out wonderful, working with wb ink is a pain! I just ordered some screen unclogger as I am experiencing that problem more so now than I did when I first started screening the bibs.

So, my question: should I stick with wb ink for the bibs? I don't want to possibly scratch a baby's face with the plastisol ink, which is why I went with the wb ink in the first place, but it is so much easier to work with! Are there any other ink options that would work for a baby bib that would be mostly non-abrasive when wiping a baby's face with the bib?

Thanks for any and all replies!

I think there are more than just feel issues here with infant wear. Certain States have regulations as to the phthalates and PVC's that can be in the ink for children under 12 or 13 years old. There are specific plastisol inks made for this market group however. So technically you could use a plastisol ink for this but depending on how much ink you need to lay down that will determine how soft it will feel.

For instance if you are printing dark colors on white or light colored bibs then you could possibly print plastisol ink with a soft hand feel. Simply use higher mesh counts with harder squeegees and print a lessor volume of ink. You may want to thin out the ink so it will penetrate the fibers easier as well.

Other than that water based inks would be the easiest to get the softest feel from. Especially if the fabric is like a towel and has lose weaves, loops, knits... etc.