Ink on Koozies

[upperhandprinting]

I was wondering if anyone has ever printed on can koozies before and if there was a better ink to use for it or not? I was thinking about trying my normal plastisol and curing normally, or using Triangle Ink's TI1706 Low Bleed White that I have for printing on polyester. I will try both of these and let everyone know the results, just thought I would see if anyone has done this before and what you found to work best.

Thanks!

[Catspit Productions]

I would say any decent low bleed ink should work fine as koozies are not washed often if at all so the ink will be able to be run through at 320 F or lower easily but if the koozie covering is synthetic and of a concerning color then use a polyester ink.

Back in the day when I printed koozies I remember using regular plastisol inks curing at a lower temp and we never had any problems with adhesion. You’ll be printing a much thinner layer if ink on the koozie so it will cure quicker.

I suppose bleeding is a concern if you are printing white ink on dark colors. Would love to hear your test results here Anyone else have anything to add?

[BoydRiver]

This is interesting, why would there be bleed please Jonathan and how do you combat it?

[upperhandprinting]

Just wanted to give results from printing on koozies. I tried the regular plastisol ink first and it worked great. So I never ended up using the low bleed ink. I'm assuming it would work just as well, but when the normal plastisol works, why bother, right? Another area of interest though. I planned on using a sleeve pallet to slide the koozie on and I found a huge discrepancy with the pallet itself. If anyone else has the SPS sleeve pallet, they may be able to help. I attached the bracket as far back as I could on the pallet, but with that setup and the pallet slid as far back as it can go on the arm of the press, the screen still doesn't reach the end of the pallet. This means that if you wanted to load and print sleeves for the sleeve and not the neck, it wouldn't work either. Why would they make a pallet that the screen can't reach? Ideas?

Thanks!

[BoydRiver]

I thought you were talking about can koozies Craig, do you have a picture of what your printing please?
I don't know what's happened to Jonathan, is he on holiday?

[upperhandprinting]

I am printing on can koozies. The ink held find and most of the prints look good, but I didn't like how I had to print them. I planned on using the sleeve pallet, but that didn't work. What do you use to hold them for printing?

[BoydRiver]

I don't yet Craig, I was waiting to learn from you

[upperhandprinting]

I finally got some pictures so everyone could see the koozies.

First, this is what I wanted to do:
Print 1 koozie at a time sliding it on to the sleeve pallet at the very end. It would hold it down tight with very little tack spray needed and be perfectly lined up straight up and down and left to right. I was going to test normal plastisol ink vs low bleed plastisol ink.

This is what I ended up doing:
Printed 4 koozies at a time using a normal pallet and normal plastisol ink and just taping the koozies down to the pallet in place. I had 4 lines drawn with an intersection so I knew where each koozie went. That system worked okay but movement was easy during taping so the logos are all over the place on the koozies. Slanted, lower, higher, all kinds of crooked. The other problem is that depending on how tightly I taped down the koozie, it changed my off contact which created less and more ink flow. Another issue arose when taking the tape off. It wasn't very friendly to the koozies and it pulled up fiber after fiber so there are a lot of rough edges on most of them.

Here are some pictures to describe the issues.

This is when the print came out exactly like I wanted it to. It's bright, vibrant, and all of the "holes" in the design are still intact. This is the goal.

Hopefully Jonathan can explain what is causing this. My only guess is that it's ink that is staying in the mesh and when I go to flood and stroke again, it's getting pushed out to the underside of the screen and then free to push outward of the stencil. This has been an issue on a lot of my prints lately so hopefully he can shed some more light on this. To remedy it, I've been taking a rag shirt and printing on it without a flood to "clean" the screen and then the problem seems to go away for awhile.

This is 3 koozies lined up to show the variance of prints. The first on the left is too dull, although it is centered squarely on the koozie so that is a plus. The center one is the correct print but is to the left on the koozie and slanted just the slightest bit down to the left. The one on the right shows the ghost edge around the design as well as the holes being filled because of that. It's also placed way too high and slanted more than the middle one with the left going down again.


Overall, I didn't like the method and am going to cut down my sleeve pallet and reduce the taper so I can reach the end of the pallet with the screen and try printing them that way. I've got to do about 250 koozies for a 6 week tour I'll be headed out on, so even though I'll end up doing them 1 at a time instead of 4, the end result should be much better. If I can figure out how to get the print to be consistent like the middle one, the sleeve pallet will correct my alignment issues and pretty soon I'll be the koozie master.

Thanks for reading this long post. Hopefully it can help someone out so they know what works and what doesn't.

[BoydRiver]

Hey, thanks for the explanation and the photos.
Very thought provoking.

[Catspit Productions]

Yeah this is an awesome post. Nice explanations here; excellent information and thank you very much for contributing in such a detailed manner

I would totally do them one at a time myself and you’ll get into a groove putting them on and off perfectly. Also the misprinting which looks like flooding could be due to too much pressure in the flood and stroke or the ink is thin which may call for a higher mesh count. Or how the give of the koozie can throw off the stroke.

As you get used to the koozie material you should get a feel not only for placement but for how the ink moves through the specific mesh count and covers the material. Then the process will run smoother rather than trying to do a pallet of 4 at a time.

You will have to get used to the give of the product, the way the squeegee can tend to roll the surface of the koozie. Just the right pressure and bam! Killer print in one stroke. Off by a little bit and you have to try to hit it again. Be careful not to flood the screen too much before the stroke and maybe try printing without a flood by just taking the ink with the stroke.

But a high quality ink with a tight screen and a sharp squeegee blade will help out a lot too. Definitely load them one at a time and use spray tack to hold them in place during printing. The koozie pallet should slip inside the koozie. Nice thread.