why does my shirt bleed through the ink?

[sunshinesusan]

Hi, I seem to have trouble with coverage on certain color shirts, like gold plastisol looks terrible on navy and black after I cure it under a flash dryer for 30 seconds. What do you suggest?

[Catspit Productions]

This could be caused by numerous factors. The easiest way to answer this question is give you the best suggestions for printing a gold plastisol ink on a dark navy blue garment. Assuming the garment is 100% cotton we would use a high opacity gold ink that will print directly on dark garments without an under base or we could use any gold ink with a white under base. If it’s polyester or a poly/cotton blend then you would use a low bleed high opacity poly white ink as an under base or a poly gold alone.

It sounds like you may want to try another ink but if you’re trying to print the gold directly onto a black or navy tee shirt then you would use a more open mesh count like a 110 or a 125. Then we would try to print a decent volume of ink by either your flood and stroke alone or a print - flash - print method. If the ink you’re using is not made for dark garment printing then it will never have enough opacity to get a decent print easily.

If the shirt is polyester or a poly/cotton blend fabric then it could be dye migration that you are seeing. Again here the ink needs to be appropriate for the job intended. A special ink called a polyester ink is required or you’ll need to under base the print with white ink. If you under base a synthetic fabric it should be fine as far as dye migration.

Check out this video, it will apply to any decent high opacity ink:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4l-g65ph5E

And see this article for more on dye migration:

http://www.catspitproductionsllc.com/dyemigration.html

and this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5XAEQhGTPI

I hope that helps out some, let me know if you have further specific questions.

[sunshinesusan]

thanks for the tips and suggestions. I'll give 'em a shot!

[Catspit Productions]

My pleasure. I'm here for oyu anytime and thanks for using the Catspit forum. I appreciate your support online!