Printing with shimmer (gold) plastisol ink

[knltees]

I recently finished a 40 piece order with shimmer gold plastisol ink. I used a standard white ink flash base. I made a few extras to see how they would wash. Unfourtunly, part of the shimmer gold ink came off in the wash. I cured the ink at 325 in a conveyer dryer. What am I doing wrong? I may have to eat 40 shirts if they all screwed up!

[ApeShirt]

Personally I haven't tied shimmer inks this myself. With that said, I'm wondering if the under base got fully cured by accident before laying down the shimmer ink. Resulting in the gold to not have anything to grab onto. Could that be the culprit?

[knltees]

Thats a possibility. The gold ink cracked in some areas when the 100 % cotton t shirt was stretched. Is curing at 325-330 good? I was told today that plastisol needs to cure at 347 degrees. I also used a 83 mesh for the shimmer ink. Maybe jumping up to a 110 mesh may help?

[ApeShirt]

320 is generally the temp it needs to hit. BUT, when doing several layers it must reach that all the way thru reaching the bottom, not just surface temp. So that means curing for a little longer ensuring the temp reaches that all the way thru.

[Catspit Productions]

Greg's right. I would guess the culprit here is an under cure. Now with plastisol inks you can print on top of another fully cured plastisol ink and it should bond fine.

But with metallic shimmers, glitters, sparkles or other plastisol inks that have shiny cristalina can actually reflect heat. That combined with the thicker ink layers in conjunction with an under base would require a longer cure time.

Most plastisol inks cure at around 330 degrees F. But when we have thick layers of plastisol inks especially metallic shimmers we need to allow the ENTIRE ink layer to reach 330 degrees F. Therefore we may slow the belt down quite a bit to make the print stay in the oven chamber for up to a minute.

Check out this video:

[knltees]

So it's best to lower the oven temp and slow the belt down or keep the temp the same? I was afraid I would scortch the ink and make it bubble.

[Catspit Productions]

That is possible but normally it takes a decent amount of heat to do that. But you keep the oven temp the same and slow the belt down. Just do it in increments and watch the ink. Do the rub and stretch tests and find the perfect belt speed and temp that will cure the ink.