Hi,

Firstly would like to thank you immensely. We just started up our screen printing business, and using your exposure unit and videos, we have achieved great results thus far burning our screens!

To the question,

We would like to emulate the ink style of a company that we frequently buy shirts from called Buy Me Brunch. They use tri blend shirts for the heathered look, and the heathered look itself shows through the ink; which is very thin on the shirt and very transparent. I will attach a picture below if I can to show the style. My question is, can we reproduce this look with plastisol? (I have tried on a 230 mesh screen and used 5% curable reducer) however the black plastisol I used was not even milky after I added the curable reducer, so I was not surprised when it still came out 100% opaque. From reading around, I am debating on purchasing a soft hand additive, and using that as the main source, while adding small amount of plastisol to it, until I reach the color shade I want and transparency. Can anyone shed any insight on this style of printing? (The ink feel on the buy me brunch shirts is so thin it can barely be felt. From the inside of the shirt, you can't tell there is ink on the opposite side.)

At my shop we've tried to achieve this by "cutting" our plastisol but had the image washout. I think this is more along the lines of water based ink. But you could try process black, if you have it,or by adding process base to your black.

Yes, you have it. Use soft hand base as the main ingredient and add a hint of color. Then run it through a nice high mesh count. 230 should suffice. Colors that are dark have a lot of pigment in them. So thinning them to reduce opacity can be a challenge. But soft hand base is a curable printable medium you can add color to. It prints much like a thin ink. And perhaps with black the suggestion of using a process black for this may be good.

You flood and stroke may also help with this. Try not to be so heavy handed on this project. Translucent inks would be the best for this too. So the choice of ink to begin with is important to consider even if you use soft hand base. Ultimately plastisol can achieve what you want but water based inks may be best at this style of printing. Otherwise it will just take a little experimentation to get it down where you want it.