Blue logo on grey shirts, printed with no problems!Over the past couple of weeks I have gone to work on printing the logo I designed for Meier Electric, Inc. and I have printed about 45 shirts so far.
Got It Right the First Time
Fortunately, for my spirits, I printed blue ink on grey shirts first, which worked flawlessly. The inks are Union Waterbased Textile Inks from Valley Litho Supply out of Milwaukee, WI.
Got It Wrong… Many Times
I was all hyped up after printing the grey shirts so I dove right into the white ink on blue shirts. First thing I noticed is that the white ink was like that liquidy marshmallow topping stuff, and was much more difficult to work with. The blue ink was shiny and sort of like pudding, which helped it slip right through the screen.
I printed many test prints and was ready to go, but by the time I had lined up a shirt, the ink dried in the screen (even with a nice flood coat). I was freaking out so I printed a couple more hoping it was just a fluke… bad idea. I goofed up about 5 shirts total out of that batch.
White ink on blue shirts, not as easy…I Suppose It’s Now or Never
The next batch of blue shirts (30 total) came in and I was really eager to pull it off correctly. With the few corrections I made they printed really smooth, and I was really happy with the results.
In a mixing container, I sprayed in a fairly good amount of water, and a couple of tablespoons of Speedball Retarder Base for waterbase inks. What a world of difference, made me feel much better about printing with Waterbase Inks.
