These inks love 100% cotton. We get the best image fidelity, color accuracy and washfastness on cotton t-shirts. Waterbase doesn’t like synthetic fabric like polyester that much, though we do print blended shirts all of the time (think : vintage looking print).
Some dyes are more resistant to the discharge process than others. In particular, royal blue, purples and kelly green are notorious for not discharging completely. Often the effect looks just fine, respectively, a powder blue tint on discharged royal garments, a lavender tint on discharged purple garments and a mint green tint on discharged kelly garments. Some other colors may resist discharge as well – it varies by garment manufacturer and color.
Ask us and we can discuss which garments may yield the best results for your project.
discharge white printed on a 100% cotton garment
discharge white printed on a 50/50 garment
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
We have an issue with our current pigment discharge print on Blue reactive dyed shirts. I was woundering if you can suggest possible causes–Many thanks.
It is a cotton dyed with a reactive recipe for pigment discharge panel printing. The problem is that the discharge has not work effectively in all areas of
the fabric. There are several different colours in the print and of course
the degree of discharge will vary from colour to colour but we have spots of
areas within a colour. Both the light blue and the grey colour have spots
within the printed shape.We guess that this is the result of either something on the fabric which has resisted the discharge like a softener or it is the result of lack of pressure at printing which has caused the dye not to fully discharge.
Print comprises dark Blue, light blue, grey and orange colours. 6% Activator was added to each color while printing.
@Aftab – I think this may be the result of a print that is not fully cured, or it may also be improperly mixed ink. I’d suggest running those prints through your dryer a few more times to see if the spots disappear. If they do, then you are not cooking all of the moisture out of the print on the first pass. In this case you will need to slow your dryer down or drive less ink into the fabric. My next guess is that the ink may not be properly mixed through all of the way. We’ve seen similar results when the pigment and discharge agent are not fully dispersed in the ink. Be sure to mix those inks with a drill mixer since mixing by hand is often not enough. You may also consider dissolving your discharge agent in hot water to help it blend with the base better.
Hope this helps, Let me know . . .