Why does the ink look faded/dull after washing?
It may be happening due to a few reasons:
It may be happening due to a few reasons:
It’s an under cure issue. Go back and test how you are checking heat within the ink layer. Plastisol needs to reach cure temp from the top of the ink down to the VERY BOTTOM of the ink layer. Water-based needs to first evaporate ALL moisture from the
To cure water-based ink, you need to evaporate all the water, reach cure temp, and hold at the temp for at least 20 seconds. The most ideal situation is to have a minimum six-foot forced air conveyor dryer; you’ll be able to accomplish a cure in the
If you don’t have forced air equipment, you need to use Warp Drive. It’s an ink additive that chemically cures the ink in 48 hours. Add it to the water-based ink, print, evaporate all the moisture from the ink, and set the shirt aside for 48 hours. D
First off, a stretch test isn’t an all-tell test on whether or not the ink is cured. It shows if the top layer of ink is fused enough for the top layer to stretch. You always want to do a wash test as well to confirm the ink is cured. When you notice
It’s most likely that the ink deposit is too thin and you are seeing ink film split. Ink film split is where the ink layer is thin and it doesn’t have enough support (from the shirt fibers or shirt mass) so when the ink is stretched to its maximum, t
Undercured ink shows up more like a shatter pattern. If you tug on the ink deposit, it will “shatter.”
Curing with a flash unit isn’t perfect, but you can get the job done with practice and the right tools. First, you’ll need something to measure the temperature of your ink as it cures. You can use a temp gun or a donut probe to check the temperature
Typically the ink will crack if it is undercured. While it is difficult to directly measure how hot the ink is when using a flash unit to cure, it is 100% doable.
It's difficult to actually over-cure plastisol ink, but it is easy to get the ink hotter than is needed. If you overheat an ink, you may notice one of few things:
Water-based ink like Green Galaxy will cure between 300°-320°F. Some plastisol inks cure at 320°F. Low-cure plastisol inks, like FN-INK™, cure at 260°F. The temperature that an ink cures at means that ink needs to reach that temp from the top to the