# Waterbased ink issues of cracking and feel



## Basile (Jun 20, 2018)

Hello there again after a long time.
I wanna ask a few questions here to get some help since i can't get the answers myself.
A month ago i bought a MagnaColours Aquaflex V2 Clear Paste and an Eco Pigment which is suitable for the paste. In order to print i must mix the paste with up to 12% of pigment then a waterbased ink is created. So i have been doing test prints over and over but i have same issues.
First i have the cracking issue. I print black on white t-shirts spot color prints and i have tried to cure them with hand iron and coocking oven but if i stretch the t shirt after the cure the ink cracks and i can see the inner fiber of the shirt. The curing instructions suggest curing at 160 celcius for 1 minute. I recently bought a heat gun too. Will it work better?
Second as i said i print waterbased ink, with fine off-contact, with 110 mesh, spot color images but after curing and washing the feel of the ink on shirt does not feel so soft. Instead it feels more like plastisol and less than waterbased, as if it not blends with the fibers. 
So have anyone ever worked with MagnaColours?
Should waterbased ink crack?
And should a waterbased ink feel like that on shirt or am i doing something extremely wrong?


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## NoXid (Apr 4, 2011)

Dark ink for light-colored garments is fairly thin, so a 110 screen (USA measure?) should be way too open, thus putting too much ink onto the fabric. Unlike Plastisol, and unlike opaque water based inks, dark water based inks do not so much cover up the fabric as they stain it. Thus they can have very little (essential none) hand feel.

Try a mesh more along the lines of 200. That should allow you to hit it several times without burying the fabric in ink.

A cheap heat press is the most reliable budget way to cure. It ensures (fairly) even curing across the garment, which can be difficult and/or tedious to achieve with the methods you mentioned.

I don't have experience with that particular ink, but that shouldn't matter ... unless that paste is intended to be the base for a thick opaque ink (like white) rather than a runny thin ink (like black).


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## Basile (Jun 20, 2018)

Hi sir thanks for the answer. The fact is that i use Aquaflex V2 which comes in 3 versions. Clear paste which you have to mix with a pigment, white and opaque white. So maybe the paste is thick enough and it gives less soft hand feel than a runny waterbased ink.

Although if the 110 US mesh that i use is too open and more ink gets through how can you explain the cracks when i stretch the t-shirt? I mean if more ink gets through the mesh and on to the fabric the feel should get less softer but it should have covered better. Am i right? So maybe it's curing problem?


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## NoXid (Apr 4, 2011)

Basile said:


> Hi sir thanks for the answer. The fact is that i use Aquaflex V2 which comes in 3 versions. Clear paste which you have to mix with a pigment, white and opaque white. So maybe the paste is thick enough and it gives less soft hand feel than a runny waterbased ink.
> 
> Although if the 110 US mesh that i use is too open and more ink gets through how can you explain the cracks when i stretch the t-shirt? I mean if more ink gets through the mesh and on to the fabric the feel should get less softer but it should have covered better. Am i right? So maybe it's curing problem?


That is not how regular water base ink works. Like I said, it does not so much cover the fabric as stain it. It cracks because it is not intended to be a layer _on_ the fabric, but something that soaks into the fibers and colors them. This isn't Plastisol  A dark ink water base print literally has no feel after the first wash.


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## Basile (Jun 20, 2018)

NoXid said:


> That is not how regular water base ink works. Like I said, it does not so much cover the fabric as stain it. It cracks because it is not intended to be a layer _on_ the fabric, but something that soaks into the fibers and colors them. This isn't Plastisol  A dark ink water base print literally has no feel after the first wash.


Hello again sir and thank you for the help. I have a feeling that the first 2 weeks that i bought the paste and pigment, the pigment was much more runny than it is now so maybe the temperature of my home has damaged the pigment. Although i understand what you said about the waterbased and plastisol inks. So maybe if i use something arround 200 mesh i could get less ink on the fabric and this would not soak the fabric with too much ink. But i have one last question. If i print with much more manpower the ink gets through the fabric so much that it literally gets through both sides of the shirt and the cracks do not appear. But it doesn't feel good as a solution to print with that much power.


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## Basile (Jun 20, 2018)

NoXid said:


> That is not how regular water base ink works. Like I said, it does not so much cover the fabric as stain it. It cracks because it is not intended to be a layer _on_ the fabric, but something that soaks into the fibers and colors them. This isn't Plastisol  A dark ink water base print literally has no feel after the first wash.


Also here is what cracks look like on stretched shirt:
https://scontent.fath3-4.fna.fbcdn....=064da72b7801eb5c571b5987442c7eda&oe=5DFDD405

https://scontent.fath3-3.fna.fbcdn....=90185754d09388a877a465bac2d3bc97&oe=5E00312F


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## NoXid (Apr 4, 2011)

Ah, I see.

I would suggest a higher mesh count AND printing hard. Also, if you don't have the shirt fitted over a platen (basically inside of the shirt), then put a piece of wax paper or baking parchment or the like inside the shirt to block the ink from going through to the back.

Again, this comes down to that dark water base inks do not create a film over the fabric, they go into it. There shouldn't be a solid film to crack in the first place, only gaps where the ink did not penetrate.

Uhm, and you shouldn't need to do "crack testing" with this kind of ink, as there is no ink film to crack. And if the stretching you did to test are far outside the bounds of how the garment would be worn, then those ink gaps probably don't matter.

So what I think you should aim for is less ink, but deep penetration. Plastisol sets on the surface of the garment and the squeegee just shears it off. Water base goes into the fabric, and you need to give it a shove to get it there ;-)

Note, water base dries out with use. Exposure to air, contact with emulsion, all this suck moisture out of the ink. You need to add some water back to the ink after use to keep it in working condition, or it will become impossible to work with. Uhm, but this does depend a bit upon the ink and its chemical composition. The best practice is to keep your unused ink in its original container and your working ink in another. That way you always have some unused ink as a reference point for what the ink should be like, and thus can better judge how much water the working ink has lost.

It all seems impossibly difficult ... until it isn't  For me, the turning point was realizing how dried out my ink had gotten.


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## Basile (Jun 20, 2018)

NoXid said:


> Ah, I see.
> 
> I would suggest a higher mesh count AND printing hard. Also, if you don't have the shirt fitted over a platen (basically inside of the shirt), then put a piece of wax paper or baking parchment or the like inside the shirt to block the ink from going through to the back.
> 
> ...


Nice i will do what you seggested me. I found the advice so helpfull!
Thank you again


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## Basile (Jun 20, 2018)

NoXid said:


> Ah, I see.
> 
> I would suggest a higher mesh count AND printing hard. Also, if you don't have the shirt fitted over a platen (basically inside of the shirt), then put a piece of wax paper or baking parchment or the like inside the shirt to block the ink from going through to the back.
> 
> ...


Hello there again. I here to inform you that prints are going better now. I did what you suggested and it worked better than before. Although i figured out that lowering the angle of the squeegee (25-20 degree angle), helped get more ink through and the prints crack less during the stretching process.


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## NoXid (Apr 4, 2011)

Basile said:


> Hello there again. I here to inform you that prints are going better now. I did what you suggested and it worked better than before. Although i figured out that lowering the angle of the squeegee (25-20 degree angle), helped get more ink through and the prints crack less during the stretching process.


Cool  Sounds like you are on your way.


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