# Printing white ink on New Balance 100% poly fine mesh shirts



## IntegriTees4life (Oct 9, 2013)

I'm having trouble printing on New Balance Tempo Performance T-shirts. I'm using white WM Plastics HO LB ink on royal blue shirts. 110 mesh screens. 1/8" off contact. The ink has been mixed to get it as creamy as possible. It seems very tacky, still, though. It's the only poly ink I've used, so I don't have anything to compare it to. I have some One Stroke Ink on the way. The issue is, on the first pass, not all the ink clears the screen and in some spots, the ink looks "rough" on the shirt. If I make a few dry passes over and over, it seems to smooth the ink out, but there is still ink left in the screen and it's noticeable on the shirt. The ink is in the same pattern as the fine mesh. If I flash and do another pass of white, the ink clears the screen but it is now way too thick and looks a lot worse with "rough" areas over a lot more of the print. Also, this ink seems to "puff up" after curing which makes the print look even worse with two passes. Is this an ink issue? Are the shirts not going to have a "solid" looking print due to the mesh no matter what I do? I've wasted 8 shirts, so far, and they aren't cheap. I tested on a "similar" shirt before starting (it was 100% poly moisture wicking, but no fine mesh) with no issues. I've successfully printed on these types of shirts before only they were white shirts with a 3 color print, no issues...one pass of each color, cure, done. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks


----------



## DanEggiman (Mar 7, 2012)

I havent done too many poly shirts, but the ones I did do I remember that if I didnt have enough adhesive on the platen the shirt was so stretchy it would try to peal back up with the screen and cause all kinds of bad leaving a very rough print because the screen wasn't popping off the garment and releasing the ink as it should. The second thought is that your ink is too thick and you should thin it out a bit, if its too sticky then it will grab the shirt and not release like it should. You can try increasing your print stroke to help release the ink as well but thinning it out with some curable reducer or something similar might be a better solution. Your squeegee should be sharp, you off contact should be around 1/8 to 1/4 depending on tension of screen. another thing to try is to do a fill stroke while the screen is up, then print stroke with it down. Basically you push the ink through the mesh into the stencil with the fill stroke before you shear it off onto the garment with the print stroke. Other than that I dont know. But I do know that because the poly garments generally have very little or no fibers sticking up, the prints come out almost glass smooth every time assuming that the garment itself isnt textured. But even so, they should come out very smooth and even. Hope this helps, let me know.


----------



## tshirt304 (Sep 13, 2012)

Make sure your platens or clean with white ink on performs shirts every little thing will show through your print

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using T-Shirt Forums


----------



## strummingbeat (Mar 19, 2014)

nice information FOLKS!!


----------



## RedSword Ts (Dec 18, 2014)

Sounds like you may need to adjust you squeegee angle.


----------

