# success with discharge printing on blended shirts?



## Poe-Boy (Oct 8, 2007)

Have any of you had success with discharge printing on blended shirts?

I was under the impression that you should only use discharge printing on 100% cotton. However, I recently found someone with a discharge print on a 50/50 poly/cotton blended tee with no problems.

Wondered if this was being done with success by anyone else.

thanks.


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## brent (Nov 3, 2006)

I have done it on a couple 50/50 shirts, gildan shirts. The first time was accidental. It didn't work well technically, but the result was a fairly cool vintage looking print.

Do you know what brand of 50/50 blends that someone did?


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## Poe-Boy (Oct 8, 2007)

Sorry...I looked up the shirt and the brand of blank is not posted.
It only mentions it's a 50/50. The creator/designer of the shirt also confirmed it was DEFINITELY a 50/50 shirt and DEFINITELY discharge print.

I'm really interested in this because some of the shirts I was looking at are 65% poly, 35% cotton.

I feel like I'm pushing it with only 35% cotton, but I really like the results of discharge.

I thought the 60/35 shirts might wind up feeling stiff if a traditional screenprint process was used. I'm looking for alternatives and thought discharge may be an option.


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## neato (Mar 21, 2006)

Was it a straight discharge or did it have white pigment in it?


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## brent (Nov 3, 2006)

White pigmented discharge? Very interesting. Philip, do you know if Matsui has a white pigment for discharge? If so, I might do that alot for white-on-dark printing.

If you can't do discharge, try waterbased printing instead of plastisol, although you can get soft results with either, plastisol if you use softhand additives.


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## neato (Mar 21, 2006)

Yes, Matsui makes a discharge white.


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## brent (Nov 3, 2006)

white pigmented discharge sounds awesome. Philip, have you tried Matsui's?

I really want to do as much printing with discharge as possible. Have you done big runs of matsui discharge, and if so, how bad were the odors ? I have to figure a way to remove the odors as they come out the exhaust of my oven. (landlord says no fumes, I just don't want to tick him off)


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## neato (Mar 21, 2006)

Yeah I've used the white quite a bit. In fact, I just did a run of 200 shirts on Friday with it. I have another run of 50 on Monday. It's nice stuff. I've even used it as an underbase with plastisol on top. Worked well.

I think discharge is a specialty service/item and should be treated as such. I would never do discharge printing only. There are too many limitations as I'm sure you'll quickly realize. If you want to print more with it, be sure to tell your customers up front that results are going to be varied. I've even encountered different results in the same color shirts, but different sizes!

For me, the best use for discharge is as an underbase for based down plastisols. Those prints turn out nice!


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## Poe-Boy (Oct 8, 2007)

neato said:


> Was it a straight discharge or did it have white pigment in it?


 
It was white. There were no other colors.
The tee was black and the design was all white.


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## neato (Mar 21, 2006)

That's why it worked then. The white discharge has a lot of white pigment, so it basically just covered well and discharged ok.


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## TeddyRocky (Mar 23, 2007)

Can you print discharge with emulsion used for plastisol?? or emulsion for waterbased inks? I'm trying to find a way to print dark colored shirts, with a softer print. So from what I understand, you print discharge, flash, and then print the following colors...is that correct? 

Thanks.


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## marlo45 (Oct 4, 2007)

TeddyRocky said:


> Can you print discharge with emulsion used for plastisol?? or emulsion for waterbased inks? I'm trying to find a way to print dark colored shirts, with a softer print. So from what I understand, you print discharge, flash, and then print the following colors...is that correct?


Answer the man!!!! I need to know, too


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## staned (Feb 25, 2007)

your discharge will just look like a wet spot on the shirt. don't flash, print over wet. it won't look right until you run it through the dryer and discharge takes place. hey phillip what discharge apparel do you use? stan


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## marlo45 (Oct 4, 2007)

staned said:


> your discharge will just look like a wet spot on the shirt. don't flash, print over wet. it won't look right until you run it through the dryer and discharge takes place.


But if that's the case registration would be almost impossible, wouldn't it? I'm referring to disharge without any color pigment just to get the print area lighter.

I was under the impression the discharge agent should/could be printed as an underbase much like white ink, except it doesn't have any hand to it since it's just bleaching away the fabric dye to return it to a natural color, tan-like.


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## neato (Mar 21, 2006)

No, registration isn't impossible, you register your art before you print right?

Stan is right, you print on top of the wet discharge. You don't want to start the discharge process before you send it through the dryer.

Stan, I've used Gildans, AA, Alternative Apparel, Continental and Pacific Sports. Most of them discharge well. But not all colors do. For example, I haven't found a kelly green or a royal blue that discharges yet. 

It's really a lot of trial and error with discharge. It can be frustrating. And don't let any apparel manufacturer tell you that their entire line is dischargeable. Pacific Sports tried to tell me that. HA! Right. I did a run on chocolate brown tees from them. They discharged great until I got to the XL's. The entire batch of XL's wouldn't discharge. I can't trust Pacific Sports anymore for discharging.


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## brent (Nov 3, 2006)

Philip, so if I were to use matsui discharge as an underbase, then do three different colors on top, say, using matsui RC series, it would all be wet on wet printing? no flashing of any layer before putting it on the belt?


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## marlo45 (Oct 4, 2007)

neato said:


> No, registration isn't impossible, you register your art before you print right?
> 
> Stan is right, you print on top of the wet discharge. You don't want to start the discharge process before you send it through the dryer.


Sorry i misunderstood . I thought Stan was saying you "shouldn't" print on wet when he was actually saying don't flash, rather you "should" print on wet.

Thanks for making this clear. This is what i thought before, and that's why i got a bit confused.


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## neato (Mar 21, 2006)

You got it Brent. At least that's how I've been doing it.


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## brent (Nov 3, 2006)

Philip, can you post some of your best and/or most complicated prints using discharge?
I'm going to try a 6color pigmented-discharge print this week if I have time!


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## marlo45 (Oct 4, 2007)

Yeah, i'd like to see some, too.


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## whiteire (Nov 13, 2007)

Hi all... specific question here - do you think you could get good results with discharge, attempting to reproduce basically the superman colors - bright red and gold on a deep, probably 'royal' blue. I have noticed some comments saying blue does not discharge well...


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## brent (Nov 3, 2006)

whiteire- I have discharged Navy and Blue Dusk Gildan shirts well. It depends on the shirt more so than the color in general. every dye reacts differently with discharge. Sometimes different sizes in the sames style/brand/color discharge to different degrees.


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## neato (Mar 21, 2006)

Navy and darker blues do work fine. 

But I've never been able to get a Royal shirt to discharge. Might have to experiment with some different brands.


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## tpitman (Jul 30, 2007)

marlo45 said:


> But if that's the case registration would be almost impossible, wouldn't it? I'm referring to disharge without any color pigment just to get the print area lighter.
> 
> I was under the impression the discharge agent should/could be printed as an underbase much like white ink, except it doesn't have any hand to it since it's just bleaching away the fabric dye to return it to a natural color, tan-like.


I don't do discharge, but why not use plastisol in the discharge screen to register the rest of the job, then clean out the plastisol with press wash and add the discharge base?


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## marlo45 (Oct 4, 2007)

tpitman said:


> I don't do discharge, but why not use plastisol in the discharge screen to register the rest of the job, then clean out the plastisol with press wash and add the discharge base?


Or maybe i just shouldn't do disharge printing? The process seems to require a conveyor dryer or curing oven of some sort to be effective and i have neither at the moment; I only have a flash cure unit. The fumes would be a problem with my current location.

From the research i've done and the feedback from the forums, i think i understand enough to attempt it, but that will be some uncertain time in the future.

Thanks for your response though.


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## brent (Nov 3, 2006)

You *can* cure with a flash cure with discharge. That's what I did at first. You can watch the discharge activate and bleach the dye out of the garment. It is of course better to have an oven, but with just a flash you can get the garment hot enough and you can also watch it cure to make sure it all discharges.
I was concerned about fumes too when I got into discharge but they are not very bad, at least with Matsui discharge that I use.


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## whiteire (Nov 13, 2007)

Does the discharge merely take the base shirt color to a white or very pale, and then you have to print over it with a pigment?

OR can the discharge contain actual dyes, and how saturated/vibrant can these dyes get?

specifically for the superman example - would i be using red and yellow discharge dyes, or would i use a one-bleach-fits-all discharge, and then yellow and red plastisol pigment inks over top?

also i forget if this was already asked - can you get discharge TRANSFERS?


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## marlo45 (Oct 4, 2007)

brent said:


> You *can* cure with a flash cure with discharge. That's what I did at first. You can watch the discharge activate and bleach the dye out of the garment. It is of course better to have an oven, but with just a flash you can get the garment hot enough and you can also watch it cure to make sure it all discharges.
> I was concerned about fumes too when I got into discharge but they are not very bad, at least with Matsui discharge that I use.


This is good to know. I thought it wasn't possible with the flash cure unit. The fumes not bad? Maybe i'll be trying this out sooner than i thought then . Thanks for the info!

Whiteire, 

From what i've read, i think it can be done both ways with similar but slightly different results.


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## brent (Nov 3, 2006)

whiteire-
Discharge alone bleaches the shirt. the cool thing is that it results in pretty much no "hand", no feel on the shirt, and you can see the shirt's fibers

Vacord promo discharge shirt up close on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
that is an example of the fibers up close

you can either pigment the discharge, which can be tricky to get an accurate color for me so far, or print normal ink on top of it.


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## CHUCKSMACK (Jan 23, 2008)

Soory guys, i know i'm not a t shirt printing master and actually i dont know much about this but im starting my t-shirt company and im looking for dicharge printing...I come from Quebec ( thats why my english is not that good  )so im looking for a printer who can to discharge printing and not so far from quebec...( if not it can be anywhere we'll check this out! Thanks to you!!


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## grafikal (Jan 29, 2008)

I did a discharge print with out buying any of those products like discharge base or agent. Heres how you do it.
Buy a Clorox bleach pen. Squeeze it out on the screen. Do like any other print and you got ... Discharge softhand effect!
The Clorox is thick enough not to run and spread and gives the same discharge effect. Try it and see.


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## scottballz (Jan 11, 2009)

neato said:


> Yeah I've used the white quite a bit. In fact, I just did a run of 200 shirts on Friday with it. I have another run of 50 on Monday. It's nice stuff. I've even used it as an underbase with plastisol on top. Worked well.
> 
> I think discharge is a specialty service/item and should be treated as such. I would never do discharge printing only. There are too many limitations as I'm sure you'll quickly realize. If you want to print more with it, be sure to tell your customers up front that results are going to be varied. I've even encountered different results in the same color shirts, but different sizes!
> 
> For me, the best use for discharge is as an underbase for based down plastisols. Those prints turn out nice!


Its funny you mentioned that you had different results with discharge using the same color shirts but different sizes. I was had the same problem several times with two different apparel manufacturers. I finally found out that they were sending their shirts out to several different countries to be dyed and they were coming back incosistent. If you complain about the problem they will make sure you get all of your shirts from the same batch that were dyed together and your prints will atleast be consistent.


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## printing40years (Dec 27, 2008)

NEVER flashcure discharge inks...the fumes are full of harmful formaldehyde that should only go up the stack of your well ventilated conveyor dryer. When yo use it on 50/50 shirts the color intensity will be reduced by half since only the cotton portion of the threads will take on the discharge inks. Sometimes that looks acceptable. Can't beat the hand.I don't like Matsui since they force yo to play chemist mixing too many variables. There are easier systems out there.


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