Davis Brown
Mixing water-based inks into plastisol is an unusual mess. It proves the old saying true that oil and water don’t mix. Usually, we know plastisol is printed on the top of water-based inks because the water-based needs to be soaked directly onto the fabric. What if you do the reverse? If you mix water-based ink on the top of plastisol? You may face the following consequences below:
3 Things Will Happen if You Mix Plastisol and Water-based Inks:
Mixing plastisol with water-based ink won’t prove to be a good idea if you are trying to do s. Therefore, you may face printing issues as follows.
1. Water-based ink will wash away:
Water-based inks need fabric to saturate onto them.
Applying water-based over plastisol prevents it from bonding with the fabric. As a result, the ink is like to wash away.
2. Curing time:
The curing temperature is the same both for plastisol and water-based inks i.e. 320 F. However, the curing time varies.
Water-based ink takes more time to cure compared to plastisol. Therefore, you may likely over cure plastisol which may ruin prints. Moreover, the prints are likely to crack over time.
3. Less Colorful prints with plastisol+waterbase mix:
Water-based inks do come in all colors but they aren’t as bright as plastisols.
If you mix both, you would find printing individually would result in brighter prints than the mixed ones.
Conclusion
Adding a bit of plastisol over water-based ink works great. While the vice-versa won’t be a good idea as we discussed above.
Related Questions:
1. Are plastisol and water-based inks the same?
No plastisol and water-based inks are different. Plastisol is thick and non-water soluble while water-based ink is comparatively thin and water-soluble. Therefore, water-based ink easily absorbs into the fabric.
2. What will happen if you’re flooding ink hard on the screen printing mesh?
If you are flooding hard especially on the 110 mesh, then the ink is likely to push far past the stencil and under the screen. Therefore, you should flood the ink lightly before your stroke.
3. Why should your screen be parallel to the pallet?
The screen must be parallel to the pallet because it maintains ink consistency off-contact. If the screen is not parallel or higher than the bottom of your screen, the ink will naturally run to a higher angle.
4. Why is low off-contact is necessary for screen printing?
Low-off contact is necessary when printing with water-based or discharge ink. Because the ink is thin and runs away. As a result, you may experience much more dot gain while printing.
5. Why should you pull water-based ink with the squeegee in screen printing?
Water-based inks saturate 50% into the garment. A pull stroke is necessary to get the ink into the garment where a push stroke with squeegee is designed to lay think the ink on top of the garment.
6. Why shouldn’t you use less than 70 durometer squeegee in screen printing?
Less than 70 durometer squeegee will go much softer and result in a thick amount of ink deposits. The print will have a faded look as higher ink deposit on the mesh and less onto the substrate.
