Davis Brown
One morning a customer told you to screen print an image on polyester moisture-wicking t-shirts. You find yourself in a position where you have taken up a screen printing job that is new to you. You decide to attend a class or consult a trainer that may hit your time and cost accordingly. However, there won’t be any problem if a few steps easily guide you.
Step to Screen Print on Moisture Wicking Shirts:
Moisture-wicking t-shirts are 100% polyester-made. They are called moisture wicking because they pull out sweat/moisture from your body to the outer surface, where it evaporates. Unlike cotton, it does not absorb moisture.
1. Use Plastisol inks to Screen Print Moisture Wicking Shirts:
Plastisol inks are suitable for moisture-wicking garments. Moreover, it is important to decide what process will make the most sense for us to recreate the image on tee shirts.
It is probably easy to work with spot color vector images that can be easily printed with spot color plastisol inks.
2. Color Needed to Recreate Image:
The second you need to know is how many ink colors to recreate the image exactly as it appears. The 10 colors required to print an image such as:
1. Red
2. White
3. Black
4. Green
5. Light brown
6. Yellow
7. Grey
8. Light blue
9. Medium blue
10. Dark blue
You can simplify the process by consolidating some of the colors into single shades. For instance, you can consolidate blues into a single shade. By doing this, you can easily reduce from 10-colors by consolidating it into a 7-color print.
3. Pick the ink type:
It tells that you will need to use polyester white ink with a blocking agent. The poly white ink provides a base coat that will help you avoid dye migration in the shirt into your plastisol inks.
Depending upon artwork, fabric type, and inks, we choose the right screen mesh to work best for the desired prints.
4. Screen Mesh:
Depending upon the artwork detail, we choose the screen mesh. The artwork dictates the screens and ink used with any garment. The low detailed or simple image needs a lower screen mesh, whereas a higher screen mesh would be necessary for high-detailed or complex images.
Further, plastisol inks are fairly viscous and will also work well with a lower screen mesh count. Therefore, all these factors let us know that, on average, we can likely use a 110 to 156 mesh screen for most of the screen printing jobs.
5. Curing:
The printing and curing process is not something extraordinary with moisture-wicking t-shirts.
It is fairly straightforward and ordinary as other print jobs.
Conclusion:
Dye-sublimation is usually suitable for printing on polyester garments. Moreover, you can go the extra mile with screen printing using plastisol inks. As mentioned above, dye-migration occurs due to polyester garments which you can prevent with a polyester white ink base mixed with a blocking agent.
Additionally, it would help if you bought bleed-resistant inks of all colors(except white). Most Screen Print shirt manufacturers have started offering inks to address wicking and stretch garments.
