Most screen printers use only plastisol ink.
If you own any printed T-shirts at all, these are likely printed with
plastisol. There is a common misconception that only heavy, plastic-like
prints are plastisol, but this is not the case. Plastisol can be printed with a very soft “hand”. The term “hand” in our industry means how heavy the print feels.
A light or soft “hand” means the print feels very thin on the garment.
By printing through a higher mesh screen and/or thinning the ink with an
additive, you can achieve this soft hand print with plastisol ink.
The advantage of plastisol inks over others is in the fact that plastisol will not dry in the screen.
Plastisol must reach a temperature of approximately 320 degrees to
cure. For the screen printer, this means we can walk away from the press
to take a phone call, go to lunch, or even leave for the weekend. When
you come back to the press, you load a shirt, pull the squeegee, and
keep going. No other inks offer us this kind of flexibility. This is a huge benefit to small printing operations where you wear multiple hats in running your business.
There are a variety of other ink products such as puff, metallic, water base, discharge, etc. that will make you a more versatile printer for your customers. You ink supplier can provide you with all the specifics of how to use these specialty inks.
Adhesives
There are a number of adhesive options to lightly adhere your shirt to
the platen for printing. One is a liquid that you spread across the
platen and allow to dry. As you print and the adhesive loses its tack, a
spray of water will reactivate the adhesive. This product is most
commonly used with automatic presses.
Most manual shops and many
automatic shops use one of two types of spray adhesives. Available in
spray cans and purchased by the case, spray adhesive comes in either
mist spray or web spray. Mist spray has the appearance of spray paint as it exits the can. Web spray comes out in a strand similar to a spider web.
Mist spray tends to get into the air and stick to everything, including
your hands, arms, clothing, and your press through the day. Web spray
is more directional but some printers complain it is more difficult to
clean up on the platens and press. (Read the article: Adhesives on the Press)
In the end, your choice is a matter of personal preference.
You will meet printers who swear by one product or the other, but this
is usually based on the product this particular printer started with in
their first shop. All these adhesive products do the job equally well.
With
our adhesives, we want to achieve a low tack adhesion of the garment to
the platen so the shirt does not pick up with the screen, and to hold
it in place to maintain registration for multicolor printing. You will
likely get 6-12 prints before reapplication is necessary, depending on
the garment. You will get a “feel” for when you need to reapply by how
easily a garment is removed from the platen after printing.
Inks
and printing supplies are the consumable products in the process for
you. In other words, these are the products you will buy over and over
again as they are consumed in the process of printing.