Screen printing with water based inks in New Mexico
ShirtPop’s home location is in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
We have an amazing state with beautiful sunny skies, bigger than anywhere in the world.
We typically have 310 days of sunshine, and we soak that sunshine up like green chile with a sopapilla and a smile.
As beautiful and predictable weather in our state is, it comes with some challenges when it comes to screen printing with specialty water based inks.
Water based ink works a little differently than plastisol. The ink smells like acrylic paint and has a similar viscosity. To give you an idea why our environment matters so much for non-burqueños. In New Mexico, I can paint a room in my house starting with a 1 wall and by the time I get to the second wall the 1st wall is almost dry enough for a second coat. That is a dry environment. Especially so for water based screen printing.
Why use water based ink?
We use Water Based inks when the project needs an extra touch of softness or a vintage touch.
It's the perfect look when you really want to “wow” a customer. Water Based inks have virtually no texture.
The ink and the apparel should be closely paired and we typically use them on organic cotton, because they match the texture very well with the soft smooth garment face. Water based inks work best for single color or two color jobs that have a vintage look to them.
How it works:
The ink is more of a pigment that re-dyes the fabric instead of sitting on the surface.
The ink soaks into the fabric and seeps deep into the weave of the fabric. Once the apparel has the print on it we dry the garment with a large gas conveyor dryer that has large blowers that pull all of the water out of the shirt and then cure and set the pigment at about 330 degrees for about 2:30 mins. This takes about twice as long to set the ink than plastisol ink.
Some tricks for using water based ink:
For printing with water based inks it is important to prep. Screen alignment is critical on the first try because you don’t have a lot of time to reset the screens once we have inks in the screens. This ink will dry on the screen and in our environment it can really start to cause problems just minutes into production if things are not in place. We use a special sauce (trademarked ;)) that helps slow the drying down on the press that slows down the coagulation of the ink while we are printing. It is also important to move quickly. A marching pace is about right. You don’t have to stress out, just use a quick but steady pace loading and unloading the press carefully watching print quality and ink levels on the screen printing press. Keep a little more ink on the screen than you need as you print. For larger runs, it’s important to mix more ink than you need and keep adding it to the screen while you are printing to keep the inkwell saturated.
Our Service Area:
Located in the heart of the Southwest, ShirtPop primarily serves New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Utah, and Texas. However, We Regularly ship custom projects across the continental U.S., From California to New York and Illinois.
Ready to start your next project? Reach out to the to me personally or our teamShirtPop.com