Soft Hand T-shirt Printing
Soft T-shirt Printing really is an art form. There are many different methods of soft t-shirt printing. Water Based inks, Discharge inks, Soft Plastisol, Plasticharge and Sublimation are some of the many forms of custom soft t-shirt printing used by our experts at InkMyTee.com. It takes the perfect amount of inks, additives, softners, emulsions and pressure to get the right result.
Here’s information on each of the different inks and how they perform;
Soft plastisol is rubber based and is easiest to work with because the shelf life is about 10 years and what we see is what you get in regards to matching custom Pantone numers. We use soft plastisol on most all heather t-shirts (poly-cotton blends) since polyester does not work with the discharge process.
Discharge ink is waterbased with an extra bleach type component that removes the dye from the shirt and replaces it with the pigment of your choice. It is meant for dark garments that are 100% cotton, it does not work with polyester. It can be printed with other discharged inks or used as a base with soft plastisol on top. Discharge ink is tricky and takes a lot of experience to work with. It can be your best friend or your worst enemy!
Waterbased ink is intended for light garments only. It has no feel to the touch. The ink needs to be darker than the shirt color. It’s great for printing on the inside of the shirt as well so that it bleeds through the fabric, creating a very vintage look.
Plasticharge ink is a fairly new process. As you can probably guess it’s an hybrid between plastisol and discharge. It feels very soft. The benefit of working with this ink is that it is more predictable and cures faster than traditional discharge. We used this process recently for a few custom t-shirt projects for On The Border restaurants and the results were fantastic!
Sublimation printing is when an image is transfered from speacial paper and ink to the garment using a heat press. The ink turns into a gas and dyes the garment. It’s amazing what type of detail sublimation printing can do. The most attractive thing about this process is the ability to print “all over”.
It’s extremely important the your t-shirt printer understands the dyeing process of the blanks prior to going into production. We have a 100% guarantee on our print quality, so you never have to worry about our prints washing out!
