What Silk Screen Printing Ink Should You Pick for YourDesign?

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Mike

If ever there were an artistic technique to be associated with modern pop culture, silk screen printing wouldarguably be it. Used on everything from posters and product embellishment and even circuit boards, thetechnique has been instrumental in producing millions of prints that—especially in the future—will beconsidered cultural artifacts of our time. And that’s even without taking into account the silk-screenedworks of artists such as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein.

The beauty of this particular artistic technique is that it’s so very accessible. With just a bit of capital outlayand a little design sense, just about anyone can put out his own little piece of pop culture using methodslittle changed since their inception a couple of millennia ago.

Nowadays, though, the choice of substrate for silk screen printers has been expanded significantly. What’sa substrate? It’s basically the canvas for the design: the material on which a print design is deposited.

While screen printing was largely used on paper and similar materials during its boom, today’s screen

printers are now famous for working with textiles too—specifically, with clothing for the purpose ofembellishment. In fact, fabric screen printing is one of the biggest industries at the moment. It’s an arttechnique so made for pop usage that it’s gone to the wearable and even the DIY level.

Expanding Options

We mentioned DIY above. While you might be thinking it means Do It Yourself (and you’d be right), it canactually take on another meaning too in this context: Design It Yourself. One of the fastest-growingsections of the textile screen-printing industry is the custom clothing section. For example, customizedshirts can now be ordered and even designed by those who don’t have the time to realize their ideal t-shirtthemselves.

Companies offering this type of service often let clients pick whatever part of the process they feelcomfortable with handling. A client can design a shirt completely by himself, for instance, or just makeselections that define parts of the design. For instance, it’s possible for the client to choose the exact inkshe wants used in printing his design. Given the sheer range of ink options now, though, that isn’t alwaysthe easiest decision.

In fact, whether you’re setting up your own silk screen printing rig at home or asking a professional t-shirtprinter to do a job for you, you’ll likely be assailed by dozens and dozens of ink options. As such, one ofthe first things you’ll need to learn to get into DIY screen printing would be the types of ink available.

Types of Ink Used in Fabric Silk Screen Printing

Broadly speaking, there are 2 main types of screen printing inks in this area:

Plastisol inks

Thick, particle-heavy, and often strongly-saturated in color, plastisol inks sit on top of the fabric and cling toit from there. They typically feel thicker than water-based inks and get their name from being plastic-based.

Water-based inks

Smoother and more liquid than plastisol inks, these inks dye the actual fabric as opposed to sitting on topof it. The result is more softness than with plastisols in the printed item, which printers refer to as a softhand feel.

Plastisol and water-based inks differ in other ways. For example, they have different curing requirements. Curing is a heat-based process that makes sure that the ink is fully dry and properly settled into/onto thefabric. Without proper curing, any of the following can happen:

1. The print can come off quickly after washing the garment.

2. The print can lose the originally intended vibrancy quickly.

3. The print can crack and flake off.

While some inks claim to be air-dry ones—many water-based inks say this on their labels—most of themactually still require curing. They can feel dry to the touch, for instance, but may only really be dry on theouter layer.

Proper curing is crucial for quality screen printing. Individual inks vary, but on the whole, you can expectwater-based inks to take a little more time or effort to cure. That’s because the water in them needs to becompletely evaporated before they can be pronounced properly cured. T-shirt printers use specialmachines for reaching the desired curing temperatures of their inks.

Plastisol and water-based are only the primary categories. Ink development and manufacture are bigindustries in themselves, and throughout the years, more than a few special ink types have been createdfor screen printers to use. Here we go into some of the special types, which typically fall under one of theabove categories:

Note for succeeding items to the content uploader: it would be good to have photos of all of the ink typeslisted below. The photos should be inserted before the name of each type.

Cracking ink

While unintended cracking in a print can be a definite problem for any printer, there are in fact inksformulated to get the cracked, distressed look instantly onto a design. International Coatings Companymakes Destructo White, for instance, which printers can use to get a vintage, weathered look on their workimmediately after curing.

Puff/expanding ink

This ink was developed from plastisol inks. A heat-reactive foaming chemical in the ink helps it puff out asthe garment is cured.

Suede ink

Derived from puff inks, this ink boasts a fuzzy nap after curing that gives it its name. The nap comes froma foaming agent in the ink that is very similar to the one used in puff inks: it just doesn’t puff as much andresults in the fuzzy, almost aerated-surface texture of the dried print.

Clear gel or glossy ink

Inks applied as glossing layers over other ink layers for a special shine. These are great examples of inksintended for stacked usage, i.e. multi-layer screen printing.

Reactive inks

These can be moisture-reactive or even photo-reactive. Common photo-reactive inks show an otherwise-hidden design and color when exposed to UV light. New inks have also been developed that reveal anotherwise-hidden design when the garment is moistened, typically after sweating (thus their use inactivewear).

Glow in the dark inks

These do just as the name says. While older versions of the ink were restricted to just a few colors, newversions offer more colors, from blue to purple to red.

Shimmer/glitter inks

These get their shimmer from small shiny particles in the liquid ink, which is technically a clear gel. Theflakes settle as the print dries and the result is a glittering print design. Shimmer inks can also be inks thatleave a print that has only a faint shimmer, as opposed to the full-blown shine of metallic inks.

Reflective ink

Often used for safety and industrial purposes, these are used to generate uniforms and shirts used bypeople who do their work at nighttime or low-light conditions.

Metallic ink

This is very similar to shimmer/glitter inks. The big difference is that instead of having a particulateshimmer, the ink dries as a smooth, almost foil-like shine. This is because it uses much finer particles,giving a smoother metallic look.

Discharge ink

This is a solution for printing light inks on dark substrates and is a water-based ink. Usually, printers wouldhave to use plastisols for light-on-dark printing. That’s because they sit on the surface of the fabric anddon’t get “darkened” by the fabric’s color. Light water-based inks, on the other hand, don’t retain theirlightness as they cure when used on dark fabrics. They sink into the fabric itself, after all. As a result, awater-based white ink will turn out grey when used on a black shirt.

But discharge inks make it possible to achieve the soft hand feel of water-based inks when printing light-on-dark. They do this by containing a chemical that removes the dye from the fabric being printed beforedepositing the final ink of the printed design. Basically, the ink “erases” the pre-existing color on thegarment first so that the lighter color being printed will show better.

Bonus: Foil

Not really an ink, but it is pretty often used in screen printing. A foil sheet is heat-pressed over an existingplastisol ink layer or a screen-printed glue layer in order to leave an effect similar to a metallic ink print.

What to consider when choosing inks:

Now, you can’t just pick inks based on their looks either. There are other things to keep in mind whenpicking the ink to be used for your garment. Below are just a few more considerations to keep in mindbefore you make your decision.

1. How hard-wearing is the ink? Some inks stand repetitive washing better than others, so you need tothink about how often you plan to wear and wash something. If the garment being printed is supposed tobe a regularly-used outfit or a uniform, you should probably stay away from the less durable inks.

2. What substrate are you using? Different fabrics actually have dedicated ink lines. There are inks forpure cotton fabrics, ones for poly blends, and more. Also, as mentioned above, some inks don’t show wellon certain fabrics: while water-based inks do have discharge inks now for light-on-dark printing, dischargeinks don’t work on all fabric types.

3. FOR THE DO-IT-YOURSELF CROWD: Do you know what emulsion should be used when screen-printing using that ink? Just as there are different types of ink, there are different types of emulsion, etwhich one you use depends on the ink you’ve selected. This is because some ink types can break downsome emulsions, e.g. some emulsions will collapse when exposed to a water-based ink. This will destroyyour stencil and wreck the print you leave on clothing.