TIPS & TECHNIQUES www.images-magazine.com 78 images APRIL 2022 Speed and pressure A great advantage of discharge inks is that they can printed wet-on-wet and don’t require flash units in between stations or an underbase. We recommend printing with a single or double stroke, depending how absorbent the fabric is. We used a medium squeegee speed and medium to high pressure for this step-by-step. Unlike high solids inks, discharge inks should be driven into the fabric – if necessary, you can reduce the squeegee speed and increase the pressure. We used an eight-station M&R Sportsman EX automatic screen printing press to print this design. It’s now time to send the garments down your dryer. We used an M&R MiniSprint 2000 dryer at 170°C for 2 1/2 minutes. Depending on the size of your dryer you may need to adjust your process, but we recommend aiming for 2 1/2 to 3 minutes at that temperature overall. The lighter colours and polyester content in the other shirts created a more muted and vintage-look discharge effect. When printing with discharge systems, inks initially printed onto the fabric will appear muted or dull until they have been cured. Curing discharge prints activates the ‘bleaching’ process. Once cured, the colours really start to sing and show how the heat has activated the discharge process and replaced the colour in the shirt. The different shirts show some variables in the effects you can achieve. The black and navy 100% cotton shirts provided really bright and solid colours. 6 7 9 8 10 STEP-BY-STEP: DISCHARGE PRINTING
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