Emulsion takes a special kind of beating when printing water based and discharge ink. Print after print, the edges of your stencil start to get soft and wavy. Your crisp prints soon become fuzzy. It’s a slow battle between the ink and the emulsion, and it occurs because of the high water content in both […]

Starting water based printing isn’t as hard as you think. Yes, really. “I’ve been printing with water based inks since 2008 and have helped hundreds of printers successfully transition. If you step into it the right way, water based screen printing can actually be easier and save you more time and money than printing plastisol. […]

Garment selection is much more important when printing with water based ink, than in plastisol printing. Since water based inks are traditionally a little thinner, they do not cover fabric as well as a thicker ink, like plastisol, does. When you are printing with high quality garments, like 100% combed and ring-spun cotton, this won’t […]

Imagine this: You’re a water based only screen printing shop. A customer walks in through the door, carrying cash in hand and says he wants to order 600 two color back print t-shirts. You say sure, give him your prices, and ask him what kind of shirts he wants to print on. He says he […]

Dustin Burnett started the retail store, Nothing Too Fancy, only three and a half years ago. Now the largest retail and contract print shop in Knoxville, his was the first boutique t-shirt store to hit the city. “We typically do vintage style t-shirts,” Dustin said. “Our retail store, without any intentions, has turned into a […]

“We’ve been printing with water based ink for a year and our printers love it, just because of the ease. The softness of the ink in particular, especially with discharge. It’s easy to clean up – no mess, and it washes up with water. We have one full time printer, now when he gets plastisol […]

I learned how to print using plastisol on an old beat up press I bought off Craigslist. A common beginning for most screen printers. The first paid job I did was for a very large and well-known fitness brand – 2,500 white hand towels. In my haste and inexperience, I printed them with plastisol. Can […]

Designing for water based printing isn’t that much different from plastisol printing, but there are some minor changes that need to be addressed in order to get the best out of your artwork. The biggest consideration being the number and frequency (or infrequency) of your flashes during the printing process. With plastisol ink, most people […]

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Plastisol inks have dominated the United States market for the last few decades. So it’s easy to forget that the history of water based inks were actually the first inks used in screen printing. The History of Water Based Ink While the art and industry of screen printing was forming in the early to mid-1900’s, […]