Screen Printing Forum

I haven't screen printed since school, ten years ago, and when I did it was on white tees.

I'm starting to get set up, and I'm wondering how to print on dark color, or black t-shirts.
Do I need to lay down a base of white first?
Do I need to use oil based ink instead of water based?
Are there any tricks to it, or is it the same as white?

Thanks a million!!

crash course

use plastisol. Base with white. (experiment with how much base to use, I like a light base coat myself) If you have white in the design, use a seperate screen from the base for it. Rock n roll.

We prefer using water based inks and have just experienced the same problem. We printed yellow onto red shirts and we had to go over the screen loads of times but you could still see the red.

Isn't using another screen to base with white quite expensive way of doing this............or is that the only way.

What d fleming said holds true, you want to use plastisol. Water based inks are not good for printing on darks, mediums are okay with certain inks. They give a really soft feel, but will not get you the opacity that you want. There are whilte water based inks, but they are not really good to print on clothes that stretch.

As for printing on dark, there are a couple of options. You can print a white underbase, then flash the ink, then print white again, then flash the ink then print your colors on that. The problem with that is, if your screen is not tight enough, you have various pressures, too soft of a sqeegee, etc., you can get alot of misprints or even too heavy of a feel. There is an art to it, that when done right, produces a great print.

A second way is to use an ink that is made to print with no underbase. I have used Union Ink's Maxopake series quite succesfully. You can print, flash print and it is opaque. Another good attribute of that particular ink is, it's not as hard to work with as others. With some movement of the ink, it starts to flow real nice.

I highly recommend Rutland Maximum Plus white inks. We sell many different manufacturers of white inks, and most of our customers prefer the Maximum Plus for dark shirts, because it has a very good opasity.