Discharge Nation - discharge screen printing blog

Positives and negatives of discharge printing

A while ago someone from Columbia emailed and asked about the positives and negatives of printing with discharge inks. I’ll go over some of them here.

Positives:

• Cool effects. This is why most people seek out discharge printing. Virtually no hand after the first wash, you can see the weave of the shirt, and the print becomes part of the shirt. Those are the main “cool” factors involved.
• Quick to print. It’s just one layer so you can print it rapidly. With a 1color discharge, I can print 90 to 120 an hour, and I’m not even that fast compared to other pros.
• Wet-on-wet ability. Printing “wet-on-wet” is when you can print multiple colors without flashing between them. That makes printing faster than if you were doing multiple spot colors and had to flash while printing. If you have a 3 color discharge print, say red, green and white-pigmented, you would print the red, spin to the green screen and print that, then do the white-discharge print, pull it off your press and put it on the conveyor belt. I did a 6 color discharge once, and I printed each shirt in about 45 seconds.
• Profitability. It’s a special service, discharge printing, and becoming in higher demand, so you can charge more for it. A printer can make maybe one or two dollars more per print of a straight discharge than a normal one color print.
• Bright colors on darks. The best way to get a bright color on a dark shirt with waterbased printing.

Negatives:

• Difficult to mix colors. It’s a real PITA to try to pigment it. I’ll mix up some straight discharge, add pigment, test print it and see how that comes out, add more pigment, test print again, add more, and on and on.
• Can’t do a whole lot of detail. It clogs, so you have to use a lower mesh count screen. I find 156mesh ideal.
• Bleeds. It’ll clog a screen, but it’s also a fairly thin ink, so if you are running it through a 110 or 123, it will drip through the screen if you walk away. Even with a 156 you really shouldn’t stop printing very long.
• Doesn’t work on all garments and colors. Discharge will give some funky results on certain shirt colors, and a lot of garments and brands just don’t discharge well. If a shirt doesn’t discharge very well, your colors will be darker than you want.
• Short shelf life. You can’t leave it on your shelf for more than a few hours. It’ll keep in the fridge for a while, but not indefinitely so it ends up being wasteful when you have to toss it. I always end up mixing more than I need but it’s better than running out of it, especially if it’s pigmented, during a print run.

That’s all I can think of right now. Happy printing!