Back in the fall the guys at work brought in some waterbased ink to test to see how well it would fare with higher-end garment printing. Scott and Ryan went out to Herwicks and picked up a few small jars of Permaset inks and proceeded to print a few sample bars and gradients to see how it cured, discharged, and printed overall. They were able to print the ink successfully on cotton, poly-blends, as well as full poly shirts (an A4 t-shirt, think of it as a cheaper version of Under Armour) without any problems. They did find out that you couldn’t discharge the ink out once you had printed it should they go an experimental rout with their designs.

As you know, this summer I plan on printing a small array of limited edition designs, mostly pigmented discharge on dark shirts. However, I recently looked into using darker inks on lighter and brighter shirts and looked back at the guys’ test of the Permaset ink. They still had a few jars of it laying around and let me take a few home to sample.  Permaset waterbased inks are very easy to use and pass very easily through the screen. I was using my 160 mesh screen with my various AustinTuners designs on it. Of course I tested them on some Isaac-sized t-shirts using a square foot of linolium sample I got at the hardware store for my pallet. I don’t have a press yet so I simply laid the screen down on the shirt directly. Also, because this is waterbased ink I had to be careful about keeping the screen flooded with ink while I was switching shirts or cleaning up a mess as the ink dries very very fast (much like acrylic paint)

Keeping an eye on the ink is the only issue when it comes to waterbased inks. Seriously, everything else is a total plus. Waterbased inks are water soluble so you can clean up with just water and shop towels. The ink dries quickly so you can actually let your shirts air dry before attempting to cure and not make a huge mess. Permaset inks in particular are not only waterbased but environmentally friendly, to clean my screen I just set my screen and squeegee in the shower and turned on the cold water. It’s ridiculously easy to clean up (given you don’t get it on clothes!) You can even zot-out the ink after curing!

So how does it turn out? Just look for yourself, remember that I am not even using a press or the right size squeegee for the artwork and just look how even and clean the design is. It looks like the shirt was dyed rather than printed.

I let the shirts dry overnight and brought them into work and threw them on the dryer. Our big dryers were set to 380 at I want to say about two minutes. Last time Scott tested the inks he noticed the shirts he ran though once washed out very slightly compared to the shirts he ran through the dryer twice (true with any ink) , so of course I threw the shirts back through the dryer a second time to cure. Remember that all apparel based inks require a curing time to make the ink set. The actual instructions say to use an iron to essentially heat press the ink and cure it. Next time I try the black I’ll use the iron and see how it goes.

Back to the shirts, I brought them home and threw them in the wash and what do you know, there is no difference in the ink at all. Still as bright as when I pulled them off the oven conveyor belt, no fading, no bleeding. The ink is so thin that it seeps into the shirt fibers giving you flawless cover. Since the ink is not a thick slab of plastic sitting on top of the fibers the ink wont ever crack like most industrial prints. Did I mention you can’t feel the print at all? Literally zero hand. If your going the indie printing rout and are wanting to print dark inks on light shirts I recommend this ink for sure.

I plan on ordering a few pints of colors, orange, a lighter blue, as well as a true red. The sample red (mid red) that Scott got was high in magenta and turns up very pink. I’ll be ordering the scarlet red next time I order ink. Only downside to these is that the color ranges are very simple. Of course if your doing this from your spare bedroom or garage I highly doubt your trying to match Pantones and each color they offer is a standard shade, they even offer shimmer inks that I hear are very good as well. If you want to mix exact colors they do offer a base that you can add any pigment to should you need this functionality. They also have a “supercover” ink that is supposed to work on dark shirts, so I will have to try that out as well and see how thick it feels.