SOFT, VIBRANT, DISCHARGE PRINT. WHAT COULD GO WRONG?

Discharge ink is an absolute dream to screen print with if you have the knowledge to make it work. You don’t need to print an underbase, you can (almost) print on any colour shirt and if you’re skilled enough, you can print wet on wet. 

If you have never used discharge ink before, it is basically a specialist water based ink (with powder activator mixed in) that is printed directly onto the fabric. During the curing process the discharge ink strips the original dye from the fabric and allows the pigment in the ink to be printed on the shirt in its place, subsequently your design becomes vibrant with a soft hand feel.

TIP 1: CHECK YOUR MESH COUNT

Just like standard t-shirt printing, we generally use any mesh count between 43t – 62t (110t – 156t US measure). To be exact, we use a 55t mesh for most printing nowadays. Some discharge inks can feel a little grainy and the white pigment in particular does have thicker particles that need to pass through your mesh. For a good print result, mix your ink thoroughly, let the powder activator dissolve and use a clean mesh with high tension.

TIP 2: USE THE CORRECT EMULSION

There are so many types of emulsion available that it can be hard to find the perfect one. Just make sure that your emulsion is made for printing discharge ink. If you use standard emulsion, you will find your stencil starts to break down during your print run. To make this easy, we use the Screen Sol QT emulsion with Sensitiser from Screen Print World. Use our discount code (CRP5) to get some money off!

Screen Sol QT Emulsion with sensitiser

TIP 3: LEAVE ACTIVATING POWER TO DISSOLVE

When mixing your inks you will need to add activating power which creates the chemical reaction when heated. Once you have added your powder, stir thoroughly and leave for 10 minutes to let the power dissolve into the ink. This should help with that grainy texture that some discharge inks have.

While we are on this topic; do not overload your pigments! If you have opted to use Magna Colours discharge ink, they have a very helpful Pantone mixing guide (MagnaMix) that you can use for free. Using MagnaMix gives you the recipes for each Pantone colour resulting in a perfectly balanced ink.

TIP 4: USE CROSS-LINKERS FOR BETTER WASHABILITY

A cross-linker is a chemical that can be mixed into your ink to help cure the ink quicker. This is a great substitute for studios who don’t have forced air conveyor dryers. This does come with a warning though… from personal experience, printing discharge inks manually is slower than using an automatic press. Using a cross-linker will speed up the drying process of your ink and if you do not work quick enough, your ink will dry in the screen. Keep the mesh flooded, print regularly and you should have a good experience!

TIP 5: CHOOSE 100% COTTON GARMENTS ONLY

Discharge ink gives best results on 100% cotton garments. You can use poly blend fabric but the vibrancy of the design may be diminished. We advise using a high quality, 100% cotton t-shirt from a trusted manufacturer like Stanley/Stella… once you found have a shirt that prints well with discharge ink, stick to that shirt!

Some t-shirt manufacturers use a method called ‘over-dying’ – this is when they re-dye a coloured shirt (usually to black) because the original colour did not sell quick enough. If a manufacturer has used this technique, your discharge print could differ from one shirt to another. This is not a common problem but if you are having colour problems, check with your t-shirt manufacturer to see where the shirts came from.

TIP 6: HAVE A WATER SPRAY BOTTLE ON HAND

Discharge ink is a form of water based ink, it can dry on the screen just like standard water based printing. It is good practice to have a fine mist of water rehydrating your screens if the ink starts to become thick. If you want more information on printing with standard water based ink, check out our YouTube video here:

TIP 7: PLAN YOUR PRINT RUN

Once you have added the activator to your ink, discharge has a shelf life of between 6-8 hours. Don’t expect to print the first half of your job one evening and then finish it the following day. You need to plan enough time to print the whole job if possible. If you have a particularly big print run be aware that you may need to mix a new batch of ink every 8 hours for best results.

TIP 8: DRIVE THE INK INTO THE GARMENT

Discharge ink needs to be forced into the garment to get a good result. When manual printing, I’m afraid this is just down to your own strength. If you are not familiar with water based and discharge printing, it might be best to start with smaller images so you can focus your effort into a smaller area. Another method of applying more force (although not in everyones opinion) is to push the squeegee rather than pulling it. Pushing the squeegee will allow you to force your body weight through the squeegee rather than only using your arm strength.

TIP 9: CURE THE INK PROPERLY

Ideally you would use a forced air conveyor dryer to cure discharge ink. A lot of manual printers (us included) do not have the space for a large tunnel dryer so we cure our discharge ink using the Big Buddy Infrared Conveyor Dryer. We put the dryer on it’s slowest setting being carful not to burn the garment. Here is a link to the Big Buddy Conveyor Dryer, remember to use our discount code for anything on the Screen Print World website : CRP5

Big Buddy Electric Conveyor Dryer

TIP 10: DO A WASH TEST

Completing a wash test on your discharged t-shirts is especially important. On your first wash, the vibrancy should stay the same however the feel of the print should soften. If your design has faded, you may have not cured the ink fully or applied enough force during the print stage.

BONUS TIP: Check out our latest YouTube video : Manually screen printing a 6 colour image with discharge inks.

We walk you through our day of screen printing a 6 colour image with discharge inks. You can watch every step of the print job from prepping screens to mixing ink, printing and curing.  

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