1 – Textile Printing with Water-based Inks (silk-Screen Printing)
This is a technique widely used in cotton tshirts although they can be used in other materials doing tests. Water based inks are so named because they are made of water as solvent material. Generally, they are offered in the serigraphic warehouses in two components as base and pigment, or only one as pigmented base. These inks have two general subdivisions as non-covering inks and covering inks.
Non-covering inks are used on white garments or very light colors and the covering inks, as the name says, are used to generate the cover in colored or dark tshirts.
At the moment, it is very fashionable to print tshirts of cotton and lycra cotton with transparent water base inks, an agent that generates corrosion (oxysulfur-formaldehyde of zinc or similar. This agent does something similar to sodium hypochlorite which is to knock out the original color of the garment and remove it or change it with the one we print. This technique results in a ‘zero touch’ impression, which is highly requested by the marketers and end customers.
2 – Textile Printing with Plastisol Inks.
I would be very close to being sure that it is the second most used form worldwide for printing of tshirts due to its ease in the learning curve in terms of printing. Plastisol ink is used in almost all materials for the creation of clothing.
In the particular case of tshirts or cotton tshirts, the corrodible agent is also being used to remove the color, and in turn, it is printed with the plastisol ink. This results in a very soft print on colored tshirts for the reason that it removes the white ink or only leaves it with a single very fine pass depending on the garment and finish. As for plastisol inks, it is advisable to use those that do not contain DOP-Di-octyl phthalate since they are carcinogenic.
3 – Embroidery
Although it is widely used in general, the embroidery due to its relief and weight is used in tshirts that are a bit thicker such as jean material, denim of uniforms, etc. This does not mean that if you want to apply a small embroidery to your tshirts, you cannot do it.
If you have any comments or questions regarding the techniques used in the design trends and printing of tshirts, just leave it in the comment section and we will respond to it fast.
