Impressions - January 2015 - 62

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Screen Printing Production

The Advantages of Plastisol
Textile Inks
Ease of use and wash-fastness are just two of the numerous
reasons plastisol still remains a go-to ink system.
By Rick Davis, Contributing Writer

uring the past two decades, there
has been a push from different
organizations - including environmental agencies and large sporting
goods companies - to have traditional
plastisol inks either modiﬁed or replaced.
One primary concern was the banning of certain phthalates that have been
deemed harmful. Our industry wasted
no time in eliminating those components
to meet those demands. Today, most ink
manufacturers only offer phthalatecompliant products to meet with the
Consumer Products Safety Improvement
Act (CPSIA) requirements that were originally passed in 2008.
In pursuit of business with large sports
companies, some screen printers have tried
and, in some cases, completely converted
to alternatives, such as high-solids, waterbased, acrylic-based and discharge ink
systems. Although these new alternatives
have gained popularity during the past
few years, plastisol still is the most popular
and widely used ink system on the textile
screen-printing market. Let's look at the
advantages plastisols have compared to alternative ink lines currently on the market.
Screen printers concern themselves
with two primary aspects of printing performance: Inks that do not air dry (plastisols and acrylics) and those that do (water-based and discharge). When plastisols
were initially introduced to the apparel
decorating industry more than 40 years
ago, the only composition for textiles were
standard water-based dyes. Some decorators were printing athletic jerseys with
acrylic paint, which initially looked impressive but lacked elasticity or durability.
The advent of plastisol inks offered advantages that had never been previously
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Impressions | January 2015

Adjustable viscosity is an advantage of plastisol inks. Screen
printers graduated from printing through multiﬁlament mesh counts, such
as 8xx, 10xx and 12xx, to 125-305 multiﬁlament screen mesh counts.

experienced. The primary advantage was
that the ink did not dry in the screen, which
was an aspect of water-based dyes that
printers had grown accustomed to out of
necessity. Plastisol inks eliminated that situation and made the printing process considerably easier. For the ﬁrst time, printers
could walk away from the press without going through the time-consuming procedure
of wiping the water-based inks from the
screens to ensure they would not dry out.
Plastisol ink also has screen-making
advantages. Prior to plastisols, the only
screen-printing photo emulsions needed
were those that were water resistant. They
worked well for their intent, but were not

typically designed for long production
runs. Thus, screen pinholes and breakdowns were common on larger jobs.
The early solution to this issue was to
treat the screen with a diluted acid solution, which would make the screen stencil permanent. Although this would require restretching the screen mesh, it was
deemed justiﬁed in order to print longer
production runs with fewer backup sets of
screens.
Today, there are countless photo emulsions available for any ink composition
currently on the market, although those
intended strictly for plastisols are the easiest with which to work. They also have
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Impressions - January 2015

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