Check out this instructional video from our ICCINK YouTube Channel. It demonstrates a print demo of International Coatings’ 7600 Direct Print Inks and also briefly shows a Mat-down screen in use to reduce fibrillation and create a softer hand.

Wilflex™ is making it easy to find answers and solutions! Our technical staff is ready to help you with any questions you may have. Wilflex color engineers can do more than help you find the right screen printing inks and dyes you need to make your printings successful, they can also help educate you on the latest industry trends, techniques and best practices.

In construction, shrewd builders deploy a technique called expansion joints to allow for unpredictable change.  They are commonly found in sidewalks, buildings, roads, railroad tracks, ships, bridges, and other structures.
The reason expansion joints are needed is that sometimes there are vibrations, heat differences, or even movement in things.  Before expansion joint gaps were introduced into these structures, solid unmovable objects would often crack under stress or pressure.
Really strong things became fragile.
People and companies need their own set of expansion joints too.  In a production setting, allowing for the vibration of unpredictability can help keep things on schedule. You plan for the chaos.
Who doesn’t want to reduce their stress?

Situated on the southwest side of the city of Decatur, Ind., Mind’s Eye Graphics is a bustling screen printing shop that handles a number of both national and local clients. The company has offered screen printing and related services since 1981, and the management team, including shop president Greg Kitson and IT director Rob Keuneke, have worked there for more than 25 years. For Kitson, the finished product, a screen printed T-shirt, is just as important as the first step. As he refers to it, “connecting the dots,” is an important component to understanding and appreciating the entire screen-printing process.

It is probably fitting that the term for the sign of a weakness is called an “Achilles Heel” as it matches up wonderfully with an upcoming, unspoken battle facing the decorated apparel industry.  
The war over water.
If you remember your Greek mythology, Achilles was dipped into the river Styx as an infant by his mother Thetis to give him divine protection in battle.  Because she held him by his heel, that was the only part of his body was that wasn’t protected.  Achilles, despite his Brad Pitt good looks,  later died when struck by an arrow in his heel during battle.
For apparel decorators, we’re in the same predicament.  Except, nobody is really talking about our weakness, which like Achilles, is associated with water.  We don’t look like Brad Pitt either.
For most shops, nobody stops to think about how much water plays into your business as we’re already overburdened with orders that have to ship, customer service challenges, employee training and motivation, continuous improvement programs, and a myriad of other things that call for more immediate attention than one sustainability issue.  There just isn’t any top of mind for this.

Obviously, you will need to choose a flash-cure unit that is compatible with your press. Some manufacturers make flash cures that are compatible with only their press brand, but there are universal flash cures that will work on any model. For the most part, flash-cure units also are designed to work with either manual or automatic presses. A manual flash unit physically won’t fit into an automatic press, even if it’s the same size as the corresponding automatic unit, and there are mechanical issues as well. 

Proper ink storage varies, depending on the climate where you live. In an article recently published in Wearables magazine, Kieth Stevens offers some important tips on how to keep your ink in working condition for a long time.

The ever-changing retail market has driven the apparel decorating industry to continuously change and evolve. Over the last decade, consumers have demanded retailers be socially and environmentally conscious of how products are manufactured. Retailers have become keenly aware of outside pressures and, as a result, mandated their manufacturing partners to meet compliance requirements in order to maintain the business relationship. 
Initially, phthalates and heavy metals had to be removed from plastisols inks. The result was a phthalate-free, non-toxic plasticizer that ended up as a substitution to the traditional plasticizers. The next wave of change was the PVC-free initiative. Major textile brands put the pressure on ink manufacturers to produce inks that were free of phthalates, heavy metals, and now polyvinyl chlorides. At the same time inks were evolving, so were the garments themselves. The days of 100 percent cotton garments controlling the marketplace were quickly disappearing. Performance wear was now becoming a standard part of the garment decorating landscape. As a result, the inks being used had to change as well. With the changing landscape, water-based inks were becoming the preferred method to meet these new requirements. Textile decorators were beginning to offer several options to produce decorated apparel on a variety of substrates and fabric compositions.

Are you frustrated by your employees lack of achieving stated goals, missing deadlines or keeping to an on-time production schedule?  Your people promise things and then don’t deliver.  Mistakes keep happening and the only answer is a lame shrug of the shoulders. The year is already half over and most of the top goals that you set in December or January aren’t even started yet. You name it.  There is a problem.
Some days you just want to pull your hair out.  
Here are five tips that you can use to push your crew into a better, more efficient mindset that delivers the accountability your shop needs to grow.  Get some actionable change started today!

There are a few ways create a security mark - something that isn't obvious to the naked eye but can be pointed out or revealed when an authentication is required - on a screen-printed garment or image.