What is the best ink to use for fabric screenprinting?

[Brandoned]

I am thinking of starting screenprinting on t-shirts and have done some research but I would like to find a recommended brand to use, I hear Speedball isn't best. Preferrably an ink that can air dry or can be cured by a heat gun or hair dryer,

[vrooooom]

The ink that works. Zing!

Air dried ink for fabrics is problematic. I'm guessing you'll want to wash the garments, and depending on your use (commercial?) you might want to avoid complaints of ink scratching or washing off.

Lots of matsui users, TW has a plastisol... speedball isn't too bad on fabric if you realize it's in that class of no dryer having curable inks. Just like latex... it'll print on fabric, but what kind of quality are you going for? Btw, I have some speedball printed shirts that are only a little dinged by multiple washes, and this is after 5 years. But you need to bring out the big guns for something really nice.

This is more of a "what's the best ink if I tie your hands and eliminate the most appropriate inks and process for the substrate" type of question. Sometimes you can get samplers from ink suppliers, so maybe investigate that?

[NeroInferno]

Hello Brandoned.
there are different kinds of textile inks.

The main ones are plastisol, or waterbased. It depends where you need to print, colour of the fabric and effect.

The plastisol can be dried using a heat gun (better a flash unit) but also if it seems dried, to be totally polymerized you need or a heat press with some silicone sheets (or better a conveyor dryer).

I used a heat gun for a year. You can't imagine how many time you loss using a heat gun to dry plastisol. Really. I bought a very cheap flash unit, and I speed up litterally the production. The bottle neck is the conveyor dryer, I still haven't one, and I need to polymerize the plastisol using a heat press.

If I need to print just one colour on the tshirt (pratically the 90% of the jobs) I prefer to use a discharge ink (waterbased). It's true this ink has got a pot life of 8-12 hours but it speeds a lot the production, and the "hand" (at the touch) is really SOFT!! You need to polymerize this ink with a heat press into the pot-life of the ink to make possible the salts into the ink will "eat" the dye of the fabric. You can also add tints to it and make very nice coloured prints.

My last choice is water based. Sometimes I use them. Some water based inks polymerize using the room temp. If you give some heat with the heat press is better. A lot of them catalize them but honestly I've some prints made with simple waterbased ink heat pressed that keep really well!

Use TW inks!

If you need anything just ask!
Fabio