What do a Vegas poker table and a Threadless t-shirt have in common? Both are money making machines, both attract a young  and eclectic audience, and both are printed with discharge inks!

What is discharge, you ask? Discharge, also known as extract, printing consists of printing a color-destroying agent, such as hydrosulfite or chlorine,  to a dark garment to bleach out the original dark dye of the fabric. Color-discharge printing combines a colored dye with the bleaching agent to deposit a new color to the design over the bleached out white base, producing a colored pattern on a dark garment.

So what’s the big deal? Plastisol inks have been used for decades to decorate dark garments – just slap on an under base and add all the colors you want. Same thing, right? Not exactly… The beauty of discharge is its ability to make bright, opaque colors on dark fabrics while retaining a soft hand – two ideas that don’t co-exist in the world of plastisols, where successful printing on darks relies on pigment loads to block out the original color of the fabric. All this ink deposition is not a necessary evil in discharge printing.  By “bleaching” out the color of the garment, discharge inks are basically absorbed into the fabric, hence creating a soft-hand print that is part of the garment, rather than applying layers of ink that are plastered over it. In fact, when initially deposited, discharge ink can look almost transparent on the fabric. It’s when the ink is cured that the bright colors appear, yet the hand of the print remains soft and appealing to the touch. This burn-out quality also makes discharge a great under base option for plastisols, reducing the amount of plastisol ink deposited over the fabric and hence softening the feel of the print.

Discharge inks, however, are not ideal for every garment. To be compatible with this technology, fabric needs to be made of natural fibers (100% cotton), have been dyed with a reactive dye, and not have been over dyed (dyed multiple colors). To ensure best results, it’s always a good idea to run a test print on the garment when using discharge inks.

Let’s recap: Discharge inks are a soft-hand alternative to printing on dark garments. They work by removing, or bleaching out, the original dye of the fabric and depositing new inks on the garment, hence eliminating the need to stack up numerous layers of ink, as is the case with plastisols.  But what does any of this have to do with Vegas, you ask? The graphics on the casino tables are printed with discharge inks to avoid the interference of the printed line with the rolling of the dice. If it were printed with plastisols, the ink would be elevated on the surface of the table, hence altering the speed and direction of the roll. Discharge inks, as we know, burn into the fabric to keep the playing surface smooth and the rolling unaltered – so even in Vegas, discharge printing is the safest bet!