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!

Chicago-based screen printer and embroiderer cranks out apparel for promotional products industry to the tune of $9 million annually.

It all began when a screen printer botched a simple T-shirt order. Naturally, the client was upset. But in hindsight, it was the best thing that could of happened to him. The client, George Kilian, took matters into his own hands and printed the T-shirts himself. Sixteen years later, the former manager of a rhythm-and-blues band owns and operates Sharprint, a contract screen print and embroidery business that grosses more than $8 million annually. "Sharprint started in the basement of my band's house, says Kilian, who initially built his own equipment and taught himself screen printing through trial-and-error. "We printed T-shirts for our band, and when other bands saw them, they wanted some too. Then nightclubs wanted wanted some, and soon everyone was coming to us and we had done very little marketing or sales. Kilian changed his tune on a career in the music industry when he realized the lucrative potential of screen printing, eventually calling it quits as a band manager. By selling to his music contacts, he instantly hit a high note, creating more business than he could've anticipated. "It seemed like we were moving every three years (to a larger facility)," he says. Today, after relocating five times since 1985 to accommodate its steady growth, the Chicago-based business resides in a 40K square-foot warehouse, which houses two new state-of-the-art 12-color automatics, two fully automated 16-color automatics, and one brand new all-over 18 color giant, as they like to call it, which has enabled Sharprint to produce gigantic prints.

  As a leader in the custom decorated apparel industry for over 30 years, Sharprint brings both the quality of a world class screen printer / embroiderer and the enterprise service structure required to work with some of the most demanding apparel companies in the world.  Sharprint is the preferred vendor for brands like Mc Donald's, NFL, MLB, NBA, Harley Davidson, Threadless.com and many others. 

 

 

 

Leveraging hundreds of embroidery heads in our 40,000 square foot manufacturing facility in Chicago, IL enables Sharprint to turnaround even the largest orders within 5-7 days.  Furthermore, its central location in the midwest allows for lower shipping costs to your costomers.