Last week we were in Las Vegas for PRINTING United, doing some live printing in the ROQ booth. As usual, printing live at a trade show was equal parts fun, challenging, and occasionally a little chaotic.
We had two different prints running during the show, and both gave us a chance to do something a little different.
For the Prints Not Dead event at the Punk Rock Museum, we printed a three-color design using Avient’s Brittle Base. If you haven’t played with brittle or crackle-style inks before, the fun really starts after the shirt is printed. Once finished, the ink can actually be pulled apart and cracked, giving the print a worn-in, distressed look.
The end result feels right at home next to all those old punk shirts in your collection that have been washed, worn, stretched, and beaten up over the years. Except this time, you don’t have to wait 20 years to get there.
We also printed a special limited run of 150 Stanley/Stella x ROQ collaboration shirts.
For this one, we went in a completely different direction and printed a two-color discharge print on garment-dyed blanks. Instead of laying a layer of ink on top of the garment, the discharge process removes and replaces the dye in the shirt where the design is printed.
After washing, there’s basically no hand feel. The print feels like it’s part of the shirt rather than something sitting on top of it. Paired with a garment-dyed blank, it made for a really soft, comfortable finished shirt.
Of course, printing live comes with its own set of challenges.
Running a press in a production environment is one thing. Running a press while talking with attendees, answering questions, explaining the print, and trying to keep everything moving is another.
It’s pretty easy to get distracted and forget to move some ink around, keep an eye on your flash times, or—in my case—leave a printhead in the wrong position.
Whoops.
Water-based and discharge inks add another layer to the challenge. You really need to keep things moving because the ink can start drying in the screen if you let it sit too long. When you're stopping every few minutes to have a conversation, that can get interesting pretty quickly.
Did everything go perfectly?
Absolutely not.
Did every shirt make it off the press and into someone’s hands?
Also no. Haha.
But that’s part of live printing.
We had a great time, printed some cool shirts, experimented with a couple of very different ink systems, and most importantly, had a ton of great conversations with screen printers and decorators from all over the industry.
That’s probably our favorite part of shows like PRINTING United. You can talk equipment and technique all day, but getting a bunch of printers together around a running press is where some of the best conversations happen.
Thanks to everyone who stopped by the ROQ booth, watched us print, asked questions, grabbed a shirt, or just hung out and talked shop with us.
Until the next one.
