Screenprinting.
Since the beginning, screenprinting has always been our bread and butter. Pine evolved out of our founder’s dedication to the craft. These days, a passion for print is shared by our whole team. We take a lot of pride in the things we make and go the extra mile to print exclusively with water-based inks for the softest prints possible. In addition to screenprinting branded apparel, we’re among a handful of modern screenprinting shops that also offer flatstock printing. Scroll down to learn more!
Ready to get started?
If you’re ready to get the ball rolling on printed apparel click below to get in touch with us. If you’d like to learn more about water-based ink and flatstock printing, keep scrolling.
Let’s talk water-based.
We talk a lot about our water-based inks. What’s all the hype about?
We’re definitely biased, but our customers agree that water-based inks make better prints. We prefer water-based ink for a lot of reasons, but softness and sustainability are at the top of the list. Water-based ink comes in a couple varieties that are important to understand. We’ll break it down for you below.
Discharge.
We agree - discharge ink could use a re-brand. If you can get past the name, discharge makes super soft prints by creating contrast through chemistry. When exposed to heat, these inks create a chemical reaction that “discharges” the dye from fabric and re-colors the fibers, creating the softest and most breathable prints.
The discharge process is only effective on organic fibers. Synthetic fibers like polyester cannot be bleached of their color with discharge ink. Because of this, discharge printing is limited to majority cotton-based garments. A lot of cotton & polyester blends, including some tri-blends will discharge, but effectiveness can vary based on dye colors and manufacturer.
We’re always working to minimize waste and toxicity, but you can’t create chemistry without chemicals. While we love really soft prints, discharge inks are more chemically-intense and wasteful than HSA inks. For this reason, we reserve discharge printing for large print areas or when softness and breathability are priorities.
SOFTNESS: ⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️
SUSTAINABILITY: ⬜️🔳🔳🔳
Acrylic.
HSA (high solids acrylic) and LSA (low solids acrylic) water-based inks are our go-to inks for screenprinting apparel. These inks can be printed on any fabric content with great results. When printed dark-on-light, LSA inks go into the fabric rather than sitting on top. This creates super soft prints that remain breathable.
When printing HSA inks light-on-dark, they function more like conventional inks by using an underbase to build contrast with the fabric they’re printed on. While underbased HSA is not as soft as discharge prints, they are noticeably softer than a conventional plastisol print and less toxic than both discharge and plastisol, containing no PVCs, phthalates, or heavy metals.
SOFTNESS: ⬜️⬜️⬜️🔳
SUSTAINABILITY: ⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️
Special Effects.
As the demand for more sustainable apparel solutions has grown, water-based inks have evolved to include a lot of the same special effects available from conventional inks. Special effect inks open up new levels of creativity to create something unique.
The special effects inks that we keep on hand are puff ink and metallic ink. Other special effects like glow-in-the-dark, reflective, cracking, and color-shifting are available upon request. All of our special effect ink is PVC and phthalate free.
SOFTNESS: ⬜️⬜️⬜️🔳
SUSTAINABILITY: ⬜️⬜️⬜️🔳
