Printing Polyprop Non-Woven Tote Bags.......

As you know, there is a huge market printing these bags, and the numbers are always good. After printing truckloads of these I now tell customers we will only print two dark colours on a light colored bag, or one light or white on dark colored bags. If a client wants multiple colours i manage their decision to change to cotton calico where bleed and shrinkage or scorching is not such an issue. I cure using my dryer with quartz tubes as the ceramic elements run too hot and shrink the bags into oblivion.

I print with plastisol, hugger catalyst, and a dollop of fast flash powder in the ink. All is good with dark ink on light bags, but I am struggling with the white ink in terms of printing cleanly with no splurge, getting a thick opaque deposit in one hit without flashing and having any registration issues etc. The white just sucks. I have pre catalysed it till it thickens a bit and find printing it thicker helps (I use QCM 158 which goes really runny with hugger catalyst), so sometimes also add aerosol powder which does a reasonable job as an ink thickening agent, but turns the ink chalky and matte. Printing in metric 59S meshes. I also note some suppliers bags print much better than others in terms of fabric quality and heat tolerance. Just wondering what everyone else does running these and if anyone has better tricks or ideas?