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screen printing => Waterbase and Discharge => Topic started by: ericheartsu on January 13, 2014, 06:37:25 PM
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What do you all typically keep your dryers at for waterbased prints on a white shirt? We are doing a bigger run, and i want to make sure the ink is curing, and the shirts are scorching!
We are using Sericol texcharge, and printing on tultex 0202 tees!
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Electric/Gas? Feet of heat?
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Electric/Gas? Feet of heat?
gas, 8 ft tunnel!
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Eric, proper crockfastness requires sufficient retention time, obviously. Unfortunately on many dryers the digital readout for speed is a number that does not reflect real time so a stop watch is required. Also the efficiency of the dryer (mainly the baffling system) will require you to make adjustments that you will make by croctesting (crock meter is best....not too expensive for most). I cringe when I see statements like "one and a half minutes at 320". Lastly, Sericols website calls for 160C @2-3 minutes.
You do the conversion but thats a bit of a wide latitude.
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Can we run waterbase through an electric dryer?
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Tony, seriously? You're saying that 18 fpm on your dryer may not be 18 fpm on my dryer? Surely you jest. ;D
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Can we run waterbase through an electric dryer?
your dryer has to have forced air....I have a Vastex EconoRed IR dryer (which is for sale if anyone interested) and it does not have forced air..I printed a 2 color water based design on 1,600 white golf towels, and I had to mix in a catalyst with the ink to help cure the ink..you mix it by volume...i purchased the catalyst and ink from Union....the catalyst comes in a small plastic bottle.
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Can we run waterbase through an electric dryer?
You can but it is not efficient.
Think about this. You boil some water, all the water will eventually evaporate. But if you put a fan and blow the steam away, the water will evaporate faster.
Yes catalyst will help with curing. Just remember, catalyst added to ink has a shelf-life.
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Eric, proper crockfastness requires sufficient retention time, obviously. Unfortunately on many dryers the digital readout for speed is a number that does not reflect real time so a stop watch is required. Also the efficiency of the dryer (mainly the baffling system) will require you to make adjustments that you will make by croctesting (crock meter is best....not too expensive for most). I cringe when I see statements like "one and a half minutes at 320". Lastly, Sericols website calls for 160C @2-3 minutes.
You do the conversion but thats a bit of a wide latitude.
thanks Tony! On to find a crock meter
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Start at textiletestingequipment.com but shop around. Last one I had was manual. Motorized ones are overkill for us t-shirt folk.
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For a general rule of thumb, just try to get as close to 3min dwell @ 350˚F as you can.
Obviously that's not feasible in all shops and may be overkill for some prints/inks, it's a cover yer arse figure. As others said, there's a lot of factors here, air flow being one of the key ones. There's much more to it that I'm still learning.
Eric are you running Red Tultex cottons? I've seen those effers scorch up a little with printing DC white on them. Sometimes the Tultex cotton is just funky.
Whitewater, our 10' chambered TexAir is all electric but with a hot forced air section so the chamber looks like this:
IR panel > forced hot air > IR panel
There are high CFM vents (built as a mod) over the IR panel grates to further increase air flow and suck fumes out (and waste heat...). The forced air chamber section is identical to a gas dryer but uses electric finstrip heaters instead of gas burners to provide the heat to the flowing air. So while it's electric it really behaves more like a gas unit with two IR bump sections. An electric dryer with only IR panels and minimal or no air circulation will be difficult to use for WB I imagine. What dryer Whitewater? You may be able to install an air knife system with a couple squirrel cage blowers, tin and a little creativity if there's room to work it into the chamber. A stopgap if you must run WB would be to use system that accepts a catalyst but that's going to make printing stressful.
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we are running white tultex, so i'm super worried about scorching them. We just did some tests, and they turned out ok, keeping the heat at around 320 and the belt speed at around 15.
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What's your exit temp on the raygun?
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Gas Dryer with air is best, but don't be afraid to do some small-medium sized runs with an electric dryer with or without air, just adjust your throughput expectations accordingly. We can do 20-25 doz. fairly big prints per hour in a 24" wide belt Hix with 8' of heat and no air. Wash tests are just fine. We run it at a 2 minute dwell at 330F. The dryer has an outer case that is ventilated and hoods over both ends, but does not blow or suck air from the tunnel itself.
Test test test, but don't put off trying just because you don't have a monster oven.
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We run discharge and waterbased all the time (matsui) on a variety of fabrics through our 20 year old national electric dryer. It is a 36 inch belt and has 6 feet of heat. We keep the baffles pretty open and have a fan blowing through the intake. The dwell time is 1:15 and exit temp is 330f. We run everything through twice as the 1:15 dwell is the slowest the dryer will go, but I would like to change or recalibrate the speed control ideally. I have a handful of shirts I wash with every load of personal laundry and some have gone through 50 or so washes without issue, so I know this is sufficient.
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It's true! Wash test is the only real test there is. The rest of the tools we use- belt speed read outs, chamber temp settings, donut probe, surface temp at exit, etc. -are all just there to help keep the parameters in place to repeat what made the wash test successful.
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yea i've always rolled my eyes when people spout specific numbers for waterbased. Everything from ambient humidity and temp, to the coverage and color of the ink, to the type of substrate, etc can affect those numbers. I've always simply aimed to over cure and wash test to be sure. I've tried to specifically pick large coverage with white printed on rainy cold days as the ultimate test and so far no issues with the setting I commonly use.
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yea i've always rolled my eyes when people spout specific numbers for waterbased. Everything from ambient humidity and temp, to the coverage and color of the ink, to the type of substrate, etc can affect those numbers. I've always simply aimed to over cure and wash test to be sure. I've tried to specifically pick large coverage with white printed on rainy cold days as the ultimate test and so far no issues with the setting I commonly use.
I thought I was the only person that have that rainy day problem.
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Work horse 5217 here. I print water base a lot. Tested hundreds of shirts some up to 50 washes. Any dryer can do water base. Its just about knowing your dryer. I print up to 400 an hour unless it is a big print like 15x19. Then it goes down to about 300. For me I try to run one line of shirts through this leaves open belt for air flow. I'm in Arizona so my results may be better than normal due to low humidity.
Take time to test and test again. Sending out a undercured jobs will hurt your business.