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Heat Seal - Heat Press - Whatever you want to call it! => General Heat Seal => Topic started by: Admiral on April 29, 2013, 03:56:08 PM
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We use transfer powder and I have seen the benefit of it...the plastisol can't peel or scratch away at all...is there a way to make transfers without the powder though?
It's a lot of extra labor and we have to wipe off the transfers once they are out of the dryer to make sure powder not on the plastisol doesn't mark up shirts.
I assume transferexpress and other companies have a better method.
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If you apply transfers to T-shirts 100% cotton & some polyester blends you don't need powder. What you do need is good control over gelling temp in dryer and printed ink deposit. Powder is fixing this issues but takes more of your time.
Boris
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If you apply transfers to T-shirts 100% cotton & some polyester blends you don't need powder. What you do need is good control over gelling temp in dryer and printed ink deposit. Powder is fixing this issues but takes more of your time.
Boris
currently do transfers through our sprint 2000 at 235F. I still would feel that powder = better transfer. Do the transfer companies - versatrans, transferexpress, use powder on all of their plastisol transfers?
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the transfer express 2 color numbers we buy are powdered; what I'd like to know is how they get rid of the excess powder that sticks to the paper then transfers to the shirts. Compressed air?
Steve
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in my experience, it's night and day. Use the powder, it helps adhere to the garment
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So, has anyone tried mixing the powder into the ink? Or using Heat Transfer inks from the manufacturers?
Steve
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So, has anyone tried mixing the powder into the ink? Or using Heat Transfer inks from the manufacturers?
Steve
we have and we found it is better to coat it then to mix it in. the powder can cause weird blocking issues in the screen
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the transfer express 2 color numbers we buy are powdered; what I'd like to know is how they get rid of the excess powder that sticks to the paper then transfers to the shirts. Compressed air?
Steve
If it's anything like when I ran Thermograph (fake engraved, raised letter printing with plastic powder) the conveyor has a hopper that shakes it on, then a vacuum which removes the excess.
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A larger company I worked at, we used Wilflex Printable Adhesive.
A little more extensive needing to be printed like a regular color; last screen down
kind of a reversible under base. It was crazy, artists used to send us up to 14 colors to
print 6-up on 25X38" on coated paper. We had a heat holding "room" for jobs that weren't
completed at days end and housed for the next day. Humidity and temp controlled, along with
heated rolling boxes at each press.
At least look at the PDF.
http://www.polyone.com/en-us/about/businessgroups/Inks/Literature/Wilflex%20Epic%20TFX%20Printable%20Adhesive.pdf (http://www.polyone.com/en-us/about/businessgroups/Inks/Literature/Wilflex%20Epic%20TFX%20Printable%20Adhesive.pdf)
Powder is nice insurance, but otherwise, enough heat and pressure will bond specific "transfer" inks appropriately.
Hopes this helps~
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We do thousands of transfers and if they do not have a white as last down we use Printable adhesive. Allow yourself a little bit of overbleed to allow for shrinkage. The other thing we did was get a Powder coating machine that shakes the powder on and then blows off the excess. Took a while to design and I would like to do it again but it works. A lot of larger companies doing transfers blow of the excess usung compressed air but you have to be careful you do not use too much pressure as you can move the ink. I have seen a company sucessfully use a vacuum cleaner on blow and their transfers had no residue.
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We use the Excalibur transfer ink. Works pretty well once you get the dryer set right. It was tricky for us to get it just right.
The powder makes it SO easy, but is kinda a pain. We had a little application "process" with a pizza box set up and some tissue paper that worked well for getting the powder on and saving the excess. I'll look in the basement tomorrow and see if I can find it and post a pic.
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So, has anyone tried mixing the powder into the ink? Or using Heat Transfer inks from the manufacturers?
Steve
we have and we found it is better to coat it then to mix it in. the powder can cause weird blocking issues in the screen
You can mix it in ink. But particles of powder need to be smaller then mesh opening. Powders are mostly sold as 0-80 microns for finer grade and 80-200 microns for coarse grade. We used to use powder this way and addition of 10-20% helped a lot. We used 80 tpi mesh.
Boris
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the transfer express 2 color numbers we buy are powdered; what I'd like to know is how they get rid of the excess powder that sticks to the paper then transfers to the shirts. Compressed air?
Steve
If it's anything like when I ran Thermograph (fake engraved, raised letter printing with plastic powder) the conveyor has a hopper that shakes it on, then a vacuum which removes the excess.
When you are serious about powdering you need to invest in machine from www.sunraise.com or www.permapress.se which is investment of $25k+, once you have it setup and running correctly it doesn't slow down production much. Ours can powder 400 sheets 50x70cm per hour.
Boris
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We never use powder on our transfers and we do hundreds every week. Correct dryer settings and proper transfer inks are a must. Be careful on your artwork that has finer detail or halftones as they will cure faster than the larger deposits of ink and will not adhere to the garment..... we always do test samples during the run to make sure things are working the way they are supposed to, especially with multiple color jobs.
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Good Point Larry K~
Correct dryer settings and proper transfer inks are a must.
If too much heat, it will drive off too much moisture/binder?
And they will have a hard time adhering no matter how much
time/temp on the heat press.
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So what's in the proper transfer inks? How about it has a wider "gelling" latitude than regular plastisol. So the finer details as well as the larger deposits of ink are able to gell properly in the lower temperature range of the available latitude. Anything else beneficial to using transfer inks besides heat control?
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We apply an adhesive that comes to us labeled 80-200ยต...not sure which size it is in reality. We only do cold peel with standard inks so your experience with hot split may vary.
Cap or difficult poly fabric transfers are powdered after the print and give a good thwacking on the back of the paper to shake off excess. Yes, time consuming but definitely helps adhesion.
Private label transfers onto Ts and sweats we typically mix the adhesive into the ink. If you don't over add it doesn't seem to mess with ink transfer on a 150/48.
GaryG: thanks for introducing me to that WFX product, might have to get my hands on some. I'm super interested in how you were able to handle the multicolors on those big parent sheets at your previous shop. Running multicolor T-120 (supposedly the most stable paper out there) on our Cameo is hell. Paper warps too much so we run multicolor with any tight reg on the manual, flashing the platens. I wish we could rock the mulitcolor on the clamshell press but I don't think we have the temp and humidity controls needed to do it.
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Yes Zoo- must be coated paper of course. Used Saturn and Eclipse. Three point registration along with
vacuum is crucial for larger sheets, along with taking the extra few seconds lining up. There was some waste,
but I was amazed at how stable it could be with heat controlled boxes. We used Wilflex "First Down Clear"
as a layer -before any ink- to let even fine halftones lift off when hot split peeled.
Must be ran through dryer each ink color stacking a bunch, then right back in box. Flashing around manual
seems like it would get too hot warping paper. Boxes were custom made although very simple with a
space heater on bottom separated from top paper shelf, with slight gap to let hot air to flow upward. No real
humidity control, but constant light heat keeping moisture to a minimum. I actually built one out of cardboard
on my own when we started, but dryer, not flash. Dryer is more safe not to drive out too much plasticizer creating
weak bond when applied. We were looking at registration marks in the corners of the large sheets lining up and
were stoked.
Mr. Chris Pluck is the neatest guy that helped us from Wilflex way back then, if he is still around.
You can do it Zoo, we screen printers are tinkerers. We can do anything!
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Zoo, running a Cameo, how cool. We had one for a long time, what a great 1 color t-shirt printer it was. Our transfer use is small, so I don't think I'll be investing in a 25k machine for powdering, but it's nice to know it's there. We powder in a box, and give it a good thwacking as well, but it doesn't seem to get rid of enough of the powder, which is why I mentioned the compressed air. I use a paper from Ace Screen Supply, Ultra Strip 3000, coated on one side. Maybe our thwacking isn't thwacky enough...
Steve
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Thx Gary, that's encouraging. I'm seeing that the T120 warps after first pass through the dryer pretty bad. More specifically it curls real bad which frustrates the next color's reg on the table. I bet that could be dialed better though on the dryer. We do pre-shrink and we hustle but I'll have to try pre-running and hot boxing and see if I can get it to jive. A first down clear is an excellent idea for fine detail stuff. We run 13x19 sheets as they're easier to handle on the 'ol Cameo. I think it works on the manual since we are using light platen tack there which grips the sheets and prevents them from moving v. the curled sheets going back on the vac bed of the cameo.
I don't know if I would say it's "cool" to run the Cameo Steve, haha. It's like the model T of clamshells so I guess if yer into vintage printing gear it's probably hip. Not having any squeegee or flood angle adjust is not so hip though, nor is the setup time on that bastard. I actually have to look into a better flatstock press it looks like to fulfill a sticker account. A Saturn or an Eclipse would be sweeeeet or maybe a graphica.
Sorry for thread hijack, I just had to ask about Gary's work.
If anyone does use compressed air on the powder be careful to ventilate or wear a respirator, I don't think breathing in a bunch of adhesive crystals is a great idea.