Discussion, tips, pictures, reviews and peer to peer support for current and future owners of Belquette manufactured machines, including the MOD-1 DTG machine and the Flexi-Jet set series of printers.
Got my rip up and running finally. Ink still fades, but not nearly as bad. Curing for 38sec at 325 on very light to no pressure.
Raw pictures are much harder than processed graphics.
Color will not be completely accurate.
Detail and clarity is excellent.
Printing speed is excellent.
Prints look great on the platten but then.....
Nice looking car. Try to use the pretreatment for light colors that is sold by the T-Jet distributors (i.e. Harry at Equipment Zone). That will help the ink colors stay bright. Have you also tried different brands of shirts? Some shirts have sizing on them that prevents a good wash test.
You can also try to increase your color settings in the graphic. There use to be a set of Photoshop actions that allowed you to click one button and it will increase the colors without losing the detail. Might want to check either Dan's forum or the Flexi forum for them.
I agree with Mark that if you are having bad fade problems, I would try the fast color pretreatment Harry uses. It does work really good. With that short cure time, how is the wash on them? You are using Dan's dtg inks right?
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It looks to me like you are not getting quite enough coverage. What I think I am seeing is the shirt through the print. How close to the rollers is the shirt? I raise the bed until the shirt is a business card or two thickness from the rollers.
What are the settings you have selected in the RIP? White cotton? What resolution? And is this a dual CMYK or single CMYK print? What brand is the shirt? Is it 100% cotton? We usually use Gildan 2000, but there are several brands that work really well.
If I understand correctly you are talking about fade after curing , not after washing. The only time I have seen this on my own prints is when the poly content is over 15%, but even this can be avoided by doing two lighter passes rather than one heavy pass.
I cure my dual CMYK prints using DTGInks at 350F for 60 seconds. I use silicon paper plus a teflon sheet with so little pressure that the paper can be moved with the press down.
There are a few folks who do not touch the press to the shirt at all, but hover it just above the shirt on their CMYK prints.
The shirts are 100% cotton Gildan, but I've tried others. I print dual cmyk at 360E mode. I've tried 720. I've tried double pass, will not work with pictures because of the darkening- unless I tweak all night.
I do not want to double pass every saleable shirt.
My press is set to no pressure, I've tried with moderate pressure.
My rip is set for white cotton, 1 pass bi-directional, I've tried other settings.
Bottom line is the colors- especially black will fade- a lot.
Pretreatment may solve it, but that's more time and more expense and more headache.
Been trying 360e double pass and 720x720 double pass. Works a lot better with fading.
FYI: Try printing using the regular 360x360 2 pass, you will be impressed with the speed and pop.
There is really no need or appreciable quality difference from 360e (360x720) in 2 pass mode, and your throughput will increase.
It's my personal choice when using the Flexi,...2 lighter coats always yield the best results.
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