Does anyone know what heat to use and how long you need to press mouspads when you print them DTG? I have not tried it yet, but it seems so much easier than sublimation that I am going to do it for this last minute job I have. I was going to try 300 and 10 seconds but if anyone has any other advice for this let me know as soon as possible since I have to finish them sometime tomorrow.
When I have printed mouse pads in my DTG printer, I first reduce the ink flow otherwise colors will run. The non-textile mode at 1440 dpi works perfectly in my printer for this.
I cured the ink using my heat press not actually pressing the pad, but bringing the heating element right down on top of the pad but not actually touching. I had the temp at 330 and I cured for 60 seconds.
I also pretreat the pads with FastBright. I tried it without pretreatment and the colors are not as vibrant.
I get really nice mouse pads with the method above.
Just an update...I printed the mouse pads with the Brother and I also decided to do dye sub to see the difference in the picture. Here are the results. I am not sure if I was doing something wrong, but the dye sub looked a lot better.
If so, the GT-541 is probably not going to do well AFAIK since the inks won't "stick" properly and probably won't create the right spray patterns to get the colors you are expecting.
If you were using a DTG that uses Dupont inks (like most of the Epson-based printers) you'd probably get significantly different results. The current revision of Dupont inks do adhere to polyester somewhat. The light color pretreatment would only help that application along.
Your sublimated mousepad is on the right? Looks pretty good to me.
Last edited by raise; July 23rd, 2009 at 08:24 PM.
Reason: cleaned up some of my horrific grammer
I didn't have any type of pre treatment to use. I have the Epson 4880 that I am still getting used to that I used to sublimate the one on the right. I thought it looked so much better that I am going to buy more mousepads tomorrow to finish the job. I had already done 10 on the Brother before I decided to do my test. I was told when I bought them that I could used them on the DTG machine, and it did work, just didn't look as good as the sublimated one. I am pretty sure they are 100% polyester because I asked the guy if they didn't look good if I could sublimate it and he said that I could. If you know what may work well to pre-treat this type of item, please let me know.
I think you're going to have a better result sublimating the mousepads if they are 100% polyester.
The surface needs to be either 100% cotton or at least 50/50 cotton poly for the Brother inks to do well in my experience.
There are rumors of a polyester pretreatment that is coming out for the Brother printers but it is still in testing and unavailable to the public as far as I have heard.
I think you are right. I also ordered some coasters that are supposed to be able to look good printed on the Brother. I haven't gotten them yet, hopefully the result will be better than the mousepad. Thanks for the information.
My experience with DTG vs Dye Sub on mousepads has been the same as above. Dye sub produced a lot better image quality/color and detail, however if you only have a DTG I wouldn't turn down an order because of it. It's always good to have a sample to show people what to expect. When I did a DTG mousepad, I pressed at the same settings as I would a shirt. I've made some of the sandstone coasters, they come out quite nice.
Polyster is junk, color will look faded, yea def. I personally never printed on mouse pads, but positive will come out great,these are suppose to be for DTG call them up to confirm
Mousepad printing question 
