Pretreatment on Black Shirts - Black Showing Through
I am having trouble with my pretreatment on black shirts. This has probably been brought up a million times put I can’t seem to find a straight answer to my problem. I’ve printed about a dozen shirts and on all of them the black is still showing through. Can someone tell me what exactly they do to pretreat a black shirt or what I am doing wrong?
Here is exactly what I do…
-Press the shirt for about 5 seconds to get out the wrinkles -Spray it with non-diluted pretreatment (I’ve tried various amounts but nothing seems to work) - Lightly brush down the shirt with a paint brush to push down the fibers -Press the shirt for 15 seconds with parchment paper
The settings I used for the pictures below are 1440x720dpi, one pass for color and white (I know I can do two layers of white but this really raises the ink cost of each shirt), medium density for white, & Auto-White-Highlight ThreshHold 15% (I'm not sure if this even does anything for the underbase though).
Re: Pretreatment on Black Shirts - Black Showing Through
Hey Ryan,
It is exactly because of this problem that I always use 2 passes for white and 1 pass for color.
My pretreatment procedure is similar to yours:
Mist shirt
Spray 2 passes at 2 secs per pass with 100% pretreatment
Roll solution into fibers with sponge paint roller (about 3" wide)
Mist shirt again
Put under heat press and let sit for a couple minutes
Press for about 10 secs....then again for 5 secs...then again for 5 secs.
I then let the shirt sit a few minutes while I do some more shirts. I prefer to leave it under the heat press if that is possible.
I then do 100% strength for the pretreatment on all settings with no highlights and print 2 passes of white (1440) and 1 pass of color (720)
Hope that helps......
__________________ Big Daddy Screenprinting -Affordable contract Heat Press Services & Low Volume Screen Printing up to 4 spot colors with no setup or screen fees
Re: Pretreatment on Black Shirts - Black Showing Through
It looks like you need to matt down the fibers which tend to pop up after you remove the quilone paper....press down for a few more seconds without any paper..this will matt down the fibers and thourougly dry the pretreat mixture
Re: Pretreatment on Black Shirts - Black Showing Through
Overall, that is really good. I always run into this problem with DTG and then reject the shirt however I recently had about 30 shirts printed with 1 color and if you look closely, you can see fibers through the plastisol as well.
Unless you are using something like vinyl, I think there will always be some type of fibers either sticking up through the ink or parts in between the threads that are not connected like in your sample.
I don't do this trick anymore because it takes too long BUT, if you do a single pass of white at 720, it gives better coverage but it's not as bright. Then cancel the color layer and do another print at 1440 as normal. Although the problem may still be present, the initial layer of white at 720 will trick your eye to thinking it's a solid image.
Also, I've had excellent results doing my 1440 layers first, and then a 720 layer on top. The color ink seems to blend much better when laying over the 720 layer than the 1440, but you need the 1440's to get the underbase bright enough.
Re: Pretreatment on Black Shirts - Black Showing Through
Depending on the printer you are using the resolution for the white layer can vary.
Considering your pre-treatment is correct the white layer dots should actually pool together to form a continuous film which will cover over all the fibers, if your white layer does not actually pool then you need to increase your resolution or check your nozzles for clogs.
Re: Pretreatment on Black Shirts - Black Showing Through
i am basically having the same problems. black shining through - not as much as seen on the provided photos, but still. i would really like to improve that - so any help is apprechiated.
i am using the same method for pretreatment. fast ink 2- CMYK Cartoon-D 720 2 pass HS (which really doesnt do 2 passes but prints in 1 which i find strange - unless you enter 2 under preferences) and CMYK CARTOON 1440 HS for underbase (also 1 pass).
underbase wizard i usually print 100;90;0;1 & no highlight. do you folks get better results with different settings?
Re: Pretreatment on Black Shirts - Black Showing Through
Finally did a few black shirts on my T-Jet 2 last night. I had this problem too. I resolved it by more pretreatment and 2 white passes at 1440.
The first time I misted the shirt with water and power sprayed it with the power wagner with 3 second strokes like the video says, pressed for 7 seconds with silcone paper them 5 without. it came out bad. Worse than above.
I drenched another shirt with pretreatment and spread it with a dishwashing sponge. It was so thick it left white marks on the shirt when dried. Pressed it for 7 seconds with non-silicon paper on top, took off the paper and light pressed it for another 5 (like the video says). I could feel the pretreatment on the shirt after drying, it felt like transfer paper. Printed great, 2 pass 1440 and 720 single pass color.
Try #2, I said screw the crap power wagner that was leaking everywhere and put the pretreatment in a water spray bottle. Misted it on the shirt, no water mist this time, no sponge. Pressed it for 7 seconds with non-silcon paper and light pressed for 5. Felt the shirt, nothing like the drenching method above, so I did the shirt again, mist pretreatment with spray bottle, no sponge, 7 second press with non-silicon paper, 5 light pressure with out paper. This time it felt like the drenched shirt. Printed 1440 two pass white, 720 color, PERFECT!
I still have to more expirementing to do, but this what I found so far.
Re: Pretreatment on Black Shirts - Black Showing Through
Just a head up, the double pretreatment with pressing in between works. 2 of my kid's PURPLE PURPLE and RED RED (really dark) used shirts make it through the wash, I see no fading. A light pink and another dark red to go though the wash.
Wonder pets and Topi and Binoo on long sleave shirts, the kids freaked when they saw them, 2.5 year old and 3.5 year old! Made a custom BOYS LIKE GIRLS sweat shirt for the baby sitter, photoshopped the back with a album logo overlaid with a cut head shot of the 4 members, the front I striped BOYLIKEGIRLS with red in the LIKE at 2.5" X 17" across the chest. The BOY and GIRLS was maxed out black... warning, it bleeds! This was on a ash grey shirt. Bright whites didn't print, it gives it charactor. I know I should have dropped the RGB values down to 250.
I have to test wash some black shirts next, I figure it will work.
The biggest problem today was I didn't realize I was putting the shirt board in backwards for the rip driver. Seems epson driver you have to but the board to the top left corner, the rip driver, you have to flip it around. Man I'm pissed I spent hours on that 17" strip! Test runs though, never wrecked a good shirt.
Re: Pretreatment on Black Shirts - Black Showing Through
we just figured that by putting more pretreatment on there are almost no black shirt fibers shining through anymore and the white particles seem to connect to each other way better.
@sick: are you saying you pretreated, then pressed, then pretreat again then press again? never tried that but let me know how this turns out. can you post pictures of your prints?
Re: Pretreatment on Black Shirts - Black Showing Through
We just got our first bottle of the new Bright White ink that is out and it seems to cover much better than the last version. We noticed a difference right away with no other changes....even on a scrap shirt that had been pretreated a few weeks before. It is also much brighter than the past version.
Just and FYI...
__________________ Big Daddy Screenprinting -Affordable contract Heat Press Services & Low Volume Screen Printing up to 4 spot colors with no setup or screen fees
Re: Pretreatment on Black Shirts - Black Showing Through
Quote:
Originally Posted by davitos
@sick: are you saying you pretreated, then pressed, then pretreat again then press again? never tried that but let me know how this turns out. can you post pictures of your prints?
yes, that's what I did, light misting once, press for 7 to 10 seconds with non silicon sheet, light misting again, press for 7 to 10 seconds with non silicon sheet.
I'll post some pics when I get some time. So freaking busy.
Re: Pretreatment on Black Shirts - Black Showing Through
We have an HM1 and have had issues with dark shirts and the fibers showing thru. The techs told us we probably were putting too much pressure on the shirt when we pressed it to set the ink. Or that we were stretching the fibers open when we mounted the shirt on the platen. We haven't gone to the extremes of double coating since we have had pretty good luck the way we are doing them now. We've also had issues with colors not looking the same from a white shirt to the darks. We've had an issue with Reds recently. The ones on white shirts looked okay but on a dark shirt it looked weak and not very Red. We have found that experimenting with different color values has helped some but still not the Red we'd like to see. We need it to "pop". I guess until (and if) they ever develop florescent inks we will have to live with processes drab look for some colors.
Re: Pretreatment on Black Shirts - Black Showing Through
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wags
We've also had issues with colors not looking the same from a white shirt to the darks. We've had an issue with Reds recently. The ones on white shirts looked okay but on a dark shirt it looked weak and not very Red. We have found that experimenting with different color values has helped some but still not the Red we'd like to see. We need it to "pop". I guess until (and if) they ever develop florescent inks we will have to live with processes drab look for some colors.
Wags we have this problem too on the Kiosk. I was very disappointed in the DTG process until I had a batch of shirts screen printed. We had 1 color design - Red on white and black shirts. Even for screen printing there is a difference when looking at white vs. black shirts. The white by far is more vibrant. I did a little research on the web for color theory and found this definition:
Induced brightness
[induce or reduce brightness: a dark background makes and object look brighter and a bright background makes an object look darker. This is usually called "simultaneous brightness contrast."]
After seeing that, it was obvious to me what was going on. Now, I'm not saying that is the -only- thing going on, but I think for us, that was the main problem. What would be nice is if the inks stayed just as vibrant as they do when they are wet.
Re: Pretreatment on Black Shirts - Black Showing Through
Yes TT I understand how colors can change on different color materials. We came from a print on paper background so even when printing on paper there are many variables in hues of white paper. When we print on a white shirt of course the color looks different that printing on top of white ink. I wish there was more information produced by the people selling the technology. I mean they have people that can test things day in and day out to see what works best with their machine and different color materials. To me a salesman armed with good info on how to print better, cheaper, would sell many more machines and have much happier customers than just sell it and forget it.
We also have had an issue with the so called ink chips that need to be replaced on a regular basis. These are supposed to fool the printer into thinking there are ink cartridges in place. When we purchased this machine no one told us these would need to be replaced frequently. We just had our machine serviced three weeks ago at which time the tech replaced the chips with new ones. We have not printed that many shirts since then, maybe 100 or so. Then we had to do a complete cleaning today because we had to change over to the new white ink which is incompatible with the old white ink. We did the cleaning, ink charged, did some cleanings and when we thought we had it back ready to run we get the message that the ink cartridges were empty. The explanation we got was since we cleaned the machine out it must have used up the chip count and we should replace them. Now I was not happy since we did not have any more replacement chips on hand. They are overnighting new ones to me at no cost but I would have thought doing only 100 or so shirts and then regular maintenance would not cause the chips to expire so quickly. To me this is not acceptable. They say it is an Epson issue and they have no control but if they want to sell these machines they should first tell you the drawbacks and at least compensate the customer for the inconvenience of replacing these chips so often. Maybe this is a rare incident and will not happen again. All I know is we killed over 4 hours in cleaning and now are down until the new chips arrive. I could go on but perhaps I will save these other issues for another thread.
Pretreatment on Black Shirts - Black Showing Through 
Re: Pretreatment on Black Shirts - Black Showing Through 
