Discuss the various aspects of heat pressed vinyl transfers. Popular and new types of vinyl media, suppliers, vinyl cutters /plotters, press times, quality, how to instructions and more can be found in this heat press sub forum.
I got a couple of teflon pillows in yet another attempt to reduce the press lines I'm getting in my textured 100% poly shirts. These do not iron or wash out once they're in so it's important for me to not create them in the first place.
I did my first tests last night with Spectra EZ Weed (302/10-15s) and I had a hard time getting the vinyl to stick. I'm positive it's due to not enough pressure -- I was keeping it to a minimum on purpose. The question is, how much pressure should I be using? A better question might be 'how much should I be squishing the pillow?'
It seems that if I crank it down a lot I will end up with lines at the edges of the foam. Are these things meant to be compressed a lot?
I had a similar issue with Spectra Cut, and when I talked with Josh, he indicated to watch the pressure on the plotter as well. If you cut into the mylar backing the material may not stick well.
Give Josh or someone else at Imprintables a call and they can porbably help you out.
I am having a similar problem with spectra cut II on the back of pique polo shirts. I talked with Lee at imprintables and he told me to ensure the cut was not scoring the mylar and to keep the pressure as light as possible when pressing as the glue will flow into the edges and adhere the vinyl back onto the mylar. I am going to do a few test cuts this afternoon and try to press it again using a bunch of different varibles. I will let you know how it goes.
The vinyl (unlike all the other colors of ez weed I have) won't peel warm. The pillows can be smushed pretty good but I'm setting the pressure so that the foam just starts to compress. I am using a J-Roller to force the vinyl onto the shirt after I take it out of the press. It's perfect for that! You can pick one up at any home center. They're used to lay down laminate.
Nah, I just happened to pick the hardest possible material to heat press onto and I'm having to get creative! Cotton and heck, even most other polys won't give you nearly as much trouble.
I had a problem with the spectra cutII not seperating from the mylar on pique polo shirts. After calling Imprintables and talking to both Josh and Lee (thanks for help - these guys are awesome) I tried a few things and have gained some interesting results:
The main problem was that my presure was too high and I was slightly scoring the mylar carrier. This allowed the adhesive to flow when heated into the scored area and in effect glue the design to the mylar. I was able to seperate the design but damaged it too much in the process. Well now I had a stack of designs already cut for a customer order that might be wasted.
I went and tested the CutII material using different pressures ranging from 70g up to 150g in 10g increments. Since my blade is slightly dull, I was able to effective start weeding at the 100g setting and up. The results after heat pressing ranged from good removal of mylar at 110g up to 130g. Ultimate result on this one is I learned it is best to test my blade before cutting a large order and determining the best cutting pressure at that time for the current sharpness and least amount of scoring.
Solution one: recut all of the designs and throw away alot of vinyl already cut wasting my $$$
Solution two: I noticed during my testing that if the design was slightly seperated from the mylar on an edge prior to pressing, that it would seperate regardless if the mylar was scored or not. I took my weeding pick and tried to seperate the edges on some of the 150g cut material with ok sucess and good results after pressing. The problem was it damaged some of the edges when attempting to seperate prior to pressing. Second idea with this one was to use a razor blade to scrape an edge up carefully so not to damage the edge of the design. VIOLA! I was able to sucessfully apply the designs cut at 150g with edges slightly lifted from the mylar prior to pressing with 0 problems removing the mylar afterwards!!! Sucess and a good save on not wasting material.
I know this was long but maybe someone else will get a job saved from this knowledge.
Thanks again to the guys at imprintables for thier help and support!
Pressure using teflon pillow? 
