[missal]

Good morning

I've been cutting regular sign vinyl for a long time and have recently decided to have a go at garment printing. I'm just looking for a bit of guidance on a few things:

Ive purchased some tshirt vinyl, plajn cut and heat stuff. My plotter is pulling it all ove the place, ive turned the pressure rigbt down, reduced the blade depth and this seems to help, do I just keep doj g this until its right or am I missibg something?

When its cut my heat press is set to 160 and am pressing for 15 seconds some areas of the vinyl are not adhering particularly on items where there's bulk, eg when putting a design on the bum of a pair of trousers and the waist band is under the heat press, is this a contact issue?

lastly. ..printable vinyl. I purchased some stahls for my versacamm. Its printing and cutting perfectly. Problem starts on weeding/ applying app tape, the liner doesn't want to let it go and thus the application tape pulls and stretches the vinyl out of shape.

Any help and advice very much appreciated.

Missal

 

[20vK]

Use a Teflon pillow to raise your print/application surface above any stitched areas. Just insert the correct size and it will raise your adhesion area above that of the rest of the garment. You can buy a selection pack of pillows

 

[joeshaul]

Generally t-shirt vinyl is a lot thicker than regular sign vinyl, so you might want to slow it down a bit, adjust your depth and your pressure. It should be fairly easy to tell if you're not cutting through deep enough or not, your design won't weed and you won't have a scratch in your tape after you pull the vinyl up. Some vinyls are a lot thicker than others, I primarily use Stahls products and their fashion film cuts at about the same settings as laminated vinyl for me, but their glitter vinyl or thermo lines generally require me to up the pressure a lot more. You may also need to adjust your blade offset as well if you're finding your angles are coming out too round. Sometimes folks that are used to sign vinyl might also cut through the wrong side of the vinyl... On plain cut heat transfer vinyl, the clear side is NOT the cutting side, instead that is the tape that is holding your design together (and thus you don't need to mask). Doubt that's your problem, but it has occurred many times before! Heat transfer vinyl might also have an extra carrier liner that is used to prevent the product from melding together while shipping, with Stahls lines it's usually a pink liner and you'll need to peel that back and trim it before you cut your design, otherwise you double your weeding efforts, or end up with vinyl not sticking.

Your vinyl should come with a recommended setting (time temp, pressure, the 3 musts in heat pressing). Generally I fudge it up a little bit, add about 5 more degrees, and a couple more seconds just to cover my ***, the only real tricky beast you need to watch out for is Polyester as it can have a tendency to start sublimating if you bake it a little bit too hot/long. As 20vK stated, teflon pillows will help raise areas for you. I sometimes use blank mousepads that I cut up to fit whatever I need as well. You may also want to up your pressure a bit more if you lack either, but beware of the issues that can occur when pressing, IE: plastic buttons if directly contacting the heat press will melt and the like.

As for the printable stuff, make sure the tape's on there good, generally I squeegee the crap out of it. Something that might help as well is to flip it upside down and pull the backer lining off with it upside down. This way you are not pulling the tape up, I found that helps quite a bit. It's not the funnest stuff in the world to play with, the only time I mess with it anymore is when it's something that specifically requires it (Solutions Opaque is one of the very few items that can be applied to leather for example).

 

[idonaldson]

Unless I missed it, You did not mention, machine, media, or ,mask types. First do a test cut on the media to get the proper cut press. Next pick a media that will work on your substrate, this instance type of material - not all media works on all types of apparel. Then you will need to pick a mask that works with your media. There are some that will pick up anything, while others work for specific ones. Take care of those three things and you will eliminate your issues.

 

[BrianHahn]

Some good posts above. The only thing I would add is that for heat transfer vinyl, you may find that if you are using a 60 degree blade, a 45 degree or 30 degree may work better. We use Thermoflex Plus. It too has a plastic carrier. When cutting the vinyl, if you blade is too sharp, the tip can stick in the carrier so instead of the vinyl sliding under the blade, the blade sticks in the carrier. So you can use a sharp blade with very light cutting force or a more gradual blade angle with more cutting force to avoid the bunching effect.