We are doing, well, arguably too much printing for our current set-up/staff. We need another heat press, but are currently dealing with what we've got. Often we have A LOT of printed shirts on drying racks waiting to be cured, while our current heatpresses are occupied with pretreating and juggling our 541 prints. My question is how long is too long between printing and curing? Minutes, hours, days? I ask "days" because sometimes it would be convenient to leave a rack that's printed for pressing the next day- but I'm betting that's not such a good idea. Thanks in advance!
The time between printing and curing
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Hi
I assume you are printing plastisol since waterbased inks would air-cure as well over some time. I haven't ever done this myself, but since plastisol sits on top of the fabric and sometimes dries out a bit, it might not adhere well to the shirt if it isn't cured soon. This is probably unlikely and just like it is ok to leave plastisol ink on the screen overnight, it will probably be ok for the shirts. Why don't you try it out on one and see what happens?
Regards
Werner
I assume you are printing plastisol since waterbased inks would air-cure as well over some time. I haven't ever done this myself, but since plastisol sits on top of the fabric and sometimes dries out a bit, it might not adhere well to the shirt if it isn't cured soon. This is probably unlikely and just like it is ok to leave plastisol ink on the screen overnight, it will probably be ok for the shirts. Why don't you try it out on one and see what happens?
Regards
Werner
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this is not true...you need to cure waterbased inks just as you need to cure plastisol inks...waterbased inks will air dry but not air cure. waterbased inks need to reach 320 - 340 degrees to be set into the fabric.
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This is posted in the NeoFlex section so no plastisol as this is DTG. Textile inks in DTG are water based and yes need to be cured. My contract DTG printer never leaves till all DTG prints are cured. They have a press in between 2 machines and try to press as they come out and 1 press keeps up with 2 machines they have 4 DTG printers.
As for the comment about water based and air drying. If screen printing which I believe the replies were for. There are some air dry water based inks.
As for the comment about water based and air drying. If screen printing which I believe the replies were for. There are some air dry water based inks.
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Not to deter from this thread, but, Union makes an ink called Aerotex Water-Based Textile Ink that has a catalyst. You do not need to cure them, they cure at room temperature. For a true cure, you need to wait 24 hours, but if someone had a conveyer, they could easily run them through quickly to dry them, and let them cure the rest of the way on their own.
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I didnt know they made a ink that would air cure...damn , why dont they make a plastisol air cure so I dont need to get a conveyor
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Now that would be amazing....I didnt know they made a ink that would air cure...damn , why dont they make a plastisol air cure so I dont need to get a conveyor
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no, there's no danger in letting the shirt air dry as long as you do end up curing properly with heat.
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Through testing we found that letting prints with a white underbase sit for a prolonged period of time led to poor wash results as well as what seemed to be cracking in the print itself.
We did not test for prints with just CMYK prints but I assume that there would be no issue here.
We did not test for prints with just CMYK prints but I assume that there would be no issue here.
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