Printing on garments has really come a long way and nowhere is that more apparent than in the winning prints for the FESPA Awards 2014. Once printers in the States ruled the world, but no longer. The winning prints at FESPA are incredible and they come from shops in Russia and Poland. From super fine…
A few notes from FESPA Digital in Munich, Germany: Progressive companies in the USA are now part of a global system, they are here in Munich seeing what is going on. Environmentalism is not dead, the rest of the world is passing the USA by. Not so many heads in the sand here (or is…
Sometimes printing on polyester is a wonderful thing. We used a Rutland Barrier Base and Super Polywhite on this red 100% polyester hockey jersey. Red poly turning white ink to pink is the worst, so we took care on this one. Besides using the right inks we were careful not to overflash and we turned…
Any experienced printer will have at some time used the wrong ink, or printed on a fabric that perhaps caught one by surprise. It is a sickening feeling to see your beautiful bright white print slowly turning pink with nothing to be done about it. Dye migration is a terrible thing. Today’s Misprint Monday print…
Parte 1 Ok , usted tiene una camisa que es en parte o totalmente de poliéster , ¿qué hace? Veo demasiadas impresoras “P&P”, lo que yo llamo ” print and pray” (imprime y reza) y no importa de si se es religioso o no, yo rezaría durante el proceso de impresión. Necesitas un poco de ciencia y aquí está . Puede…
Here are some tests on a range of maroon colored polyester shirts. This is the test explained earlier, a drop of plasticizer and then a white fabric heated to 320 degrees F for 30 seconds. The nine shirts are a spectrum of results. Even shirts that don’t have much of a dye migration problem do…
As outlined in the earlier posts, you can heat up the polyester garment in question with a heat press and a drop of plasticizer will cause some dye to transfer to a piece of white jersey. Pretty much all fabric will transfer some of the dye, but it is a matter of degree. The more testing…
Printing on Poly, real world shirt issue: 1. On left: plasticizer test, 320 degrees for 30 seconds heat transferred to white square. That’s quite a bit of dye on the white. If we had done that test before printing a sample we would have saved ourselves some grief later. 2. On the bottom is our…
Ok, you have a shirt and it has some or all polyester content, what do you do? Too many printers I see P & P it. “P & P” is what I call “print and pray” and no matter what religion you do or don’t follow, I would keep prayer out of your printing operation.…
Sometimes you can do a great job and everything is perfect and it all may not be a mis-print but it may result in a “mis-fire.” Twice we set up to reproduce Richard Avedon photos of Marilyn Monroe on a black shirt. Both times we did some of our best work we have ever done…
