You need to cure a T-shirt twice to print with white ink: Pretreatment and printed ink.
|
 Pretreatment
To cure our Pretreatment, we need a heat press for enough heat (356F / 180C) and pressure, and also the way to release steam out within 35 seconds.
You may feel 180C / 356F is too high for your garment, but high temperature is necessary to melt the "glue" inside for washability. So when you print on thinner garment or "easy-to-burn" tote bags, make the curing time shorter, much better than lower the temperature, e.g. e.g. 27-30 seconds with 180C / 356F.
|
The process is shown as follows:
 First you apply Pretreatment with
e.g. a roller or a spray, or some pretreating machine, the T-shirt
is wet enough with Pretreatment as shown in the image below: |
|
 Lay the pretreated T-shirt on the heat press. If you feel that your heat press does not release hot steam smoothly, then put some heat-resistible bubble mat (ulethane) to let the hot steam out while curing. This process is really important.
 Lower the lever and press. Heat and pressure will boil water inside Pretreatment and the steam
moves up "fixer" to the surface of the T-shirt. Also "glue" inside melts
and make thin film on the surface. That's why we need a heat press to
cure Pretreatment to print white.
 Be sure to use Teflon® sheet to flat the surface.
|
|
 This is the successful image of pretreated T-shirt surface.
|
|
 Do not use conveyor oven to cure Pretreatment, or film and fixer could spread inside and be cured as they are, so that the white ink may sink into the inside and the printed garment does not look white. Also the surface feels rough and easy to peel off.
|
Printed Ink
You can use either a heat press or "tunnel" conveyor oven. We recommend using "tunnel" conveyor oven to curing ink because we print much more white ink plus color ink is on the surface
of the T-shirt not inside of the fiber, printed ink may move
easier with the heat press. Heat press can flatten the surface and give it a glitter
and sticky like rubber looking print.
The settings of conveyor oven may be different, depending on the
size, conveyor speed control, etc. But the temperature should be
320F/ 160C to melt "glue" inside the ink.
The following values are just for your information: please try and confirm the print.
|
 |
Heat Press : 35 seconds with 180C/356F
|
| |
Lay the parchment (Teflon® sheet to release safe) to prevent ink from touching on the top when you cure the print with white ink, the ink layer is thick (thick layer of ink). The cured surface will be softener and more natural when you cure the printed T-shirt with non-contact way, to stop the iron on the top of the T-shirt and count 10 sec, then put the Parchment and cure regularly. This "wait" can avoid the explore of ink.
|
|
| |
Confirm the actual temperature with the "touch" termometer, sometimes uneven and lower temperature causes poor washability.
|
| |
Tunnel conveyor oven : 3-4 minutes (depends on machine).
|
 |
| | e.g. 3 minutes 30 seconds for Adult L T-shirt, 3 minutes for small towels.
|
| |
closed-type oven (like the one in the kitchen): 5 minutes
|
 
| |
|
Depending on the material curing conditions may vary, be sure to test new materials before you use. Pretreatment on white and light-colored garment may turn yellowish (burnt) easier than the normal garment. |
|
Some white/light-colored garment may turn yellow when it is left unwashed under the sunlight. Keep the pretreated garment away from the sunlight. Keep in mind that both human sweat and our pretreatment have some "salt" inside. Better to wash soon. |
