Foiled by Fleece?

[ZooCity]

For you all running foil on fashion fleece- how's that working out?

We're good on Ts, good on most fleece we tested but struggling hard on AA flex fleece, F497, F495, etc.

Virus adhesive P/F/P.  Tapped on heat press with teflon before foiling to get the adhesive surface extra smooth.  Amagic gold. 

There is absolutely enough adhesive down to make this work and it is working, except we got voids everywhere.  Focusing on getting the adhesive print perfect on press on this fabric but grasping at how to do this.   The printed adhesive film is very topographic as Joe Clarke would say.  Tapping with heat prior to foiling doesn't seem to be fixing it.   Combos of of smoothing/not smoothing/etc. not helping much either.

Thanks in advance!

[ebscreen]

What about a smoothing screen on press after flash?

That fleece is pretty open. We haven't foiled too much fleece but the times we have
we've used hd clear plastisol, which might do a better job at filling the gaps, although its actual
foil gluing properties don't touch the Virus product.

[ZooCity]

What about a smoothing screen on press after flash?

That fleece is pretty open. We haven't foiled too much fleece but the times we have
we've used hd clear plastisol, which might do a better job at filling the gaps, although its actual
foil gluing properties don't touch the Virus product.

Yeah, no improvement and actually will pickup on the teflon.

Was afraid I might hear that.  We have a bucket of HD Sharp Clear here which Wilflex says is ok to use if heat pressing.  Will break it out first tomorrow and see what's what. 

Crazy thought- could you UB the Virus adhesive with HSA? 

The Virus has been gripping so well that it's made me rethink everything I thought I knew about foil.  Very durable prints after 20 wash cycles. 

[Colin]

Pressure settings?

Have you increased the pressure at all during testing?

[ZooCity]

Pressure settings?

Have you increased the pressure at all during testing?

Yes, some.  Seems like we're dumping ink/adhesive into this fabric and struggling to clear screen and keep it all on the fabric.  I'm convinced that if we can bridge it smoothly we're there.  Just not sure if that's doable with the wb adhesive.

[Colin]

Is there a thickener available so you can print through lower mesh counts?

[ZooCity]

Lower than 135 sounds nuts but I believe this would print through a 90.   To what advantage?

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[Colin]

You are on a 135?

Well, damn.....

The only thought with the ink thickener is that it will (potentially) bridge the mesh better, just like a good white will bridge better than a thinner white...

Thinking out loud

[DannyGruninger]

Inline might make our process different and I only know what works for us here really but for fleece we run a base. If we are printing wb adhesive we run an opaque stretch base pigmented close to foil color under the glue. For plastisol which for fleece/inline I prefer we use two layers of pigmented glue using a flash/iron/smoothing screen before the 2nd glue screen. We run the plastisol glue tacky into the inline machine. 150/48 mesh on all the screens we use for foil nothing lower as the really low open mesh for us doesn't create as smooth of a surface for the foil to transfer to. But for a lot of garments we have tested the virus glue has too much bite to it for the foil to release from the carrier paper. My testing has shown it starts to bond the foil to the carrier paper and the glue making it impossible to release correctly. One of my guys has a crew neck fleece we foiled several months back with plastisol inline method that he wears/washes a few times a week that still looks damn good. I ask to look at it every couple weeks and am blown away with how well it does - something about wet glue bonding with foil then curing in the dryer makes it wash super good. I think your issue is the superior bonding of the glue combined with a potential problematic roll/batch of foil but the foil would probably be great with a ppfp of plastisol then a quick semi cure before pressing.

[Prōdigium]

Not sure if this will help, but thought I would toss the idea out there.

Many, many years ago I was given a job for 1500 polar fleece scarves...the REALLY fuzzy ones for a gold foiled logo...told the salesman to go shoot himself, but the customer insisted. Turns out that after some trial & error I was able to print the logo directly on the FOIL, dusted the wet ink with transfer powder adhesive to keep the ink from smearing and then applied it all wet on the fleece. Heavy pressure, cold peel.......Looked kickass!! and stuck like it was welded on.

You could at least give it a try.

[ZooCity]

I love this forum.  Thank you all for the conversation on this.  Will report back on any progress.  Going to try plastisol and also higher mesh counts today.

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[heray11]

Have you tired runniing the garment thru your dryer first, then do your process?? JJust throowing that out there.
 Has anyone ever dampened the garmet and then dryed it before the process is done?

[ZooCity]

After trying a few more things on press, plastisol transfers ended up being the solution.  We printed HD Sharp Clear with adhesive (like for trucker caps, etc.) onto trans paper, very light cure, applied to the fleece, cold peel, foil, cold peel. 

I'd call it 95%, still needs some work to get it where I want, but the prints are adhered very strongly, held fine detail as well as large open areas of image, had lots of shine and the process went smoothly.  Slow work on the heat press due to the long cool downs but worth it.   There is still what I would call micro pitting of a few areas in the image but I'm convinced a more adhesive plastisol combined with a heat press upgrade will resolve that easily.  Going to reach out to Wilflex for more specific product for this.

I think Danny may have been onto something with our foil potentially being a bad batch.  It had so many aberrations toward the core of the roll that we had to toss lots of it out and while it released well something seemed a little off with it. 

Cell phone pic here.

We did try HSA UB with Virus adhesive on top and it works but not as well as the transfers do for fleece.  I think we would be looking at 3 screens min, maybe 4 to run HSA w. Virus adhesive on fleece successfully which makes it cost prohibitive for most work.   But it certainly can be done and may shine on Ts. 

[DannyGruninger]

Chris, I'll let you and the rest of the gang in on what product you need to use. Order you up some Wilflex "Super Bond" - its made for hot split transfers and all your issues with foil will probably go away if you start using that. I really dont know anyone else that is using that product as anytime I need it the ink has to come from wilflex and they usually need to make it. I can print it inline on our press single stroke through a 150/48 run it into our foil machine and foil it hot or do it on the heat press and peel when its hot no issues. It saves a ton of time, works way better then anything else.

[ZooCity]

Chris, I'll let you and the rest of the gang in on what product you need to use. Order you up some Wilflex "Super Bond" - its made for hot split transfers and all your issues with foil will probably go away if you start using that. I really dont know anyone else that is using that product as anytime I need it the ink has to come from wilflex and they usually need to make it. I can print it inline on our press single stroke through a 150/48 run it into our foil machine and foil it hot or do it on the heat press and peel when its hot no issues. It saves a ton of time, works way better then anything else.

Danny, thank you.  Looks like nazdar carries that.