Heat press help! (screened transfers)

[hazeremover]

IMO, powdering "wet" or un-gelled plastisol produces the best results. A swift pull through the powder and a light blow with compressed air does the trick.

The most common mistake I see is over powdering. It's wasteful and sloppy. The properly powdered transfer should not resemble a sugar donut. When an excessively powdered transfer is heat pressed, a noticeable halo will appear around the perimeter of the image. Not so obvious on light colored garments but glaring on darks. An excessive halo or spread of adhesive also tends to lift after a few washings which can lead to peeling, even when correctly pressed, especially on polyester blends and nylon substrates. A hairline halo is normal and should be fine. No halo is even better.

Less is more!

[Sbrem]

Hit me up if you need a hand on this. We've done these the way you are for years.  Union has an excellent page on their site regarding transfers generally speaking.

Get some of the adhesive frog mentioned and try stirring it into the ink.

Hey Zoo, we use the box and shake method, but I'm curious about mixing it into the ink. What percent of adhesive to ink are you using, roughly? And Eric, it sounds like you're overcuring the transfers before application. I use as little heat as possible, I just want them to gel. As Frog  pointed out, if over cured, they won't re-melt. I use 320° for about 12 seconds, medium pressure (fairly subjective there) and peel hot. Try some different papers. Ace Transfer supply has many different papers, I got a sample pack and ended up with a paper I liked much better, smoother, stiffer, more stable for multi-color.

Steve

[ZooCity]

Ok, for poly foam front trucker caps or similar material that needs the tenacity of later of hot melted glue to adhere the ink we powder the sheets wet, flicking the back with two fingers gelling in the dryer. These do look something like sugared donuts and do not result in a halo though you must ensure you get the excess powder off.

Private labels-  T-120 (could be wrong on the number) paper for multi color, just about anything else for single color. For labels, we need a little extra tenacity but not the amount described above.  Mix some powder into the ink.  You don't need a ton and nowhere near so much that it gets pasty.  In fact, the adhesive isn't totally necessary for Ts, we've just found it to be a little extra insurance and lets you apply that batch to different fabrics.  Just use less if printing it is an issue. We do print through the lowest mesh count our greatest open area that can hold the detail, good point on mesh clogging.

350-360° for 10-12 sec, 'medium' pressure for labels.  Time and temp needs to be reduced sometimes on long runs that heat up the platen. 400 @5 sec sounds nice but I imagine you get more pronounced marks on the shirt from the press?