Help needed. I'm stumped.

[mjrprint]

So we purchased two red chili quartz flashes in the shop and they have been working great until today. I am printing midnight heather grey shirts and they are discoloring after they are flashed. They are 70% cotton, 30% poly. We have a large color run of the same shirt and grey is the only one this happens to. This leads me to believe the problem is with the poly. I had them set to as little as 2 seconds and you can still see the lines. Do any of you gurus have any ideas?

[IntegrityShirts]

No sure if this helps but I have similar problems with Gildan 18500 hoodie in sport grey.  Or any fleece in sport grey, they scorch VERY quickly.  Is the fabric smooth and stiff when you remove it from the platen?

[mjrprint]

It was at first, but I tweaked the settings and now it is more of a discoloration.

[Fluid]

Sounds like you are melting the poly in the shirt blend. Try lowering your flash time on the ash.
I saw this when we first got our quartz flash units with ash t's.  You could see the discoloration on the shirts and they corresponded with the quarts bulbs from the flash.

[mk162]

can you set the flash up higher or turn the temp down?  I do this on troubled goods with our radiant panel flashes.

[mjrprint]

I have the flash as high as I can put it. Sadly there is no temp adjustment on the chilis. I am at a 2 second flash right now. I guess I can try 1 second but I'm sure the inks wont gel. If it's not one thing it's another right lol.

[Gabe]

try to turn on the flash for 2 sec. when the pallets are down position
and only 1 sec. in the up position with 3 sec. dwell in the up position
good luck
Gabe

[mjrprint]

Thanks Gabe I will try that.

[Flying Colors]

We had the same issue, you can flash when the pallets are down but it will slow production and you still have the threat of them scorching.

The best way is to get flashes that your can turn the intensity down. For those type of garments we run the flashes at about 30%.

Another way, which is also slower, but pretty much eliminates spoilage is to pull out an old radiant panel flash.

Mark

[Donnie]

Heather gray is notorious for this. 

[alan802]

You have to be a little creative when you don't have the ability to change bulb intensity and that includes what gabe was talking about, and play with your dwell times a little bit and height from substrate.  We used to have to do that all the time and we burned a lot of garments playing around with the settings.  But that color is the worst at scorching, that heather is very sensitive.

[ebscreen]

Another vote for intensity control. Don't use it often, but when we need it
boy am I glad it's there.

[Admiral]

Consider underbasing with gray instead of white ink...I had to do that once or twice.


What's worse is when you find garments that the Red Chili won't detect even when you play with the settings on the flash.  I have found 2 of those, dark heather colors.  Got the flash to work correctly after a lot of struggling once.  The other time had someone stand by the flash to activate it every time the machine indexed(luckily not a bit job).

Better flash unit or infrared instead would be the way to go but we don't have that option right now.

[mjrprint]

I have it dialed in finally. Also thanks to a call from Sonny got tipped onto putting a rheostat in to control the flow of voltage. Good thing we have electricians on call.

[Sbrem]

We are suddenly having the same problem with some heather grays from Canvas. A huge run, and I bet we've lost close to 100 pieces today. Made in Pakistan makes me a little suspect. Bin Laden maybe?

Steve

I started a similar thread under "blanks"