adhesive powder fine, medium or coarse.....?

[Bearded Lady]

I've been screen printing heat transfers to apply to foam front trucker hats for more than 15 years.  I've always used ICC fine adhesive powder and never thought about using anything else.  I just ordered some from GSG and the dude was surprised that I didn't want the medium or coarse grain.  I realized I have no idea what the difference is in application?  Can anyone here tell me?

I rarely offer this service to customers, it's mostly for items that I sell at retail.  I can hold quite a bit of tiny detail, but occasionally have trouble with white.  Anyone else have issues with white?  I use plastisol, hot peel paper and crappy old hix hat press.  I cure transfer sheets to 320-ish and transfer at 325 for 15 seconds.

Thanks in advance and cheers!

[blue moon]

nothing but fine for us. We tried the other stuff and it was no go. Leaving holes in the transfers. . .

pierre

[Frog]

Seems a little high on the cure.
And, no, I have only used Union adhesive, and it didn't offer a choice of grades (that I ever noticed) It's probably fine.

[3Deep]

Fine here as well, I've had some that was a little rough and it balled up, when ever I print white ink transfers I try and get a thick gasket with my screen on the print side and I use a 80 mesh screen for the most part.

[KevWilso]

The fine powder is what many ink manufactures use when making plastisol transfer inks and shipping them out as RFU.  The fine is very light which can cause it to float around in the air when mixing; so it can be messy which is one reason people order the medium or coarse powders.  I have noticed though with many of our customers who do a lot of plastisol transfers; they seem to be migrating to the fine grade powder, and are having more consistent and better results.

[Bearded Lady]

Thanks, Kevin.  I should have just called you to ask.  and I would've bought the powder from you but I needed a nazdar product and figured i'd just order from one place.

[KevWilso]

LOL.  It's all good. 

[mimosatexas]

I've tried a bunch of powders and currently I'm using the stuff from one stroke. I would describe it as medium, not fine. All of the fine powders I have tested are a bitch to work with. They tend to come with lots of clumps in the bucket due to moisture or compression I guess, they coat everything in the shop while powering paper, they stick to the paper due to static and humidity and then transfer to the garment when pressing. You can definitely get too coarse, but the one stroke powder is a good size. We do a crap ton of transfers with super fine detail (halftones and tiny text) and it works very well.

I actually prefer the coarser powder kevin sells, but it does have issues with some finer stuff. It works well for basic spot color stuff though and anything with a clear or white base trapping everything.

[mimosatexas]

Also, run them through at closer to 230 to 250, press at 330 for around 8 seconds. Peel as soon as you open the press, like no delay at all. Should fix a lot of your transfer issues.

[Bearded Lady]

thanks everybody.  I'm making some transfers today and I'll try the lower cure temp.

[Frog]

thanks everybody.  I'm making some transfers today and I'll try the lower cure temp.

yep, the thing about plastisol transfers is that they don't need (or want) to be fully cured.
In fact, I didn't even think that the only-gelled hot peel or hot split transfers needed the adhesive.
I use it on cold peel.

btw, I'd love a plastisol transfer expert to spell it all out for us if they can.

[mimosatexas]

I have tried a bunch of times with different inks and print/pressing variables to NOT use the powder and it has never worked.  They always fail prematurely, even with inks specifically advertised to be able to work without it.

[Frog]

I have tried a bunch of times with different inks and print/pressing variables to NOT use the powder and it has never worked.  They always fail prematurely, even with inks specifically advertised to be able to work without it.

As I said, I'd love a plastisol transfer expert to spell it all out for us.
Cold peel, hot peel, hot split, adhesive dusted on afterwards or mixed in the ink. The whole kit and caboodle!

[Bearded Lady]

My temp gun is probably off as it's 15 years old and something is rattling around in it, but I did testing yesterday with various cure temps and did not have good success without the ink hitting 315-320 deg. I do currently use one of those tiny table top vastex dryers so they're not spending much time in there but even back when I ran an electric dryer with a 6ft chamber I would typically cure transfers to just about 320deg.

I definitely couldn't get the transfers to stick to the hats without using adhesive powder.

They worked best when the temp gauge on my heat press was set to 325deg.  but that could be off too as it's old.  The best result came from a quick preheat of the hat for a few seconds, then place the transfer on the hat and press for 20sec. I fanned the transfer with my hand for a sec and peel off. I did 300 hats with only a couple mistakes. The art had some pretty fine positive and negative detail, 2-4pts.  I printed with a 156 mesh.  black plastisol straight out of the bucket.  fine adhesive powder.  I used super low quality foam front hats from Cobra Cap with a light gray front.  They did take me 5-6 hours which I realize isn't ideal for high volume production work.

I'm certainly not an expert but figured I'd post my results as I saw another thread about transferring onto trucker hats.

Thanks again for all the input.

[Frog]

My temp gun is probably off as it's 15 years old and something is rattling around in it, but I did testing yesterday with various cure temps and did not have good success without the ink hitting 315-320 deg. I do currently use one of those tiny table top vastex dryers so they're not spending much time in there but even back when I ran an electric dryer with a 6ft chamber I would typically cure transfers to just about 320deg.

I definitely couldn't get the transfers to stick to the hats without using adhesive powder.

They worked best when the temp gauge on my heat press was set to 325deg.  but that could be off too as it's old.  The best result came from a quick preheat of the hat for a few seconds, then place the transfer on the hat and press for 20sec. I fanned the transfer with my hand for a sec and peel off. I did 300 hats with only a couple mistakes. The art had some pretty fine positive and negative detail, 2-4pts.  I printed with a 156 mesh.  black plastisol straight out of the bucket.  fine adhesive powder.  I used super low quality foam front hats from Cobra Cap with a light gray front.  They did take me 5-6 hours which I realize isn't ideal for high volume production work.

I'm certainly not an expert but figured I'd post my results as I saw another thread about transferring onto trucker hats.

Thanks again for all the input.

If the gun is reading 315-325, chances are the layer itself is closer to the 210-250 gel the various inks recommend for transfers. My gun spikes at around 390 just before exit for a full 320 cure