Foil

[DannyGruninger]

Thanks Danny!  I did get it and it will ship today.  I will send you tracking shortly.

Thanks again.
Kevin

Just got tracking, holy cow that was fast! Kevin you rock dude! That service was flawless 

Two thumbs up for River City

[KevWilso]

Thanks Danny!  I did get it and it will ship today.  I will send you tracking shortly.

Thanks again.
Kevin

Just got tracking, holy cow that was fast! Kevin you rock dude! That service was flawless 

Two thumbs up for River City

You are very welcome thanks again.  Also Eric Thank you for the nice product referral!

[mimosatexas]

I definitely feel spoiled being a five minute drive from Kevin...

[IntegriTees]

<snip> I also see foil prints in stores and being worn on occasion that look MUCH smoother than I have ever been able to get.  Usually my foils seem to pickup a bit of the texture of the shirt, while I have seen foil that looks pretty much perfectly smooth, almost like vinyl, but with the softer, thinner results you see with foil.  Any ideas on how to get the smoother finish?

PFP'ing Wilflex HD Gel II through a 110 (110-80) mesh gets us the smoothest foiled effects. YMMV. I've done some 135-48 and can't really tell much difference. Crown Gold foils perfect for us using it, but it doesn't have as nice a feel as the waterbased Virus adhesive. With silver, I ALWAYS use the Virus, regardless of the desired hand.

And on a personal note, my new vacuum platen (Mimosatexas Style  ) works great! I want to try to print some HD Gel on transfer paper for foil. Just to see how it works. I might try 83 mesh and powder adhesive, cold peeled, and want to see if PFP'ing is still necessary. THANKS!!

@ Ericheartsu, I didn't realize Kevin @ River City sold the Virus adhesive. I can highly recommend using the retarder too. The adhesive "rolls up" in front of the floods and squeegees like butter.  I use it on my manual too. Good stuff!

Anyway problematic foils get the Virus treatment for us. Otherwise, Wilflex Clear HD Gel II. 

I suspect that the precise dialing in of temps, times, and pressures at the heat press have nearly as much bearing on success as what happens on the print floor. An air operated heat press sure helps with repeat-ability, since it eliminates one more squishy variable.

Why not do everything in the virus? Cost?

[Itsa Little CrOoked]

@ IntegriTees, the water based adhesive is a little more fiddly. Not much....but some, and for some shops the opposite could be true. The Virus adhesive being waterbased, wants to be cleaned up NOW or teensy weensy artifacts of dried-in adhesive can survive washout and reclaim. Again, in someone else's shop, it might not be an issue.

Cost isn't much different. But with the gel adhesive the "mirrored" effect that Mimosa mentioned is possible. If I just want near-perfect release, I do reach for the water-based adhesive,  ESPECIALLY on large solid areas. We did a silver volleyball once that would have been MUCH better with water based adhesive.

We did a job later that included some little specs almost like droplets of water that used gel adhesive PFPFP'd  and they were almost like little mirrors.

Having said all that, we LOVE the Virus Adhesive, so long as we add their 3-5% retarder. I used to use Jantex waterbased adhesive until her formulation wasn't available any longer for some reason. I didn't care for the next iteration, and jumped ship. NOthing worked as well for us, especially when we needed to print it manually...until we found Virus.

[Itsa Little CrOoked]

Oops. Double Post. I can't find how to delete it.

[DannyGruninger]

Here's a quick(really crappy quality) video of us doing some inline foil using the virus adhesive. This adhesive for us is head and shoulders better then anything else, just requires a quick flash before our foil machine. We have it going pretty slow here as we were just dialing it in but one operator will run this at 450 pcs per hour once we are dialed.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdsYjJdibmQ

[ttwo0603]

What brand of foil is everyone using?

We use Amagic/Klaser, but i'm wondering if there is something better?

In my shop here we use A-Magic foil with Matsui waterbase and Matsui Foil adhesive, I print over 100k foil jobs a year, we heat press at 290 degrees and anywhere from 6 to 10 seconds. I have found A-Magic foil to be superior to Crown, crown foil takes more heat and longer times to press for me in the past, I have been using A_Magic now for at least 4 years, all different colors, and Silver and Gold foil always foils better then any color I have came across. The picture enclosed is of a 30k foil job we just finished with zero issues.

[DannyGruninger]

Awesome, are you guys doing inline foil or using heat presses?


Did you see our video how we do inline foil on the roq? Sounds like with that type of foil volume you NEED an inline solution!

[ttwo0603]

Awesome, are you guys doing inline foil or using heat presses?


Did you see our video how we do inline foil on the roq? Sounds like with that type of foil volume you NEED an inline solution!

We are using about 15 heat presses. When you inline foil how fast does the job run? Does inline foil tarnish the bling of the foil?

Sent from my LG-H901 using Tapatalk

[ttwo0603]

Awesome, are you guys doing inline foil or using heat presses?


Did you see our video how we do inline foil on the roq? Sounds like with that type of foil volume you NEED an inline solution!

If that video is any sign of how slow that press goes there is no way I can use that method. We are running about 4500 units a day on a waterbase foil job.

Sent from my LG-H901 using Tapatalk

[DannyGruninger]

Awesome, are you guys doing inline foil or using heat presses?


Did you see our video how we do inline foil on the roq? Sounds like with that type of foil volume you NEED an inline solution!

If that video is any sign of how slow that press goes there is no way I can use that method. We are running about 4500 units a day on a waterbase foil job.

Sent from my LG-H901 using Tapatalk

We are gearing up to expand our in line foil by adding 3 additional machines. When we have 4 machines going our production will be capable of 2400 pcs per hour..... That is not slow by any means.

Currently we have 1 in line setup which 1 operator( yes only one person, can produce approx 500 per hour. In a single shift two weeks ago we produced a 2,500 pcs order..... No heat pressing, 1 person doing the entire job.

[TCT]

Danny is right, if you do a lot of foiling on a consist basis, it is kind of a no brainer. Your ROI is very fast and extremely easy to figure out.

How many employees are running the 15 great presses?

[Colin]

Danny:

If I understand correctly, Ttwo can't tie up his presses producing at your rate.  I am assuming he is running much faster and its cheaper for him to foil afterwards while his presses are freed up to keep spinning.

Although I would look at cost of employees doing foil vs money coming in on the presses spinning.... Must be really slim.

[DannyGruninger]

Danny:

If I understand correctly, Ttwo can't tie up his presses producing at your rate.  I am assuming he is running much faster and its cheaper for him to foil afterwards while his presses are freed up to keep spinning.

Although I would look at cost of employees doing foil vs money coming in on the presses spinning.... Must be really slim.

I have some ROI numbers on inline foiling on roq vs printing on an auto then foiling on a heat press..... I'll post it up once I can find it

There's many ways to skin the cat but we have a repeat foil job that is 6k pcs on every order and for us we would not do it any other way then with our roq foil machine. When we used to get the job prior to going roq inline we would absolutely dread the process, the extra people we had to bring on, etc.... For us inline has allowed us to be profitable with foil where before we struggled. Not to mention and I'm not saying this happens to everyone but we've had instances where prior to going inline we had issues with the adhesive which in turn gave us hundreds to thousands of rejects. There's nothing like getting halfway through a stack of shirts your doing heat press foil on only to realize something went wrong on press or with the ink.

But producing 500 pcs per hour per machine for me is pretty profitable with the upcharge of foil.