Those rubbery silicone inks?

[alan802]

I can't imagine 210-220 degrees being too hot?  But that's why I'm asking, someone who has much more experience with this ink can help steer me in the right direction.

I'm testing the ink right now, and it cured at a setting of 290 and 30 belt speed.  I printed it on a bad bleeder so I'll know shortly if it bleeds at that temp.  I'll keep going down on the temp.

[tonypep]

290 @ 30 should be in the ballpark for most dryers. Thats how we run the Wilflex products (16' ft heat)

[Frog]

248-284 for one to two minutes as spelled out here in their tech sheet
https://sourceone.nazdar.com/Portals/0/TDS/ImageStar-Silicone-InfoGuide_2016-web.pdf

[alan802]

I read the spec sheet before I get too far into testing something and generally they are spot on, but the temp the shop told me they were hitting and the awful bleeding I saw means that something is wrong.  I'd suspect the ink manufacturer knows their product well, but I've seen things fail going straight by the book.  The guy that runs that shop is a heli pilot and knows how to follow the rules, hence me bringing this up here.  If it acts like a plastisol at those higher temps in regards to bleeding I hope it brings a lot more to the table in other areas.  I tried to run a job with it yesterday and pulled the ink out after 15 minutes of test printing and the ink drying up.  When it printed right I loved the print, but it was drying and forming tiny balls that were hanging up in the stencil.  Yes, I was printing like WB, but it was very hot and dry yesterday.  I gave up on it and put in some One Stroke ELT, cured it at 290 and got essentially the same print visually, just doesn't feel as rubbery and stretchy.

[tonypep]

Certain drifit/poly/blend fabrics will actually exhibit color shifting all by themselves without a print when run through at typical plastisol settings. I've seen silver turn pink. BTW the Imagestar products must have a catalyst  3 to 5% as stated on the spec sht

[bimmridder]

I've seen the siler to pinkish orange also, at 280

[Colin]

Alan

We decided to run the ELT-S here instead of Silicone for all the above reasons and more.  We have a sprint 2000 HO.  We run our temps at 270 and a dwell time of one minute.  We have only had bleed issues on severe bleeders.  We used the Digital Black under base and had zero issues after.

Garment drape is awesome, hand is phenomenal.  No catalization.  No ink waste.  No drying issues. 

We have noticed the ink is maybe on the low side for opacity, so we have stared adding some Cabosil (powder thickener) to the ink to help that out.
 Running 150S for our base and 150S or 180S for top colors.  65/90/65 blades, sharp.  Most of our work is on the auto.

I would not go back to Silicone for any reason right now.

[tonypep]

Even though the Imagestar silicone chemistry comes from Dow Corning I don't feel the product is ready for primetime as Colin suggests. Liked the One Stroke products but probably going back to making our own LCA plastisols.

[Rob Coleman]

Even though the Imagestar silicone chemistry comes from Dow Corning I don't feel the product is ready for primetime as Colin suggests. Liked the One Stroke products but probably going back to making our own LCA plastisols.

Hey Tony:  Sorry to hear this.  It actually is prime time!    Launched a few years ago and significant sales -- one our fastest growing products for sure.  Not without it's limitations, but for it's intended purpose, one heckuva a solution.  Will be happy to discuss with you sometime.

Alan - Silicone (at least ours - can't speak for others) - will not bleed (post dye migration).  There are no solvents nor plasticizers to solvate the dyes in the polyester and bleed.  You can see sublimation due to heat being higher than the set point of the low-energy dyes being used today.  This is where temp comes into play.  While we recommend 250-280 for 60 seconds, the fact is silicone is either dry or it is not.  There is no gel and cure stages like a plastisol.  So, skin cure it (maybe 210-220), and let it post cure for 24-48 hours and you are good to go.  Many people do not even use a tunnel dryer - just flashing off last color and box. 

All the above is for POLYESTER dyes - not dye sublimation which is a different animal.  This is where we need to use our Masking Black under everytihng.  This is the ONLY time masking black is needed; when printed on standard non-dye-sub 100% poly, just white underbase and colors.

[tonypep]

To be clear.......not saying it doesn't work it works fine but too many limitations. For instance we have over 1200 PMS plastisol colors on shelf which; just by adding an LCA (additive not catalyst) turn into low cure inks just like that. For a lot less money and zero waste. Silicone simply isn't for everyone but few things are

[Binkspot]

We ran the crap out of the silicone, was extremely happy with the results. Abused it just to see what we could get away with. Ran the digital camo without the black blocker base.
Few things learned along the way.
Hot days cut back on the catyliat to 3-4%. Run smaller batches and have them pre measured ready to mix and dump in the screen when needed. No different to how we ran discharge in the summer.
If they did bleed it would go away within 24 hours. The ink would not hold the migration.
I ran a cooler dryer, just hot enough to stop the ink from transferring to the next garment at the end of the dryer. It is a chemical cure so even without heat it would cure.
Stretch beyond the garment breaking point but still retain the image without cracking or disortation. Helpful when the customer orders small spandex but should have gotten a XL.
Clean up with WD 40, then normal reclaim.
Megan has a jacket going on five years, our first silicone print. She wears it almost daily, washed countless time and the print is holding up better then the garment.

[ZooCity]

Where are yinz getting the 290˚F @ 30 belt from?  Our Sprint HO has a 16' chamber and we run wilflex performance at 290˚ at like 8-10 belt speed which is our regular speed or 320˚ at about 16-18.  We based our speeds off donut probe reads on actual garments and they are setup to just kiss the target temp for plastisol and hold it for a few seconds. 

Are the belt speed readouts maybe different dryer to dryer?  For reference, our 8 speed equals about 1min 30s in the chamber.

[Dottonedan]

I imagine Temp is temp, but overall temp of dryer setting...and belt speed to reach that actual cure temp would be based on environmental factors that would change.  Room size, Geographical location (Arizona. Main or Florida), time of year, weather. That sort of thing.  That's why you can't rely on only one donut reading and then "set it and forget it".  It changes.   Our guys just learned they had not been totally cuing the inks for a long time now after we bought our donut.
I know they think they just read it once and we're done and forget about it. Should be good right?  I know you need to check that temp often. Every other day, or at least every week. Getting warmer now, The doors are staying open longer and it's been storming lately. Need to do it again. Mornings, mid day and evenings till you get a feel for what the day is going to do. That's what makes this job interesting. Always something to check on.


One of the jobs at a shop I worked as an artist had a position for people in the glass factory as a pinger.  The pinger would sit in a chair and ping the glasses and mugs as they came off the dryer belt with a ceramic stick and ball on the end. We called them pingers because of the sound it made. You would also hear a distinct difference when they hit a bad one. LOL.  $6.25 an hr + benefits in a union shop back 15 years ago.

[numbercruncher]

Where are yinz getting the 290˚F @ 30 belt from?  Our Sprint HO has a 16' chamber and we run wilflex performance at 290˚ at like 8-10 belt speed which is our regular speed or 320˚ at about 16-18.  We based our speeds off donut probe reads on actual garments and they are setup to just kiss the target temp for plastisol and hold it for a few seconds. 

Are the belt speed readouts maybe different dryer to dryer?  For reference, our 8 speed equals about 1min 30s in the chamber.

Most gas dryers used to calculate based on feet per minute(or meters if metric). So an 8 setting with 16' of heat would get you 2 minutes in the chamber, a 10 setting should get you a minute 35 seconds(1:35) or thereabouts.

[alan802]

Where are yinz getting the 290˚F @ 30 belt from?  Our Sprint HO has a 16' chamber and we run wilflex performance at 290˚ at like 8-10 belt speed which is our regular speed or 320˚ at about 16-18.  We based our speeds off donut probe reads on actual garments and they are setup to just kiss the target temp for plastisol and hold it for a few seconds. 

Are the belt speed readouts maybe different dryer to dryer?  For reference, our 8 speed equals about 1min 30s in the chamber.

I think all the M&R dryers will be the same, and it's on a feet/minute calculation.  We've only got a 12' chamber and a belt speed of 12 is exactly 1 minute inside the chamber.  I am still a believer in the donut probe but the settings that I would need for the probe to say I hit 320 degrees seemed excessive so I've continually lowered the temp/time and wash-testing, stretch testing, "white glove rub & tug" , and then comparing the results to the laser temp gun readings.  With our dryer, and I'm certain on most M&Rs, if I set the temp to 360 the gun is usually within 2-3 degrees of that setting on the ink surface, so getting the temp at the bottom of that deposit even with the donut probe I think is a bit of a guessing game.  With all the testing I've done it seems like on prints with a decent underbase the bottom of the print will be about 40 degrees cooler than the surface.  So if I hit 360 on the surface with the temp gun I feel that the important temp is at or around 320. On a thicker ink deposit the donut probe would tell me I hit 320 with dryer settings of 390 and a 22 belt speed.  But the shirts were so damn hot you couldn't handle them without gloves so that's when I started thinking we were too hot.  And I've gradually changed the settings over the years and a typical cotton shirt, dark, with a good underbase will cure with a temp setting of 360-370 and a belt speed of 25-27.  According to the probe we're not hitting 320, but every test we use tells us we're cured. It has been very rare that I've had a print fail a wash test, even on settings that I was quite sure were going to undercure.  And we've stopped using all those older inks with questionable history and the only inks we're running now are QCM XOLB & WOW, along with some 500, 533 and 550 series Excalibur ink.  I'm not sure the spec sheet info on those but I think they cure under 320.  The One Stroke ELT white seems to cure if you really give it a hard stare, and maybe just a little bit of heat .  I think I need to calibrate the probe again and maybe I can get to that today.