# Can you cure DTG garments with a flash cure



## emaugust (Sep 6, 2007)

Hi all, second post of the night - can you cure a DTG garment with a flash cure or do you need the heat press? I haven't seen a video yet where the dtg garments were cured with anything but a heat press.


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## FatKat Printz (Dec 26, 2008)

We use heat presses but there are are few people on here using conveyor driers. I know Adam (TahoeTamahawk) says he using it for whites and darks. Whites for one minute then that's it. Darks for one minute through it then one minute in the heat press. He says the wash is alot better this way. Printzilla swears by his conveyor also. We want one...


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## emaugust (Sep 6, 2007)

Awesome - thanks for the input! Right now I just screen print and cure everything with a flash cure... trying to assess what the total picture is for going DTG :]


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## binki (Jul 16, 2006)

i have seen dryers used. if you leave it sit in the sun it might cure but i don't know about washability. we have just hovered the heat press for a minute and then set the shirt aside but it is still tacky weeks later.


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## equipmentzone1 (Nov 22, 2008)

emaugust said:


> Hi all, second post of the night - can you cure a DTG garment with a flash cure or do you need the heat press? I haven't seen a video yet where the dtg garments were cured with anything but a heat press.


Direct-to-Garment printers use water based ink. A heat press is perfect for drying direct-to-garment printed garments because it's able to provide the steady heat necessary to dry them.

A conveyor dryer can also dry d-t-g printed garments. However, conveyor dryers are generally designed for a different purpose. They're usually built so that they quickly raise the temperature of the ink on a garment to about 330 degrees, the curing temperature for plastisol, and then get the garments out of the dryer as quickly as possible. You'll have to turn the belt speed on your dryer way down in order to get the dwell time needed to dry d-t-g printed garments.

A flash dryer isn't suitable for curing d-t-g printed garments. The purpose of a flash is to quickly raise the temperature of the ink on a garment to about 330 degrees in order to cure plastisol. A flash dryer can't provide the steady heat necessary to cure a d-t-g printed garment. You'd end up scorching the shirt if you tried.

-Alex


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## grboc (Feb 19, 2010)

Is it possible at least to use a flash cure unit to "dry ink to the touch", for instance while the heat press is busy with another task?


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## Smalzstein (Jul 22, 2008)

Aren't pressure required for Dupont and similar inks ?


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## Resolute DTG (Jun 27, 2010)

We have recently performed a lot of tests in this area.

The process of curing pre treatment to white ink is a critical one, get it wrong and it will wash off, crack or even peel. Flashing with heat on the top surface of the print will only achieve a dry surface to touch with no durability in the wash. 

If a tunnel dryer is used configured for waterbased textile inks you can achieve better results than a heat press. You will generally get a softer hand to the print and no tacky residue as the binders are allowed to burn off and exit out of the tunnels chimney. We have found the best settings to be 410c for approx 90 seconds for a perfect cure. This generates a cured shirt every 30 seconds and is more economical to run than the equivalent amount of heat presses to achive the same speed. Wash tests results after ten washes are quite amazing, the down side is you need quite a large tunnel with a different configuration to conventional tunnels for the best results. 

Part curing pre treatment is also quicker and gives a better result with no pressure marks from the heatpress. You do need to flatten the garment under a heatpress prior to printing to ensure no fibres are sticking up. This is a couple of seconds only and of course you use no curing papers for either of the two processes.

Hope this helps.


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## spiderx1 (Oct 12, 2009)

410C Wow that's hot.


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## Resolute DTG (Jun 27, 2010)

spiderx1 said:


> 410C Wow that's hot.


It's not as bad as it may look, our tunnel uses forced air to cure from the underside and the top. It does not heat the shirt to 410c just the air in the chamber.


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## TPrintDesigner (Sep 16, 2007)

I'm using a Calmat DTG dryer and it takes 3 minutes at 160. Washability and print quality is waaay better than what we got when using heat presses.

Your 90 second cure time is impressive. That would come in handy for the small CMYK only prints because there are times when our dryer can't keep up with our printers.


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## RebThomps (Mar 14, 2014)

Resolute DTG, curious, what type of dryer is it that you have?


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## MichaelDavies (Jan 20, 2010)

These guys make a device that appears to use Halogen Lamps like a flash cure to cure DTG Prints
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhEyir-Ku7I


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