# Plastisol Transfers onto fleece garments



## brad99 (Aug 10, 2009)

Hi everyone.

I'm looking for some advice for pressing plastisol transfers onto fleeces. I'm a screen printer (11 years and counting) and have never been asked for this sort of job before. 

We don't use plastisol transfers often as we print direct to garments virtually all the time.

I hate printing onto fleece at the best of times. I dont think it ever looks any good. I've tried to get our customer to consider embroidery instead but since they've had transfers from another supplier in the past, they want to do the same again.

They've shown me a sample. Excellent quality. The fleece shows the normal evidence of being heatpressed and the transfer adhesion and quality is very good.

The problem I'm having is whilst sampling, i'm overheating the fleece to get the transfer to bond properly . the pill is becoming far to compressed (more than i would expect/accept) from putting a fleece under the press.

The transfers are bog standard pastisol transfers which i've printed myself. We have a good success rate with tee shirts, it's just the fleece which is a problem.

thanks in avance


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## wozzars (Apr 26, 2011)

Hi.
Are you using standard plastisol ink straight onto the transfer paper and what grade of powder glue are you using?


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## brad99 (Aug 10, 2009)

It's standard plastisol, in this case it is Union Metallic gold. I believe we are using Unilon powder. I couldn't tell you which one though, it might be 2027


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## brad99 (Aug 10, 2009)

i guess the bottom line is we are trying to use as light a press as possible to adhere the transfers. The fleece material supplied is for horse blankets and is very soft. even light press pressure compresses the material too much.

I would love to know how the original printer managed to do it


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## wozzars (Apr 26, 2011)

Have you tried mixing the ink with some of the glue first then once you print onto the paper give it another dusting of powder,thus more glue will be in the ink allowing a better attatchment to the garment.(this is how i do it)
Depending on the thickness of the image should be dependen on the courseness of the grain of powder.
Hope this helps
Cheers


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## brad99 (Aug 10, 2009)

thanks for the advice so far.

we mix glue and ink normally but will try your advice and add more after printing!

Thanks for the advice, lets see what happens!


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## wozzars (Apr 26, 2011)

Pictures speak a thousand words!


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## wormil (Jan 7, 2008)

Been a long time since I've used Unilon powder but we just dusted it on after gelling the transfers. You might try one of those blanket/pad things for the bottom platen of your heat press.


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## brad99 (Aug 10, 2009)

thanks guys.

I'll post a pic of the sample later on.


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## JohnWisc (Sep 29, 2011)

Wouldn't dye sub be better for fleece as fleece is 100% poly?


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## brad99 (Aug 10, 2009)

Hi John,

I wish i could. The fleece is dark blue so sublimation is out 

we have a sample of some new powder arriving today. I have a suspicion that our current powder is the problem factor at the moment.


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## brad99 (Aug 10, 2009)

I've attached a couple of photos of the original sample. its the same item, just with the camera flash on one photo. The thing you cant tell is the softness of the fleece. it has to be the softest fleece I've ever seen!

We'll see how we get on with the new powder. Hopefully, we have some success!


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