# white ink fading



## Gologo1 (Apr 2, 2010)

We just recently purchased the melcojet(Anajet). The white underbase keeps fading as nears the bottom of the design. The design is printing blurry. Any help on how to fix this problem would be greatly appreciated. My boss is about ready to throw the machine out the window.

Thanks!


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## Inked2012 (Aug 31, 2009)

First thing to check is to make sure the board is level to the printhead on all four corners of the board. Bring the head out over each corner to check. Are you printing bi-directional? How far away (in mm) is the shirt from the printhead.


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## IYFGraphics (Sep 28, 2009)

Another thing to check is when your pretreating your shirts that your treating the entire print area, and that the heat press your curing the pretreatment with is big enough to cure the entire print area.

Hope this helps.


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## equipmentzone (Mar 26, 2008)

Gologo1 said:


> We just recently purchased the melcojet(Anajet). The white underbase keeps fading as nears the bottom of the design. The design is printing blurry. Any help on how to fix this problem would be greatly appreciated. My boss is about ready to throw the machine out the window.
> 
> Thanks!



When the fading happens to the next shirt you print, take the printed shirt off the printer and do an immediate nozzle check on the printer. Check to see if all the white ink lines are printing.

Harry
Equipment Zone


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## dragonknight (May 30, 2009)

Try to use "medium" white ink coverage instead of "heavy" white ink coverage because sometimes if you use heavy coverage the white ink tend to fadeout if the printhead have been used so often, heavy coverage only good for new print head or your nozzle check 100% perfect.


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## Gologo1 (Apr 2, 2010)

Thanks guys. My boss got it to look good. She did have the white ink setting on heavy, and went to medium and changed some other settings and now it seems to be looking good. The only other thing is when she took it home to wash it, the black ink faded. It was on a hot pink t-shirt and you can see the pink through the black now.

Thanks,


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## dragonknight (May 30, 2009)

It is good to see that one of your problem went away Megan, for your current problem you should be more specific about your curing process...how did you apply your pretreatment? are you using anajet ink? or other type of ink?


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## Gologo1 (Apr 2, 2010)

We are using anajet ink. We cured it for 30 seconds at 330 degrees. We sprayed the pretreatment on and rolled it on with a paint roller. Our trainer showed us how to pretreat and told us to cure for that long.


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## dragonknight (May 30, 2009)

Try to look at this post maybe you have the same problem http://www.t-shirtforums.com/direct-garment-dtg-inkjet-printing/t112888.html and in the end the suggestion is you should try to change the black ink with other type of ink (any rebranded dupont ink would be fine).


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## Gologo1 (Apr 2, 2010)

Thank you for forwarding me the other post. Do you really heat press them for 3 minutes? We are afraid that will burn the shirt!


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## raise (Apr 11, 2008)

Gologo1 said:


> We are using anajet ink. We cured it for 30 seconds at 330 degrees. We sprayed the pretreatment on and rolled it on with a paint roller. Our trainer showed us how to pretreat and told us to cure for that long.


You cure the pretreatment for 30 secs but the actual white ink print needs to be cured for 180 secs (3 minutes). Test it on a shirt and you shouldn't see any scorching but at 30 secs for the ink print, you are not removing all of the water and the print will not bind to the shirt properly.


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## dragonknight (May 30, 2009)

Gologo1 said:


> Thank you for forwarding me the other post. Do you really heat press them for 3 minutes? We are afraid that will burn the shirt!


Yes 3 minutes would be fine for Black color T-Shirt or any color T-Shirt with white ink, if you are afraid that you will burn the t-shirt try pressing them 90 seconds twice, 30 second cure time is only for CMYK ink without white ink (For White color T-Shirt or softcolor t-shirt) but I prefer 60 seconds cure time for any rebranded dupont ink


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## 23spiderman (Jun 26, 2008)

AnaJet (at the time i took the training) suggested 36 seconds at 356 degrees for cmyk only and 90 seconds at 330 degrees when using white ink. we are now curing ALL our shirts for 90 seconds at 330, and we've seen an improvement with our wash tests. if we're doing a small print (cmyk only) and the print is done before the heat press, then we'll go back to the shorter time. i have one customer that washes his shirt in cold water and hang dries, and the shirt looks like it came right off the printer. 

as far as burning a shirt, the temperature dictates that more than the time. even at 360, you won't burn a cotton shirt. a white or ash shirt may scorch a little, but it shouldn't burn. when screen printing, we normally don't see any scorching unless the shirt (white, ash or grey) gets above 400 degrees in the oven.


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## Gologo1 (Apr 2, 2010)

Thanks for your help everyone!


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