# How-to's on printing plastisol transfers and making them adhere to the garment when heat pressed?



## T&SPrinter (May 21, 2009)

We are currently doing a job for a local company. They have a double lined, wide meshed, 100% black polyester short. The dbl lined short poses a problem first and foremost for printing directly to the short, or atleast printing a nice solid opaque image. So, our decision was to print plastisol transfers and heat press the image to the shorts. I printed the white image, in reverse, to the transfer paper using StaTru Phoenix white through a 110 mesh screen. I then gelled the ink, not cured, but gelled the ink @ a temp. of 230 degrees, and that temp. was gauged using a thermo gun with laser. I then heat pressed the image onto the shorts @ 350 degrees @ a dwell time of 15 seconds and used very firm pressure. Once the heat press top was raised, we cold peeled the transfer after about 20 seconds. It still was able to peel, so we took that garment and ran it through the dryer to achieve a temperature of 330 degrees again read with the laser thermo gun. The customer recently called, after a day or two of having the garments, and said that the images is almost off if not fully off. Please help, I went by the specs and it still does not work. We just don't do many of these transfers with plastisol. I think we have done two including this latest one in the 8 years I've been here. Please help...


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## wormil (Jan 7, 2008)

Printing transfers requires a lot of experimentation until you get it right. Really you want to experiment on scrap shirts before selling them customers. For this order I would recommend just ordering transfers from someone to get the job done or find a way to direct print them. Are you using a conveyor dryer? It's almost impossible to cure transfers properly with anything else.

For direct printing you may have to construct a special platen or glue a piece of melamine covered fiber board to raise your existing platen.


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