# Prints with DTG HM1 wash out (help or advice needed)



## reinis (Oct 18, 2007)

May be someone can help me. I bought my DTG HM1 printer some 2 month ago. I am really satisfied how the printer works. I printed a lot of shirts and many clients started to return shirts because of washing out. After the first wash the color washes out for some 10-30% for 100% cotton shirts and if I print on dark or color shirt (100% cotton or 5% elastane and 95% cotton) with white under base for some shirts the ink washes out even for some 80%. On the other hand there are many clients who are satisfied and everything is ok. Basically I did everything as it was said in the manual. Advised clients to wash the shirts at 30C. I cure the prints at 170C for 120 seconds.


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## DAGuide (Oct 2, 2006)

Reinis,

There are a lot of factors that could affect washability. For dark shirts, how are you pretreating your shirts? I have heard that some type of shirts have a chemical on them that you need to pre-press before you pretreat them.

I am not sure where you are located. You might want to speak with your distributor and see if they sell the pretreatment for light color garments (which is different than the white ink pretreatment). Equipment Zone in NJ (USA) has this new pretreatment and several people on this forum rave about the results. 

Ultimately, you need to try several different pretreating techniques and increase/decrease certain factors (temperature, time, pressure,...) - then do your own wash tests. Hopefully, the whole pretreatment will get easier in the future. Best wishes.

Mark


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## vinstr (Nov 5, 2007)

If you are using the new dupont inks and printing without any pretreatment, like on white shirts, they wash terrible alone. Many of us cannot print white shirts without pretreating using fastcolor, as the inks wash very badly...with fastcolor they are awesome, but it sucks pretreating all shirts now.


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## Tagger (Sep 16, 2007)

DAGuide said:


> I have heard that some type of shirts have a chemical on them that you need to pre-press before you pretreat them.
> Mark


Mark,
I pay particular attention to pretreatment methods even though I don't have my machine yet. I did read about "sizing" chemicals on shirts. Is that what you are refering to? If so, I'm glad that a resolution as simple as preheating the shirt is available. Thanks for the information.
Bruce


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## sunnydayz (Jun 22, 2007)

reinis said:


> May be someone can help me. I bought my DTG HM1 printer some 2 month ago. I am really satisfied how the printer works. I printed a lot of shirts and many clients started to return shirts because of washing out. After the first wash the color washes out for some 10-30% for 100% cotton shirts and if I print on dark or color shirt (100% cotton or 5% elastane and 95% cotton) with white under base for some shirts the ink washes out even for some 80%. On the other hand there are many clients who are satisfied and everything is ok. Basically I did everything as it was said in the manual. Advised clients to wash the shirts at 30C. I cure the prints at 170C for 120 seconds.


Hi, I have an HM1 also and dont have any washability problems. If you can tell the process you are doing from start to finish to see if we can help, sometimes it is such a little thing that can make a world of difference.


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## zhenjie (Aug 27, 2006)

Sounds like you need to do a double pass for the white t-shirts.

For white ink prints, you need to cure for longer then that. perhaps 3minutes I say. At least half of that should be under FIRM preassure. We found out last week through extensive testing that the prints that went under FIRM pressure in the heat press had better wash results plus you get the added bonus of having the prints feel better also (since its squished into the t-shirt itself).


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## adawg2252 (Dec 12, 2007)

yeah, i have a TJ3 and someone just told me one of my shirts washed out. turns out I had only pressed it for 35 seconds. digital timers are great, but if you don't set it tothe right time......wasted shirt.

it's probably the length of time in the heat press and the pressure, if i had to guess.


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## DAGuide (Oct 2, 2006)

Tagger said:


> Mark,
> I pay particular attention to pretreatment methods even though I don't have my machine yet. I did read about "sizing" chemicals on shirts. Is that what you are refering to? If so, I'm glad that a resolution as simple as preheating the shirt is available. Thanks for the information.
> Bruce


Bruce,

This is one of the chemicals that I have heard about. It is something that does have an effect with the pretreatment chemical used by the Kornit machine when printing on American Apparel shirts. I have also heard only a few people have a hard time with Dupont ink. But, I also know several other companies don't have this issue at all with Dupont. I think it will all come down to your pretreatment techniques. Ultimately, everyone needs to do their own wash test and see what works best for you and the people that you are selling the shirts to. Remember, different type of fabrics and shirts with chemicals on it will react differently. So keep a log of what works and create your own operating procedures.

Hope this helps.

Mark


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## reinis (Oct 18, 2007)

Thank you everyone for information. I'm located in Baltic States (Europe). May distributor haven't told me anything about the special pretreatment for light color garments, I will ask them.
Bobbie, this is how I print my shirts:
- white shirts: no pre-treatment, print once or basically twice, cure with fairly hard pressure at 170C for 120 seconds.
- color and dark shirts: pre-treat then cure with heat for some 10-12 seconds, then print the white under base, then the colors, then cure again with light pressure at 170C for 120 seconds as it is said in the manual and as it was advised by the distributor.
I'm printing with Dupont inks. I also heard that the problem might be in some chemicals that are used in shirt producing process. I'm printing basically on American apparel shirts (Hanes and Stedman).


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## adawg2252 (Dec 12, 2007)

reinis said:


> Tcolor and dark shirts: pre-treat then cure with heat for some 10-12 seconds, then print the white under base, then the colors, then cure again with light pressure at 170C for 120 seconds as it is said in the manual and as it was advised by the distributor.


I have to press my dark shirts three times as long as light shirts, 60 seconds for lights as opposed to 180 seconds for darks. You might want to try extending the time, but make sure you have a teflon or parchment sheet inbetween (if you dont already) because the ink will smudge or in some cases (in my experience) cause the shirt to stick to the heating element of the press so when the auto open press opened, the shirt was still stuck to it and almost caught fire.

Also, you should contact your distributor for the pretreatment, it really does work and they should have it by now, since it's been out long enough.

Good luck!


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## davitos (Sep 5, 2007)

we only cure shirts with light pressure and have great wash results so far. 
we found that if you cure them with a lot of pressure the steam cannot get out properly resulting in bad wash results.

lights we do for about 100secs - darks for over 210secs.

hope this helps.


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## Don-ColDesi (Oct 18, 2006)

The longer that direct to garment is around, the more interesting situations that seem to pop up. Our European partner has had some washability issues that we have been unable to reproduce here in the States. If you are a student of the forums you will periodically see posts regarding different results on even the same brand of garments, only made in different countries. 

Before selecting a brand of shirt to print on, I would suggest that you buy a selection of sizes and do your own wash testing to see what to expect. Unfortunately, t-shirts are a commodity item and manufacturers are always looking for a way to cut corners and sometimes this results in less than desireable finished products.


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## ledpenny (Jul 18, 2007)

sunnydayz said:


> Hi, I have an HM1 also and dont have any washability problems. If you can tell the process you are doing from start to finish to see if we can help, sometimes it is such a little thing that can make a world of difference.


Hi, I have the Anajet, and some things do not fade in the wash, and others fade 50% on one wash. I use the Vivid setting, medium drop size, 2-3 passes... get a great looking print, then heat set with Stahls rubbery cover for 100-200 seconds... Is the 'sturdy as screen printed shirts' just a scam? Most advice from Anajet techs doesn't help.


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