# Dye Sublimation Bleeding When Stacked After Pressing



## ilogar (Nov 12, 2009)

Hello everyone,
I sublimated some towels that are 100% poly for a customer and received a call from that customer the following week. She mentioned that the towels had images in the back that looked like ghost images of the original image. Im thinking there is a possibility that I didn't clean the bottom platen good enough or it could be the way i packaged them. I Stack six towels and put them in a plastic bag. I did some other towels for another customer and didn't see the ghosting on those towels. I know that I have to clean the bottom platen often to avoid this scenario, also I will start using butcher paper on the bottom platen as well. I also use a vapor foam pad on some of the images that are too small, for the other images, I just use a full sheet of paper that hangs over the edges of the press which is a 16x20 heat press. I have three questions that I still haven't found answers for on this forum. 

1)How many presses does a vapor foam pad last for? 

2) Is it possible for the inks to re-gas if presented with hot 
weather? Maybe the inside of a car temperature?

3)Could stacking one another after being pressed cause the ghosting effect?

I do have picks of the towel. Will post them Tomorrow.


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## Riderz Ready (Sep 18, 2008)

If they are dyetrans towel I could not imagine ink blowing through the back side as they are pretty thick. We have never had an issue with them. I think everyone probably does things differently and it probably depends on qtys you do but for us we have to press quickly with as little set up as possible. We use the white nomax pad on the bottom and place a piece of fabric over the nomax. We press 100-250 jerseys before we replace the fabric over the nomax. What is interesting is the cleaner (whiter) the material is underneath your fabric you are pressing the more likely you will get blow back on the backside. Meaning if we are doing white and black jerseys and the material underneath the jersey material is clean (white) and we press there will be noticeable blow back underneath the jersey material we are pressing. If we were to press another white and black jersey there is an excellent chance we would pick up that imagine on the backside of the new jesey material we are pressing. The solution for us is to not change that backing fabric as once it is darkened there never will be blow back on the back side of the fabric pressing. Thus any time we change that fabric we press 5-10 dark jerseys and never have to worry about blow back until we change the fabric out again. if we had to change that backing paper/fabric out on each press the cost of production for us would double in lost time. 

If someone from Conde/Johnson Plastic catches this they may have even better solutions. I would also be curious as the where the source of the oil like substance comes from that collects on the platten. I am guessing fabric but not really sure. That eventually soaks into the nomax and forces us to clean the nomax pad.


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## Conde_David (May 29, 2008)

I would really need to see one to tell for
sure. I would recommend putting blow out
paper on top of the vapor foam.

So the issue either happened in the press or
out. 

Outside, could be stacked while hot?
In bag, hot ups truck? 

Can you post a scan?


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## D.Evo. (Mar 31, 2006)

On-line Jerseys said:


> I would also be curious as the where the source of the oil like substance comes from that collects on the platten. I am guessing fabric but not really sure. That eventually soaks into the nomax and forces us to clean the nomax pad.


I have the same issue. I have noteced, some substrates are "oilier" than others.

I'm guessing it could be because we work with polyester - which is essentially made of oil


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## ilogar (Nov 12, 2009)

Can you post a scan?[/quote]
Here is a scan that the cutomer sent me. I still havent seen the actual towels yet.


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## Riderz Ready (Sep 18, 2008)

Wow - 

The first one looks like in fact the towel was folded in half and it mirrored the image to the other side. What brand of towels were these?


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## mn shutterbug (Mar 19, 2009)

My guess is this would be from stacking them before they're cooled down. I don't see how you can get blow out when using the foam pad since the pad would prevent the shirt front from touching anything. I've been told a foam pad can last up to 50 times.


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## binki (Jul 16, 2006)

We have had this happen and we don't know why. I also have a vapor apparel shirt that I dye subbed, let cool, put in the washer. When I took it out (wash cold only) the print had migrated to every place the image on the shirt had touched another part of the shirt.


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## ilogar (Nov 12, 2009)

On-line Jerseys said:


> Wow -
> 
> The first one looks like in fact the towel was folded in half and it mirrored the image to the other side. What brand of towels were these?


Sorry, they are 80% polyester and 20%polyamide. I purchased them from terry town.


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## ilogar (Nov 12, 2009)

mn shutterbug said:


> My guess is this would be from stacking them before they're cooled down. I don't see how you can get blow out when using the foam pad since the pad would prevent the shirt front from touching anything. I've been told a foam pad can last up to 50 times.


The towels go through Quality Check before they get packaged and the ghost images where not there when they left on the UPS truck. They go through QC three times. One, after the towels get heat pressed. Two, before we put grommets on the towels. And three when they get bagged in plastic bags. It seems strange that they would bleed during shipment. Could dye sub inks re-gas during shipment?


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## ilogar (Nov 12, 2009)

How much time do dye sub inks need to fully dry on fabrics such as polyester? I ran some tests today and found out that the blow out onto the vapor pad from the initial towel did not get imaged onto the next towel being pressed. I will use butcher paper on top of the vapor pad if the blow out from the initial towel transfers onto other towels in the future. Should I be worried about towels bleeding onto each other if shipped to a customer, even after letting the inks dry on the towels for a long period of time? Also, i am worried about shipping towels to a customer and they receive them and take them out of the packaging and decide to stack the towels. Should i be worried? For now, I will use dunnage to put in between the towels before they get put in a plastic bag to prevent bleeding. Im i going over board with the dunnage? Any suggestions?


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## Riderz Ready (Sep 18, 2008)

ilogar said:


> Sorry, they are 80% polyester and 20%polyamide. I purchased them from terry town.


If you do a quick google on polyamide you can see that this material is heat resistance which would lead one to think there is a good possibility that that like cotton the ink will not infuse fully which may be the issue. We have never had this problem occur with Dyetrans towels. They are a bit pricey but print incredible.


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## jpkevin (Oct 22, 2007)

My guess is that the towels were at some location during shipping, and they got really hot which caused some migration of the inks. Being in a plastic bag probably increased that effect, as it held the heat inside the bag. You may want to package the towels in paper bags.


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## Rolando67 (May 4, 2012)

In my humble opinion I could suggest a few things you could try, but first I'd like to know the following from you:
1.- Had you used this 80/20 towels before, if so did you ever have any problems at all.
2.- Have you changed anything in your setup? such as Ink,paper,rip software,printer.
3.- What inks and paper are you using?


I had a customer who had the same issue ( Ghost images on the back), what worked for him was reducing ink %,less pressing time and less temp.
I hope you can play with those numbers and then put the towels in a plastic bag just to try and reproduce the scenario and see what happens. I hope it works for you otherwise I stand to be corrected.


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## greusel (Nov 17, 2021)

Did you ever resolve this? I'm seeing magenta bleeding from things folded and packed in a similar way.


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