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KrunkuliticusIII

heat press in place of flash dryer ?????????????????

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I have my cutter and heat press and usually cut and weed vinyl then of course heatpress to the tee. Recently, with my cutter i found a secret route to screen printing. My only issue is how to cure the ink. I believe i have spent enough on the cutter and heat press and hahaha a flash dryer isnt cheap. I was wondering if that has been heard of using a heat press to cure instead of flash dryer. Or what about a heat gun? Hope so found a good cheap one online..... to be continued i guess.

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I used to do screenprinting and a flash dryer would be your best bet, actually a conveyor dryer would be the best, but a Flash dryer is the best next thing.

When my partner and me didnt have the flash dryer yet we would use a heat gun. It is possible to cure plastisol inks with it, but is not as effective as a Flash dryer, it will take you longer to cure one shirt and there is a high risk to burn the shirt in some spots.

If I was in your situation, I would get a heat gun (they are very cheap), cure the with that and them  heat press the shirt for a few seconds. This will help the curing process plus it will give the ink a softer feel. IU wouldnt rely on my heat press alone to do this.

It can be done and they can be cured right using the heat gun, but as I said there are risks and it will take you longer. If you are doing short runs this method can be good, for longer runs it wont.

Anyways, if you dont cure them right you are going to see the the ink cracking and peeling in the first few washes.

Good luck

JC

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If it isn't properly cured it will either crack or wash out.  Never tired a heat gun, I suppose it would work but as Joe says, I wouldn't want to try any long runs with it.  In reality, a flash dryer isn't the best way to fully cure the ink either but it works.

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here are a couple of thoughts for you to ponder. in the past i have placed t-shirts on a large flat pan and cured them in a conventional kitchen oven.

someone else has already posted a concern about having too much heat affect the print durability and too little heat will result in your image being washed out after a few laundering cycles. using heat test strips is a must to determine the effectiveness on your efforts.

during a multi color run a few years ago i used a heat press to dry some shirts. i placed wooden dowels on opposite sides of the platten and used just enough pressure to keep the lid closed. the dowels created a dead air space about 3/8" and heat setting upped to 450*. the shirts dried in about the time that it took to print a 3 or 4 color job.  i never had a single shirt returned using this method. just a little extra caution so that the dowels do not end up in the print area.

good luck,  daniel t

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Most plastisol ink only has to reach a core temperature of 320 degrees in order to be cured correctly.

So, in answer to your question, Yes you can use the heat press. But, you have to do some test runs first.

When you print the shirt then take it to the heat press, obviously you don't want to let the shirt fold over at

all or you will create a mess. When pressing the shirt I have always set the temp to about 350-370 and pressed for 10-12 seconds.

You will have to see what works best for your press as they may be calibrated differently.

Know that when you press the ink, it will flatten and be forced into the shirt some, so you may get unwanted

results. Play with the pressure to get better results.

When you use a heat transfer, the only difference is that the ink has been cured once before, but it should not make

any difference that the ink hasn't been cured yet. It just might get messy transfering a wet shirt so minimize the space

as much as possible.

One easy way to see if the ink is close to being cured properly, is to stretch the shirt. If cured properly, the ink will stretch a bit maybe as much

as .25" or so. If it does this, then you should be good, however you should always do a test wash or 2 or 3 before selling to your clients.

Hope this helps some.

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ready for a homemade flash dryer ......here we go !!

What you need ......

Two heat guns ....12$ each at Ace hardware ...

Two Cookie sheets $2 each at dollare store

JB weld Tubes .....

and then do this :::

Drill holes in one cookie sheet ...... about an inch apart .... Hold on this is way to much info for me to type I....Plus I have diagrams ....

You know what I will find my plans and post them when I get to my home computer ......

Sorry for the tease !!!

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