Lasse

Wow, that looks nice.

About static electricity, it mostly accures when I screenprint tranfers, (when a rubber squegie runs over the mech and the print lands on plastic sheets, it builds up static electricity).

Yesterday I finaly got the last things I ordered from China delivered, so today I started experimenting with DTF-printouts. Since this is just a "test spin" to see how my customers here in Sweden react to DTF-transfers I´m only using a L1800 with AcroRip for now.

My first print was a parrot with my companylogo and that turned out great at the first print. I first traced the parrotphoto in Photoshop, imported the result in Illustrator and placed my vectorbased logo on top of the parrot, saved the result as PDF, (the print looks a lot better IRL than on the photo).

My second print was a bit more tricky. First I prepared the print the same way as I did with the parrot, but by doing so the print came out of the printer without the white letters around the boat. Hmmm, now what? - Well I imported the original Illustratorfile in Photoshop and saved it as a PSD-file. Opend it in AcroRip, made my settings, and printed. The print came out perfect.

I also did some testprints with .jpg and .png files, but they didn´t print out as well as the Illustrator and Photoshop files.

8 hours ago, Lasse said:

"If you don’t mind me asking, what is that your using to apply the powder?"

That´s just 16" of a rain gutter. I´ll do some photos for you when I´m at the printshop later today..:)

This is how set up my adhesive powder station johnsson4

"If you don’t mind me asking, what is that your using to apply the powder?"

That´s just 16" of a rain gutter. I´ll do some photos for you when I´m at the printshop later today..:)

17 hours ago, johnson4 said:

Interestingly I’ve had the opposite effect with humidity. The more humidity, the more clumping I get over time. The spec sheets for the powder generally says to keep it sealed as it makes it clump, which I do experience in a high humidity environment. I have no idea if that is affected short term in its use though.  
 

the static makes sense, which is probably why it sticks to the sheet without ink sometimes. I’ll have to try that if I find it an issue, thanks.

If static electricity is the problem one normaly get a specific kind of pattern on the sheet. I don´t think one will get the same kind of pattern when high humidity is the cause of the problem.

I´ll attach a short videoclip to visualize how it looks when static electricity is the problem. And yes, one can also see how I apply the powder..;)

On 1/8/2021 at 12:41 PM, Ikegwegbe said:

Is does have one pass but does not have chipless support

 

I got 2 refurbished Epson 3800 sitting in my garage, whating for work and they both have working ARC-chip installed. The Epson 3880 uses the same ink cartridges as the 3800, so to my knowledge there is ARC-chip solutions for the 3880 avalible.

I got mine a couple of years ago on Alibaba, and a quick search showes that suppliers still offer ARC solutions for the 3880
https://www.alibaba.com/trade/search?fsb=y&IndexArea=product_en&CatId=&SearchText=3880+ARC+chip

On 1/15/2021 at 5:58 PM, Kuipersh said:

How do I get the powder to NOT stick on the transfer film except on the ink/printed design?  I’m running into where I can’t get all the excess powder off the film because I am sprinkling by hand but when I try to dump off excess powder some sticks randomly to the transfer film and this will show up on any colored tshirt besides white of course.

Kuipersh, I run a screenprint shop in south of Sweden where I mainly produce plastisol printed heat transfers. In that process one applies the powder adhessive the same way on the wet ink as one does with DTF-printed heat transfers. Occasionally I ran in to the same problem having a hard time removing excess powder off the film, mainly in the whinter time. During whinter, when the temperature gets below 0 degrees celsius the air gets wery dry and increases static electricity. The build up of static electricity is 9 times out of 10 the source of the problem you´re describing

To reduce this problem I have grounded all my equipment and built an humidifiersolution that keeps the relative humidity in my print shop in the range of 60-70%. To have a controlled relative humidity is also preferred in an area where one works with ink jet printers and waterbased inks. It prevents the printheads from clogging as fast as they do in an area with dry air.

On 1/15/2021 at 6:22 PM, johnson4 said:

 Random note in the bubbles. If your curing from the backside( powder side) your sealing the print before the ink is completely dry. If you melt the powder and create that barrier/seal, and the ink still needs to evaporate some, it’s probably where the small bubbles come from.

Regarding the bubbles, I have seen that even the small DTF-printers offered from China sometimes has a built in heating system. At first I didn´t understand the function of these built in heatsystems but regarding your discussion above it may start to make sense.

I guess the function of these Chinese built in heating systems helps to evaporates some of the moisture in the ink once it comes out of the printer by warming up the whole plate where the print rests once it comes out of the printer.

To accomplish this on a DIY-basis maybe one can think in the terms of a 2-3 mm aluminium sheet and a car seat heat pad solution.

JaRugz...

Regarding inkcartridges, the best refillsolution I fond for my 3800-printers is the refillabel cartridges with the original chip. And yes, every chip has to be in the right place/inkslot to work. I also use a chip resetter to resett the chips.

Judy, I´m glad you got better results with EK print.

But the thing is that you never will get concitent good prints if you don´t know how to control and adjust the image before you send it to the printer.
Andy touched the subject sligtly in his second post November 21. Gammut control. Here´s a youtubeclip explaining it ->

And here´s another clip showing different technics on how to make colors "pop" in Photoshop ->

I suggest you start with making your colors pop and then use the gammut control/correction to make shure the popped colors  not way out of gammut.
But before all that, make shure you´r computor screen don´t lie. A well calibrated screen don´t lie.

2 hours ago, johnson4 said:

How close did you need it to the head?

I guess the best way to find out would be an trial and error approach by putting some sheets of plain paper, (about the thicknes of a t-shirt fabric) under the PET-film and give it a try.