Top 3 Tips To Keep Your Prints Looking Sharp!

It’s no secret that dye sublimation is one of the fastest growing sectors for textile printing. I mean, it’s easy to see why when you think about it. Who doesn’t like rich, vibrant colours especially when you can achieve them with relative ease? 

Compared to other textile printing methods dye-sub is a virtual walk in the park but there are still a few hurdles that you can come across… Luckily, they’re usually easily spotted and rectified – here’s my top 3 to watch out for!

1. Ghosting

No, this isn’t when you all of a sudden stop going to see your printer. Nor is it a term used when covering it with a dust cloth. It actually refers to a faint image appearing around, or next to, the main image you are printing. 

It’s usually caused by the sublimation paper moving during the printing process but can also occur if your fabric is shrinking due to the heat used in sublimation. Two things you can thankfully fix easily!

How To Fix It:

Make sure that your sublimation paper cannot move during the print process. The second you start to apply heat to it, the dye will begin to react, so it’s essential that it stays in one place. If you’re using a flatbed heat press you can always enlist the help of some heat-proof tape to keep things under control. You need to take extra care when it’s time to remove the print from the heat press as well… Make sure to separate the sublimation paper and textile as quickly as possible, taking care not to burn your fingers!

If it turns out your fabric shrinking is causing the issues then the solution is normally to ‘pre-shrink’ the material. Let it go through the heat press process without the sublimation paper, so the fibres can retreat before you add your print. That way, second time around when you add your sublimation paper there will be no shrinkage and you’ll get super sharp results!

You can also try using a ‘tacky’ sublimation paper – let me know in the comments if you’d like to learn more about this!

2. Head Strikes

We’ve all been there – excited to get a new print run on the go and then BAM! Scuffed substrate and a feeling of dread as you print the nozzle check to see what damage you’ve done. Not only can you have a potential print head fatality, but you’ve also got an unusable print. 

Most people who print dye-sub do the paper transfer method – and that’s great! It offers a lot of advantages to the user such as, cheaper printers (due to less sophisticated media handling requirements), sharper prints and the ability to print multiple jobs on one roll – even if it will eventually end up on different textiles. The drawback of paper is that it acts like a big sponge, absorbing all the moisture in the air, and that’s when problems can occur. Change the environment for paper rapidly and it can expand and contract its size. When it’s clamped into a machine and under restriction this can result in ‘bubbling’ and the raised paper can come into contact with a print head – not good.

How To Fix It:

The easiest way to combat this is to keep your printer and your paper in a controlled environment. Monitor the temperature and humidity in your print room and make sure it doesn’t fluctuate too much or exceed the maximum recommended parameters. If you are outside of the recommended parameters there’s a good chance this is the root of your problems.

Don’t expect to be able to take paper from a freezing cold, damp warehouse into a temperate print room without running into any issues. If you have no choice but to store the paper in a different environment, then bring it into the print room before you’re ready to change the roll and allow it time to climatise. That way any shape changes can take place previously, whilst the paper isn’t under tension.

Also, keep an eye on how much ink you’re putting down. If you’re oversaturating your paper then consider a heavier weight alternative, or perhaps look at re-profiling all together. After all, over saturation does more harm than good – you want to be running at optimum ink levels to ensure highest quality results (whilst also saving yourself money, avoiding wasted ink). Let me know in the comments if you’d like to know more about issues caused by bad profiling!

3. Banding

Ah banding, a printer’s faithful enemy. Thankfully, modern printers have some amazing in-built technology to help combat unwanted stripey prints but they do still occur from time to time. 

Although it’s one of the most common reported faults, banding is often hard to troubleshoot because it can be caused by so many things. Everything from blocked print nozzles through to bad profiling can be held accountable. Fortunately, I also have a few tips to keep the odds of keeping it at bay in your favour…

How To Fix It:

First of all, it’s good practise to do at a nozzle check before any print run. It’s amazing how many people set their printers off to do a 50m run without actually knowing if all the nozzles are firing correctly! Blocked nozzles means no ink and you’ll end up with annoying white lines all over your artwork. Take the time to check and if any are missing do a clean. Remember to check again after the clean to make sure it did the job!

But what if all your nozzles are firing but you’re still getting drop out? This could be down to the profile you are using. Let’s say you are printing a design with a solid colour in the background – that requires the machine to put a lot of ink down. It’s important to make sure you’re giving the printer enough time to be able to fire and replenish all the ink required, if you don’t you will ‘starve’ the heads of ink! If the heads are being starved, then there’s physically no ink that can be put down and you will get white or faded banding. This can also have a real negative and damaging effect on your print heads – so be warned, don’t push your machines too hard! Choose a profile and speed suited to the designs you are printing, if you find the heads being starved then increase the number of ‘passes’ the machine is doing – this will instantly slow it down for you!

There’s a number of other reasons banding can occur – if you want me to do a full article on the subject let me know in the comments below!

Et voilà!

So, there you have it, three common errors and how to fix them. If you’d like to learn more, or have any questions, then please don’t hesitate to get in touch by leaving a comment or dropping me a message!