Printing on fabrics with a Latex printer requires an understanding of how fabrics are constructed,
of the different types of fabrics, and what to look for.
Latex printers print beautifully on fabric, coated or uncoated.
But there are things that I recommend you understand, and I'm going to go over fabric printing;
things to look for, loading procedures, and then, finally, printing itself.
But before I load the material, the first thing I figure out is,
is this fabric likely to work with a Latex printer.
Now, as I say over and over again, the Media Locator is the place to start.
But just because it's on the Media… not on the Media
Locator doesn't mean the fabric won't work very well.
This, that I have here, is a Berger stretch canvas.
I believe that this is on the Media Locator, but if it weren't on the Media Locator,
I'm certainly sure that this will print.
But there are things I look for in a fabric before I even consider loading it in the printer.
The first thing is, for a Latex print is, is it on a three-inch core.
Now, the smaller printers, the 310, the 330, they will allow you
to print with a two-inch core that the core comes that way.
It's convertible.
You can buy a conversion core for 360 if you want to run two-inch cores.
But I think you'll find that most fabric does come on a three-inch core.
By fabric, I mean fabric that you would buy that's designed for digital printing.
OK.
You can't just go to a hobby store or a fabric store and
buy fabric off the shelf and expect that to work in a Latex printer.
Usually, those fabrics are not prepared on the roll even or with the edges cut properly
to run through a digital machine.
You're going to run digital, or run fabric on a Latex printer, you want to buy digital fabric.
So, the stuff with the raw edges, what we call salvage edges, those are really not ideal
to run on a Latex printer, and they probably are not going to work.
It's just going to cause a lot of frustration.
There's a wide range of fabric manufacturers who are
designing their fabrics to run on digital printers.
Fisher textile, Aurora textile, Berger textile, George and Otto Friedrich, Heytex.
You get the idea.
There's a long list of them.
And almost all of those fabrics will work well.
Now, the first thing you want to know is, how stretchy is the fabric.
A lot of uncoated fabrics may be extremely dimensionally unstable, or very elastic.
If it's too elastic in both directions, that is, if you can take the fabric and stretch
it in both ways, it's going to be harder to run through the printer.
At a certain point the stretchability of the fabric will make it impossible to go through a Latex printer.
Some fabrics that are impregnated with a lot of Spandex to give them a lot of stretch,
well, the stretch is good for the wrinkle resistance;
what it's not so good for is running through a Latex printer.
There are other sublimation printers that may be able to handle a fabric like that,
but the Latex is going to have some trouble.
It's going to tend to either bunch up in the pinch rollers, or it will tend to misregister.
I would say about the most stretchable I can run through the printer would be something
like a Fisher or easy stretch.
It does stretch in both directions.
It does require some attention.
And loading, it certainly does require a take-up roll.
But any, any more elastic than that and it's probably not going to work.
And that's kind of one of the tougher fabrics to run.
There are materials that are stretchable in one direction, dimensionally stretchable.
Those are more stable, and I would recommend those, in most cases, if you're going to run
something that needs wrinkle resistance.
Now, this is called a stretch canvas, and it has a little give in both directions,
but it's not much of a give.
It's just a little bit of give, to give it a little elasticity.
But mostly, this is a fairly tight weave.
The other thing to notice about this fabric is, it has undulations on the edge.
The edges have these little waves on them.
That probably happens when it was cut, when it was cut from the master roll.
And those waves may require the use of the edge guards.
It just depends on how high they come up.
The edge guards may be able to hold those down.
Now, if the undulations on the edges are too big, even the edge guards are not going to
hold it down, and in which case, that's going to be incompatible with the printer because
the carriage will keep catching those edges.
The edges should be as flat as possible across there, not having it kind of undulate like
this, which you can kind of see a little bit.
The next thing I'm going to figure out is, is the fabric coated or uncoated.
If it is coated, I want to know what side it's coated on.
Some manufacturers are very clear.
There'll be a label inside the core as well as a sticker
on the roll that says inside print or outside print.
What they mean is, they did some kind of coating or some kind of change to the surface of the
fabric so that there is an optimal print side.
If that's the case, make sure you're aware what optimal print side you're printing on.
A lot of people will take fabrics that are really coated,
and then mistakenly print on the wrong side,
and not be happy with the results.
So, printing on the correct coated or uncoated side matters.
Next, if it's an uncoated fabric, it's not that big a deal.
You can kind of choose which side you choose to print on.
It's more of a preference then, rather than a coating-based need to print on one side or another.
This particular material is an uncoated fabric.
That is, there's no specific coating on it.
You could choose to print on the inside of the roll, or on the outside of the roll.
My preference is to print on the outside of the roll if they look the same.
If one side looks different than the other, then it's a matter of aesthetic preference
on which side I think I would like to print on.
Other things I look for before I even load the fabric is, I want to make sure upon inspection,
on arrival, that the fabric has not been damaged.
Oftentimes fabric will be damaged or bent, or the cores can be crushed in shipping.
Those can be very difficult to run.
Because it's neat, it… fabric needs really to be nice and even and flat to go through the printer.
If you have a core that's bent, or you have sort of undulations in the top, here,
because it pinched or in some way it was put on the core incorrectly, those can all affect the
likelihood it's going to print successfully.
If you have it on the core where they have it kind of puckered on the edges,
and as a result it's sort of waves along the surface as it comes through,
that's going to go through the pinch rollers and actually cause bunching.
And you're going to get little tunneling through there.
When the printhead comes across, that tunneling is going to manifest by having the carriage
touch it, and will leave little marks.
That usually indicates that the fabric was not prepared correctly,
or transferred correctly from a master roll to a smaller roll.
And it's really more of a media issue than a Latex printer issue.
It is not uncommon to find fabric roles that were damaged in shipping, or incorrectly transferred
to the core, or have some other material handling problem.
That is, it's not their printer.
It's the roll that you purchased isn't as, or it does not
have the integrity that we would need to run on a digital printer.
Most rolls come in fine.
And certainly, most reputable fabric manufacturers do a very good job on quality
control to make sure that everything's on roll evenly,
it's transferred to the core properly, and everything works fine.
Another thing I look for is if it's, I want it to be as much possible, a nice, straight,
even line, here, on the edge of the core where the fabric is applied.
Now, it can drift some.
The printer will allow for that.
So, if the fabric kind of shifts along, and side-to-side, that's generally not too big
a deal, because the take-up reel will sort that out.
The printer will kind of gently glide at one edge or another.
But if it's really irregular, it can cause problems traveling through the printer.
I'm also looking for any imperfections; things that are clearly wrong.
Sometimes when they get rolls of fabric,
people install them and they kind of bounce them out of the box.
Well, what happens then is, the fabric hits the ground and it puts a dent in one end.
And if you have that dent in the end, that indentation, it will travel through the print
path and you'll get one end sags kind of funny, and it contribute to head strikes.
On one way to test for that is, you take the roll and instead of printing on one end,
you print on the, if you were printing on the outside,
switch the roll around so now you're printing on the inside,
which means the dent will switch to the other end of the printer, and into,
if then it manifests on the other end of the printer you know you have a damaged roll.
So, inspecting the roll, making sure everything is right before you even load it in,
is one of the key things to look for with fabrics.
You can't just take any old fabric and load it in the printer.
Fabric printing requires some attention.
It's not like printing on adhesive vinyl or banner, which is very easy.
Fabric's going to take a little more awareness of types of fabrics and what to look for in
the fabric before you even put it in the machine.
So, next one I want to cover is, now that we've chosen a fabric, I'm going to show you
some little tricks that I have that help you load the fabric and put it in through there,
and make sure that everything's going to print fine, before you even hit Print.
Because you don't want the fabric to travel through the printer incorrectly and cause
head strikes or have the carriage grab the fabric.