Once you've decided on a fabric – preferably pulled it off the Media Locator
– now we're going to load the fabric.
There's a few things to understand about loading.
One.
This fabric I've decided to print on the outside of the roll.
It's uncoated.
It wouldn't matter which side we print on, so I'm going to print on the outside.
The first thing I notice is that there's a bit of core sticking out the end, here.
Because that core is sticking out the end,
I could not place this core on the inside marker if I wanted to,
because the edge of that core is going to push that
material past the point where the printer can read it.
And it's going to keep telling you that you got to move it off to the right.
As a result, I'm going to put it on the end here,
which gives me about an inch with the core sticking out.
And then the roll of fabric will be well within the threshold that the printer needs to identify
where the edge is.
It's very common to have the core stick out at the edge a little bit.
That's perfectly fine.
If it bothers you, you can always cut it off.
But generally, I place it on the end part of the marker, right at the far end,
and then the fabric comes in a little bit.
The printer will see it just fine.
The next thing I'm going to need to do is, I'm going to put it inside this.
OK.
This is the fabric loading accessory, or I just sometimes call it a fabric threader.
We have a front-loading printer, and with this soft fabric it's going to be very difficult
to get it through the path, here, and not have it fall back down again.
So, you need to put it inside this, and then this feeds through the printer,
which then the fabric threads with this on it.
It has little magnetic flaps on it.
These magnetic flaps come up, and they hold the fabric down.
Now, this comes with a 360 and a 370; 360 and 370 come with this.
Ideally, 360s and 370s are your fabric printer.
That's if you're really focused on fabric printing on a Latex, the 360 or 370 is the
machine that we would strongly recommend.
Now, you can print, especially on fabric like this, with a 330, or if it comes in a smaller
54-inch roll, with a 310 or the 110.
However, those printers are going to have fewer fabrics that you can print on,
because you want the fabric, ideally, to be fairly airtight, or to be coated.
And also, none of those printers come with this.
So, if you're going to load it, you will buy this as an accessory on a 330, for example.
This is sellable as an accessory.
You can order this.
So, if you're going to do fabric, you may that this is going to help you load it.
I have people that do load the fabric using other devices like adhesive vinyl,
where they life up some of the adhesive vinyl and place it in there and put it down,
and use that to feed it through.
Some fabrics are almost heavy enough and coated enough that they can load right in.
They don't need an accessory.
But generally, you're going to need this to load fabric.
The other thing I do is, on the actual loading here, I do choose the box Use loading accessory.
You do not have that on a 330 or 310.
That is just going to be on the 360, 370.
330, 310, I would probably use a manual load and feed this through, get the fabric trailing
behind it, and get it all the way out the front of the printer.
If you use the loading accessory on a 360, you can feed this In.
And as soon as you feed it in you'll feel the machine kind of grab this.
And it will feed this all the way through, and down to here.
And in a second video I'll show you how that works.
But I do use the accessory when I make the selection there.
And that will allow it to travel through the path much easier.
Does a very nice job of bringing this through the printer.
Make sure you don't let this get beat up, because this has got to travel through the
print path and to in this front area here, and clear that curing platen.
If this gets too beat up, it may get stuck there when you're feeding the fabric,
and you don't want that to happen.
So, take care of this.
Next thing I'm going to do is, I'm going to place the platen covers in.
Now, this fabric being almost completely airtight,
I could print this with the existing platen covers,
your flat platen covers.
Platen's [flattens?] just fine.
I wouldn't need to put the ink collector in.
The ink collector isn't really necessary for a fabric like this.
You could use the ink collector or not use the ink collector.
Really, no ink is going to go through this fabric.
So, this is what I would call a universal fabric.
It'll work well with any of the Latex printers, including older generations,
because there's really no ink that's going to go through.
So, your choice of which platen you use, is pretty much up to you.
I'm going to leave the original platens in to load this.
I'm not going to put the ink collector platens in,
because I just don't think they're entirely necessary for this fabric.
Now, if you take the ink collector platens out, careful about how much vacuum you use.
You don't need a lot of vacuum to hold down fabric.
Another thing about fabric which is important to remember is, as a rule,
until you're really familiar with fabric, or you have a real feel for it,
I recommend that you use the take-up roll.
I would say 30 or 40 percent of fabrics almost require it.
That is, without the take-up roll, they're not going to travel through the print path properly.
They're going to get stuck back there.
Keep in mind, if it's a kind of dimensional, stretchable fabric,
and you're just pushing it, it doesn't go anywhere.
It just sort of falls, and folds over itself.
But as soon as you put it on the take-up reel, now you have tension.
And that tension holds it down and allows it to travel across the platen smoothly.
In most cases, people using edge guards think that they're solving a problem.
In reality, that problem would be better solved by applying the take-up reel with tension.
The tension is going to do the job to have the fabric travel smoothly through the print path.
If you have kind of buckles and tunneling along the pinch rollers,
putting it on the take-up reel, lifting the lever and dropping it back down again,
and letting the printer smooth itself out with some tension is usually the solution.
So, there are a lot of fabrics that you wouldn't necessarily need the take-up reel.
They're usually coated, thicker, and densely woven.
And over time you'll figure out what those are.
But until then, I kind of recommend the take-up
roll because it's going to make your life a lot easier.
And certainly, until you have your sort of fabric sea legs under you, it's going to be
easiest to just put on the take-up roll, rather than have these problems with head striking.
In a really extreme case, if the carriage comes out and grabs the fabric, it could kind
of stuff it back down in those pinch rollers, and it can get stuck down there.
And then it's quite an effort to take a little
Xacto blade and kind of cut yourself out of it.
Another thing I watch for – and this is true of all media
– now, you're going to use the platen covers for this, so it's not as much of an issue.
But you want to make sure you don't have tape from an old roll, you know,
sticking onto here, because that tape, when it goes through the print path,
you don't want it to get caught in those pinch rollers.
You'll do that once, and then you'll spend the afternoon trying to pull that tape out
of there, and you won't do it again.
But make sure you don't have loose tape, because if it gets caught in those pinch rollers,
it's going to be quite a time, sometimes, to get it out of there.
You want this thing to go through the print path cleanly.
With that said, we're going to move on to loading it, itself.
And then I'm going to show you some other things about what to look for on the take-up roll.
Because this is kind of key to having the fabric
travel properly and then be able to print properly.