design innovation series
street fleece edition
printing on fleece 101
hey everyone we're kicking off our six-part video series all about fleece
our Street fleece collection is just huge right now everyone's loving it so
we wanted to show you some creative ways of how to print on it
printing on fleece is a little different than T's so we want to show you the ins
and outs of that so we'll start with putting basic so we just plain it in
Sacramento now and we're gonna head to motion textiles which is one of the best
print shops in the nation and they're going to show you how to print on fleece
so let's get going
all right so we've made it to Motion Textile and we're gonna kick off the
six-part printing series with some basic printing tips from Tom and if you have
any extra questions after this video be sure to comment below and I'll
personally go in and answer all of your questions so let's get going
6 things you need to know about printing on fleece
so Tom I'm super excited about printing these fleece designs what's different about
printing on fleece compared to a t-shirt so printing on fleece is generally a
little bit more difficult than printing on the typical jersey knit t-shirt but
with some simple measures you can actually make the process a lot easier
tip 1 adjust off contact
my first tip for printing fleece is adjusting your off-contact that's the
distance between the screen and the surface of the substrate you always want
to raise the off contact because the fleece is a thicker material you want to
make sure that the screen is not touching the fleece before you print you
want to make sure you have about 1/8 of an inch of distance between your garment
and the screen so the screen is able to bounce back up after you apply a
pressure this will help prevent smudging the ink after it's laid down one hack is
using a piece of cardboard or thin materials to help set your off contact
tip 2 know your mesh count
the second thing we'll talk about is selecting the right mesh count on fleece
you generally want to go with a lower mesh count at least for the base layer
or base layers the key is to penetrate the fabric to flatten the fabric out so
that you have a smooth stable printing substrate laying down a screen with the
low mesh count will help create a smooth surface to print on we typically start
with a 135 mesh count screen for the base layer and then use a 225 mesh count
screen for the top layers
tip 3 select correct adhesive
selecting the proper adhesive is very very important
when printing fleece so before printing jersey knit fabrics we would generally
use a roll-on water-based tack for fleece we use an aerosol spray and we
spray each and every platen before the garment is loaded on it's really really
crucial for holding registration on press both a web-based spray adhesive or
roll-on based pallet adhesive are popular
choices when printing fleece you can always test out different adhesives to
see what you prefer you just want to make sure the fleece stays put on the
put on the platen
tip 4 pre flash and flatten
advance tip for printing on fleece is to pre flash and flatten the fabric before
the very first print goes down so we run a flash that pre shrinks the fabric and
then the flattener screen is what actually locks the fabric down on to
this protective flatten taking this extra step before you lay down any ink
ensures an ultra smooth print surface on which to lay your design it's a quick
and easy way to take your print from good to great
tip 5 flash at lower temperatures
when we're printing fleece
we want to be really really careful about controlling the flash temperature
on the press and so why is that different than printing on a t-shirt
fleece is really really prone to scorching warping and moving around on
press when the flash temperatures are too intense so the general idea is that
you want to flash at a lower temperature and at a slightly longer dwell time if
needed for both water based and plastisol inks
we recommend flashing at temperatures between 220 and 260 degrees this will
reduce the risk of your garment streaking or distorting on the press
tip 6 design to garment
so the best advice I could offer for printing on fleece is actually in the
design stage designing to the substrate is what we call it so creating designs
that are actually print-friendly on fleece trying to minimize color count
minimizes registration limit the amount of detail in the design that's gonna be
your best bet for getting the best results if you aren't sure what artwork
works best with please stay tuned because we'll cover lots of design ideas
for fleece later in this series alright guys we have five awesome
designs are gonna be showing you guys over the next five weeks so be sure to
subscribe to our channel because I promise you you're not gonna want to
miss this it's gonna be pretty epic so hit that subscribe button and I'll see
you guys at the next video so I think those are some great tips you shared
with everyone so let's get into this little bit which fleece should we start
with first I think we're gonna start with the fluorescent print the guys are
actually getting that set up on the press and then we're gonna go on to the
holographic that's gonna be fun because we're trying something totally new that
we've never done before there and then a little bit after that we'll go on to the
Jumbo print and that's probably gonna take us through the rest of the day