White Ink Printing with the Anajet Garment Printer

Achieving Optimal White Ink Results with your AnaJet Direct-to-Garment Printer

Printing in Content Based Mode

Printing Without Content Based Mode

Print Head Nozzle Check

What Pretreatment does.
Preteatment is a primer/bonding agent that is
only necessary when using white ink.
(MSDS Ingredients list available).

 

Required tools

A sprayer that can spray a fine mist, A Wagner HVLP
(High Volume Low Pressure) sprayer is recommended, you can also use a Hudson sprayer that will deliver a fine mist.

 

 

The AnaJet Pretreatment Booth will allow you to move the pretreatment indoors, away from wind, rain and cold. It keeps the undesirable spray mists under control, by venting outside with the provided exhaust tubes, so the operator can concentrate on spray operations.

The twin exhaust blowers force all your mists through a multi-stage filter system and then outside. Swing doors allow easy loading of garments.

 

 

Application Procedure

Apply Pretreatment in slow EVEN passes.

Since the pretreatment has a white caste when wet, look for an EVEN grayish wet sheen across the garment.

If the pretreatment soaks through to the back or begins to run or drip you are applying more than you need.

Going in only one direction even out the pretreatment using a card squeegee to assure EVEN coverage.

 

Drying options

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Line dry, Flash Dry, Conveyer dry, or heat press by hovering the heating element above the garment.

*Note: When drying the pretreated garment with a heat press, be sure to hover the heating element above. If you clamp the press down, you may cause the pretreatment to glaze as shown.

Storage

Once completely dry, shirts can be folded and stored until needed.  

Effects of poor pretreatment:In this case the pretreatment was applied unevenly with the lighter areas allowing the white ink to soak into the fabric causing a mottled appearance.

  

White Ink Pigment Separation

Since the titanium dioxide pigment in the white ink is so heavy, when the white ink is not used for a few days the pigment may begin to settle in the ink tubes.
Before printing with white ink check the white ink tubes where they enter into the print carriage. If they appear milky or bluish the pigment has settled and you will need to advance past this settled ink.

 

 

 

 

  

White Ink Pigment Separation
If the pigment in your white ink has settled, a good way to advance past this settled ink is to print a square of just white ink underbase. Use a setting of Heavy Drop Size, Level 3. You will see when the printing begins that the white inks appear milky and grey but as the print continues the white ink will become stronger. When the underbase is satisfactory press the cancel key. This process will advance just the white ink without wasting any CMYK ink. You will then be able to print with a strong white underbase.

 Fabric Fibers

 The image above shows a close up view of the fibers of a standard t-shirt. To achieve the best results when printing it is necessary to flatten these fibers.

The images below show the results of printing when the fabric fibers have not been pressed down.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fabric Fibers & Heat Press Settings

To flatten the fibers of a pretreated garment place it in the heat press and clamp down for about 5 seconds. A higher pressure setting may be necessary to flatten stubborn fibers.
After the garment is printed, place it on the heat press and hover the heat element over the garment by approximately ½” (15mm) for 15 seconds. (This procedure allows the layers of ink to set up before applying pressure, this keeps the white underbase layer from pushing up through the color layer resulting in fading of the image.)
Place parchment on the garment and clamp down the heat press with medium pressure for 90 seconds at 330˚F,165˚C.

 

 

White Ink and Polyester Fabrics

When printing on blends of cotton and polyester keep the following in mind. Since the ink will not adhere to the polyester fibers in the garment the underbase will not be a vibrant and this will in turn lead to the colors also appearing muted. The higher the polyester content in the fabric blend the greater this effect will be.  This becomes even more pronounced after heat pressing.