If you are struggling to get a vibrant opaque white print, the chances are you are using too much white ink or over curing! You might think simply printing more white ink will produce a more vibrant and opaque final print, and in theory that is correct, so why are your whites looking dull?
Surface Tension Penetration Take two substances, DTF White ink and adhesive powder, the white ink is opaque, the powder although it looks white in its granule form, turns clear when cured. If you mix the two together and cure them, hey presto, your white ink becomes semi transparent giving dull results.
Surface Tension Explained At some point in our earlier school years, floating a pin on water was used to explain what surface tension is. The surface tension in white ink, is what makes it possible to print larger amounts without the ink running off the film. The image above shows an Ultra DTF print, with 160% white ink printed ready to be gelled! What is gelling? If adhesive powder is applied to white ink at this level of thickness, some of the powder will penetrate the surface tension and mix with the white ink. As the powder is actually clear, once it melts as part of the curing process, the particles that have mixed with the ink dilute it making it semi transparent. Using adhesive powder that stays white when cured can help, but it still produces microscopic pin holes if the ink is not gelled prior to the powder application. In order to avoid this you can do one of two things!
Reduce the amount of white ink to a level where it has naturally gelled (partially dried) before the powder is applied. This makes the powder sit on top of the ink rather than mixing in. Although you have reduced the amount of white ink, the final print will have less pin holes giving a brighter more opaque white and vibrant colours. Once this process is mastered, you are at the limit of what your DTF system can produce.
Depending on your model of DTF printer, you can use two sided curing to make sure the ink is forced to gel no matter how thick it has been printed. The ink must be kept perfectly horizontal until it is gelled, or it will be thicker at the lower end or worse run off the page. The R-Jet PRO ULTRA DTF™ V8 is currently the only DTF system with a perfectly horizontal film path allowing the ink to stay even as it passes through the two sided curing unit before the powder is applied.
No other DTF systems can match the Resolute R-Jet PRO ULTRA DTF™ system for opacity and dye migration blocking.
For more information on improving your DTF prints, please call us at 01246 202686, email us at sales@resoluteink.co.uk, or schedule a demonstration using the links below.
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