4 Professional Tips for Printing Fabrics

Precisely because of their specialty and uniqueness, fabrics require some basic technical precautions to be handled in the best possible way and to ensure the best results on the printing plotters.

The tips

Loading

With all materials it is essential to pay attention to the loading of the reel in the machine and to its perfect winding; but this precaution must be even more important when printing on textile. The reel must have both sides perfectly aligned.

Rewinder

With any type of textile and on any roll to roll printer, for a correct printing, the fabric must be perfectly fixed to the rewinder’s roll. Special attention must be paid to the perfect tensioning of the rewinder. For the best tensioning of the materials, it is recommended to pull and hook the roll in the center and not on both sides.

Pinch Roller

If printing and cutting systems are used, after tensioning the material correctly, it is recommended to use only the first and the last pinch roller, removing or excluding all the others. Since the pinch rollers of the print & cut systems are very narrow, they exert their pressure at only one point: this causes the creation of waves and folds between them.

Plotter configuration

Other precautions for textile printing on roll to roll systems are:

• Reduce as much as possible or, better still, turn off suction.
• Lower the working temperatures
• If possible, print with the head in high or medium position (if the quality does not suffer).