Primary Latex Fabric Printing Setup

Printing on fabric with a latex printer requires an understanding of how Fabrics are constructed,

the different types of fabrics and what to look for.

Latex printers print beautifully on fabric coated or uncoated but there are things that I recommend you understand.

Before I load the material the first thing I figure out is :

1.Is this fabric likely to work with a latex printer?

Here we confirm that all AGIS fabric products on AGIS store are compatible with Latex printers, so make sure you choose a fabric from the media section.

Next to that- for a latex printer – is it on a 3-inch core?

Now the smaller printers the 310 the 330 they will allow you to print with a 2-inch core. You can buy a conversion core for 360 if you want to run to 2 inch core but I think you’ll find that most fabric does come on a 3-inch core.

By fabric I mean fabric that you would buy for design for digital print.You can’t just go to hobby store or fabric store and buy fabric off the shelf and expect that to work in a latex printer.

Usually those fabrics are not prepared on the roll evenly or where the edges cut properly to run through a digital machine. If you’re going to print fabrics on a latex printer you want to buy digital fabric so the stuff with the raw edges those are really not ideal to run on a latex printer.

They probably are not going to work it’s just going to cause a lot of frustration.

We have  a wide range of fabric manufacturers like Endura, Premex and TVF, all of those Fabrics will work well. Check our media section of the store here.

2. How stretchy the fabric is?

Now the first thing you want to know is is how stretchy is the fabric.

A lot of uncoated fabrics maybe extremely dimensionally unstable or very elastic.

If it’s too elastic in both directions, that is if you can take the fabric and stretch it and both ways then it’s going to be harder to run through the printer at a certain point.The stretchability of fabric will make it impossible to go through a latex printer. Some Fabrics are impregnated with a lot of spandex to give them a lot of stretch. The stretches are good for the wrinkle resistance but what it’s not so good for is running through a latex printer.

There are other sublimation printers that may be able to handle a fabric like that but the latex is going to have some trouble, it’s going to either tend to bunch up in the pinch rollers or will tend to miss register.

We would say the most stretchable we can run through the printer would be something like a EZ stretch, it does stretch in both directions and it does require some attention and loading it certainly does require a take up roll though.Any more elastic than that and it’s probably not going to work with latex printers and that’s kind of one of the tougher Fabrics to run.

There are materials that are stretchable in One Direction dimensionally.Those are more stable and I would recommend those in most cases if you’re going to run something that needs wrinkle resistance.

3.Coated Vs Uncoated?

The next thing we want to figure out is if the fabric is coated or uncoated.

If it is coated I want to know what side it’s coated on, some manufacturers are very clear they’ll put a label inside the core as well as a sticker on the roll that says inside print or outside print. What they mean is they did some kind of coating or some kind of chang to the surface of the fabric so that there is an optimal print side.

If that’s the case, make sure you’re aware what optimal print side your printing on.A lot of people will mistakenly print on the wrong side and not be happy with the results,so printing on the correct coated or uncoated side matters.

Next if it’s an uncoated fabric ,it is not that big a deal,you can kind of choose which side you choose to print on, it’s more of a preference there’s no specific coating, I choose to print on the inside of the roll or on the outside of the roll.

Our preference is to print on the outside of the roll if they look the same. If one side looks different than the other than it’s a matter of aesthetic preference on which side.

4.Fabric Inspection

We want to make sure upon inspection on arrival that the fabric is not been damaged.

Sometimes fabric will be damaged or bent or the cores can be crushed in shipping.

Those are going to be very difficult to run because it’s needed fabric needs really to be nice and even and flat to go to the printer.

If you have a core that’s bent or you have sort of undulation, might be pinched or in some way it was put on the core incorrectly, those can all affect the likelihood it’s going to print successfully.

If you have it on the core where they have it kind of puckered on the edges and as a result it’s sort of waves along the surface as it comes through that’s going to go through the pinch rollers and actually cause bunching and you’re going to get little tunneling through there when the printhead comes across that tunneling is going to manifest by having the courage to touch it and leave little marks that usually indicates that the fabric was not prepared correctly or transferred directly from the master role to a smaller role and it’s really more of a media issue than a latex printer issue.

It is not uncommon to find fabric rolls that were damaged in shipping or have some other material handling problem. That is not the printer it’s the role that you purchased.

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