Soft Knot Fabrics

*Soft Knit Fabrics I've been having some trouble trying to print on a soft knit fabric from Beaver Papers. It's their TexStyles Soft Knit DTF fabric and says its latex compatible but not sure if it'll work for our 365. The problem isn't so much with the ink as it adheres excellently, but the big issue has been some major rippling I've been getting with it. I printed on another product of theirs, Salute DTF and it comes out beautifully, crisp, sharp, and zero rippling. I personally think the fabric is too loose of a kit and is going in between the rollers and creating ripples, thus causing inconsistency in print quality with the highs and lows of the fabric and also head striking in the high points. The issue is, I've been given we have to have some sort of soft fabric option for this job. Is there a way to do this type of fabric in the 365 or is this not possible? I have used the TUR and that didn't help at all. I've tried readjusting the fabric and the rippling doesn't change. We're in need of a premium soft knit fabric to print on, one that is almost like a soft t-shirt material for this client and have some samples coming in, but this particular fabric I don't think will work. Does anyone have any recommendations on what ones to try. We've got samples coming in from Ultraflex and TVF to see if any of those are better.

Ask them to send you profile or just play with the options - temp, passes, vacuum, optimizer, ink density...but a lot of wasted time if color in the end is wrong...

It's not so much the fabric as it's printing, it's when it's coming out of the feed rollers and onto the platen/ink collector is where I'm getting the rippling. I'll upload a picture when I get the chance to run the material again.

Temperature is most of the problem ...try printing with 8 or even 6 passes not giving time to deform the fabric but to cure the ink (with lower temp) of use platen protectors, not to run over metal heaters directly... And search for profile in medialocator for soft fabric if there's any and fingers crossed

As you can see, it's wrinkling when it's not even printing. It's attached to the take-up reel, tension looks great coming out, but on the platen/ink collector, it's creating wrinkles in between each and every wheel. I really think this material will not print with the 365, but I need a 2nd or even 3rd source, especially if someone from HP can respond, that this material is not the right one to use with the 365 printer.

Vacuum is too high causing these wrincles...and there is like a design flaw at couple of places on the printer that gives vertical edges... there's an option in menu for vacuum but printing profile comes with vacuum preset so you may use another profile for fabric just to see the difference... try to modify the profile...

The vacuum isn't even that high so I don't think that is the cause, as you can see the image I have it set to. What I'm trying next is advancing nearly all of the fabric off of the roll onto the take up reel, then rewinding it back on there and seeing if that helps.

Well, seems to have helped and no longer is causing head strikes, but because it's valleying in between the wheels, it's still causing vertical streaking. And I don't know if there's any way to prevent that from happening and it's just the way the machine is.

It's just the printer and the substrate (coating is the most important).. we've tried many canvases expensive and more hp sertified but we're using just 3 for now just because of the coating...looking fine materials when printing looks blurry or streaky or just surface isn't flat but like fingers all over or like in your case patterns and uneven vacuum lines... we encountered problems with different roll of same canvas...had to return to producer ... My point is when you use brand new material for printing (no matter the company is the same) - you have to print and adjust printer parameters for it in your case - check for another printing profile with low vacuum, don't use take up reel for a test, manually rewind the fabric...and may use more optimizer...

Hello @ltreeceiii Yes, it is possible to print on these materials. Please search in Media Locator (https://www.printos.com/ml/#/medialocator ) filter by Media Type Durable textiles -> Media Sub-type Polyester Banner and Displays. In all the materials that come out pay attention to the value of the weight just because we recommend the materials that are below 250g / m2 (which are the Soft Knit) we also recommended using ink collector. We suggest to use 0 values of Optimizer, in order to save ink.