Evaluating the Quality of Ink for DTF Printing
Evaluating the Quality of Ink for DTF Printing
White ink is way more important than other colors in the DTF printing process, and its usage rate is higher than others. If you don't know whether your new white ink good or not, reading this article will help you to find out.
1. Precipitation test (Suggestion: This method is best tested with 2 different brands of white ink)
You can pour the white ink into the clear water bottle, shake it then let it stand; then watch the different between the bottles: the slower the sediment in the ink settles, the better the relative quality of the white ink.
2. Print on the DTF machine to see fluency
You can print from the length of 10m first, and then increase by the length of 5m, from which to see whether the fluency of continuous ink printing is high or not. Good ink will run smoothly during the printing process.
3. Check the tensile stress-
You can print a pure white pattern prints, then stretch it. By checking the elasticity, you can know the tensile strength of the white ink. As usual, the higher the tensile strength, the better the quality.
4. Check the purity of color
Some ink are just not white enough, you can watch the white ink during the DTF printing process, check the purity by comparing color cards. The whiter it gets, the better it is.
Actually, glycerin and titanium dioxide are two important components that determine the quality of white ink. “Glycerin” makes sure the fluency of DTF printing , “titanium dioxide” makes sure the tensile strength. Although, using the best quality white ink is well known, but due to the printers’ different size of wave patterns in each factory, in order to ensure the smooth printing, which will need different kinds of inks to match. Therefore, it’s best to choose the original matching ink is the highest compatibility in the selection of ink process.
The test condition of AIIFAR's ink test: First, it must be printed continuously and smoothly for more than 30m; Second, if it can pass the test strip. Only the white ink that passes the above two conditions at the same time is considered to pass AIIFAR’s test.
By the way, when it comes to white ink, there is a problem that must trouble you for a long time: the printer’s print heads are always blocked by white sediment. When the printer heads are blocked, you would need to stop running the machine to clean the print heads, which would cost you some precious time. If the number of clogs occurs too many times, you would need to spend extra money to buy a new print head. So, to prevent this from happening, AIIFAR has invented a white ink stirring device for DTF printer, which can keep the white ink rotating without precipitating. Here’s a video for more info about the white ink stirring device.