Printing Metal - Mottled effect

[Justin]

I printed a small metal panel (iPhone insert) following everyone's advice and it seems fine thanks. I still have a couple of larger metal panels to have a play with so fingers crossed these will be better.

[Hyraxx]

I'm having a kind of the same issue as what sounds like yours having but on S3 cases where black is mottled and just not black looks more green. If I print on white metal issues print with the sparkle metal then everything looks good, but I suspect that the sparkly mask the black issue I am having.

[John Nex]

The mottling effect on the black is down to the coating being too thin to hold all of the black ink which is made up from all 4 colours. It's just too heavy to put down properly. The coating on the sparkly metal is much better and is thicker, thus allowing it to hold the ink. The other problem of mottling can occur when there is too much pressure and the mottling is actually paper fibres melted in to the coating.

[Hyraxx]

Its becoming very frustrating now, as I cant lay down less black ink as there are no settings in the mac driver and if I lighten the image in PS then it makes matters worse.

[Andrew]

A bit less heat will generally help mottling. If you are getting greenish tinges with black (which is common) then a tweak in the profile might help.

The sparkle does come out better but as far as I was aware they were coated the same as the plain. There have been many different batches through now on the iPhone cases and not always consistent in their printing ability........ even though most come from the same place in China.

[Hyraxx]

Think i'm going to fire up a windows system tomorrow and see if I can get anything better out of the drivers, as I never thought to try windows. Also tweaked my profile and going to test some more.

[Paul]

Remeber. By tweeking your profile you can come up with.good settings for one collor but you will mess up another one.

[AdamB]

Had a quick look over the posts but not sure if it was established or not?

I always print glass and metal in reverse (i.e chopping boards alluminium etc)

by reverse I mean I would 'normally' (on anything else) have the substrate with the transfer on top (face down onto the substrate) and then press down.

With metal and glass I have a piece of baking paper, then the transfer face up on the bottom, then the glass or metal on top of that (facing down) , then a sheet of baking paper on top and have never had any problems with them that way.

[Justin]

Bought some more white metal to have a play with

Looks like my issues were down to pressure. I'm now resting the top plate on the metal (transfer facing upwards) with no additional pressure at all. Still got a slight pattern under certain light which was consistent with my press lower mat surface. Popped a piece of silicon under the print this time and hey presto looks great, no markings at all

[WorthDoingRight]

I print my tiles in a similar fashion except I use a mousemat with baking parchement on first. Then my transfer goees on this face up with my tile on top of this face down then more baking parchment and finally a silicon mat. I find the mousemat helps curve the paper around the edges for a full face transfer.

I did today experiment with Yolo's Mugs N More laser transfer paper. First two sheets melted in the printer on plain paper setting, third sheet went through ok on film setting but failed to transfer to a tile face up at 120C for 120sec as recommended for mugs. I finally got a transfer to transfer 90% successfully at 140C for 180sec then turning press off and leaving for additional 30 secs before removing backing in bowl of water. At this point I ran out of my samples - annoying that the first 2 melted in the printer :frown:

Have to decide now whether to risk buying some Mugs N More (potentially results may be ok once I get the right temp/time settings - still wondering what a CUBE is that they mention in their guide) or going the TMT CPM route instead.