Faux suede pressing heat and times

[Photomouse]

Could anyone give me an idea of the heat, time and pressure needed to transfer an image to faux suede? We will be using a flat bed press to do it.

thanks

[pisquee]

As a guide I would start with 200 degrees C, and 1 minute, and then experiment from there. Depends on your inks, and how accurate your press temp is.
On our rotary press, we do suedette at 170 degrees, with a 1 minute pass through time.

[Photomouse]

Ok thanks, I'll give that a try

[Photomouse]

What could be the cause of the images looking to dark on the fabric? Is it just a case of increasing the light in Photoshop before it's printed or could it be down to the ICC profile, the fabric or my printer settings?

[pisquee]

Your images print fine on all other substrates, except the suede? with exactly the same settings?

[Photomouse]

Looking at them, they all seem to be dark. I followed all the sawgrass installation instructions when installing the inks and installed the correct ICC profile, maybe my screen needs calibrating?

[pisquee]

Yeah, if colour accuracy is important to you, you need a calibrated screen, along with an understanding of the differences between how what you see on screen is lit with a light behind it, and what's printed on paper doesn't, so there's always going to be a different look.
Also, with the level of printer you have, you're not really doing it justice (or getting the best results) by not having a custom ICC profile.

[Photomouse]

How can I go about getting a custom ICC profile? Is the ICC profile that came with the inks not up to standard?

[pisquee]

The generic profile that came with the inks is a "good-enough" one to cover all similar models of the printer you have, and doesn't take into account that every individual printer will print slightly differently, along with everything you print to will print differently, so, in an ideal world, you need an ICC profile for each printer you have, and for each different substrate that you print to... a starting point would be one profile for bright white things (like aluminium sheets and ceramics etc) and then one for more matt surfaces like fabrics.

[pisquee]

Paul (one of the moderators here) does profiling, so he would be best to speak to.