Where did the moisture come from?

[PeteO]

Morning,

So over the weekend i tried out the Sub Crystals from Longforte.

In each case i printed the image, wrapped and taped to the front of the crystal, pressed with paper up, covered with a silicone sheet for 5 mins @ 200c

The first came out fine,

The second came out with obvious signs of moisture on the paper, and in fact when removing the paper it tore along the folds as it was so wet. This resulted in the crystal having 2 cloudy areas in the bottom corners.

When pressing slates i prepressed with paper to remove moisture, and seeing posts on here saying the same for cork coasters, but that makes sense, these are porous materials.

Where did the moisture come from on the crystal?

Now my only thought is the first was pressed with a cool silicone mat (as in it hadnt been used before), the second the silicone mat was warm from the previous press. Do the silicone mats attract condensation or retain moisture?

Pete

[webtrekker]

I would have thought that any moisture in the silicone sheet would have presented itself during the first 5 minute pressing.

I see Longforte recommend pressing for 7 minutes, not 5. Maybe that makes a difference.

My money would be on moisture from the printed paper. I've had this before printing aluminium.

[PeteO]

Thanks Webtrekker, how did you get over the issue with the moisture? When you say in the paper, do you just mean from being in the printer for a length of time?

The 5 mins was a recommendation from the person who suggested them as a worthwhile item, will try at 7 to see what occurs.

[webtrekker]

It turned out to be a storage problem for me. My workroom was at the north side of the house and was always cold and never got any sun. When I moved to the other, sunny side of the house, the problem disappeared. My cutter works better too with paper and card stored in the 'sunny' room. All paper is very susceptible to humidity levels.