3 Ways To Use the Stampinator (and How to Dial in Time & Temp)

Let's talk about time and temp, where to start at, and the three ways we use the Stampinator here at MADE Lab. First of all, time and temp's going to be depending on your ink. And if you're using the green rubber, if you're using the green rubber, you need to run the stamping about 25 to 30° warmer than you would on standard no rubber, just the teflon.

That little bit of thickness of that green rubber changes your variable.

The second is ink.

If you're using a low cure ink, you're going to lower that stampinator down about 20° or so. what the difference is between a standard cure 320 and a low cure at 280 to 290. So with that said, we're using a standard cotton white ink and a standard lowblade ink on this particular job. We're going to start at 320 for 4 seconds and we're going to dial it in from there. The first way we use the stampinator here at M Lab is to pre-stamp it. This works particularly well for thicker garments or fleece and one of the preferred ways we use the Stampinator. Today we're actually going to be printing on Allmade's organic CBC fleece.

And we're going to be pre-stamping that for 4 seconds at 320°.

Because we're pre-stamping it, we need to put a burner shirt on here first cuz we're going to do first piece and then last piece right here. So, it's going to stamp after before it's printed. We got our print head number four turned on. And then we have our print head number six, which is our print stroke cotton white turned on. We're going to see how this comes out. So, first piece, let's start it up. And then we're going to do last piece when our garment's ready to print.

Okay, we're pre-pressing the garment here. And let's check out the print results when we're done. A nice smooth print on Allmade's Organic CBC, please.

The second way we use the stamp here at MADE Lab is to flash stamp it, meaning use the Stampinator as the flash dryer. So, we're going to be printing the front of this CVC hoodie fleece. It has a pocket. We're going to slightly raise up the back of the Stampinator to slightly offset that pocket a little bit. We're just going to raise it up a millimeter for a stamp flash. We're going to print and then stamp after that. Send that around for another rotation. And we're going to start at that 320 for 4 seconds.

Okay, we have a nice good flashed ink. Slightly tacky, but we did have a little bit of ink on the bottom. Just towards the top. So, if you see the bottom of the heart, no ink right there, just a little bit towards the top.

• The reason why this is happening is because the way that hoodie is designed, it has a seam right there that is preventing that from getting down. So, we need to slightly lower this down a little bit in order to press a little bit harder.

• If this was consistent across the entire design, we would know it's more of a temperature problem. But now, this is an offcont problem that samper is not able to touch all the way. So, to clean that off, very easy to do.

• Just take a dry rag and that ink just wipes off if you're using plastisol.

• Lower my front off contact a little bit so it gives a little bit more pressure up there in the front. This is another thing that the green rubber actually works very well with because the green rubber assumes those seams and kind of evens things out.

Okay, here we go. Let's try to run this again with those adjustments.

After we made those adjustments, we got a perfect flash stamp. One thing to consider when you're flash stamping, specifically fleece, is fleece retains heat differently. So, even though we pre-pressed it at 320, in order to get it to stamp and release, we took the stamp down to 300° and it flashed perfectly.

Now, we'll run the overprint with just one print stroke and see how it looks.

Crisp, smooth, and great looking print. Final way we use the Stampinator here at MADE Lab is actually to cure the ink. So, it's a cure stamp. What we're going to do is we're going to show how that works. There's a few ways to do this.

• You can do this with a craft paper or you can do this with the teflon paper. The teflon paper is going to leave it glossy, more like a heat transfer or DTF. The craft paper is going to leave it more matte like a traditional screen print, though the fibers will be matted down.

• For a full cure, we're going to stamp it for about 7 to 8 seconds.

Again, we're making sure that we do not have any ink releasing on the Teflon, which we don't. And let's do a stretch test to see how that looks. We're doing a stretch test. And that ink is fully cured.

Now, let's run it one more time with some craft paper. There's a few different ways to install the craft paper. You can use Velcro or you can actually use a spray mist to stick it on. The cool thing is is that Stahls makes this and it's very effective for using the Stampinator with matte fibers. Again, we're heat pressing this for the same 7 to 8 seconds at the same flash temperature of 300°. And with that craft paper, we have a nice matte finish on this cure. Again, we're stretch testing that to make sure it's fully cured. No problem.