Kitebuilder.com

[marty]

I want to add my logo, or maybe just my name to some fabric to be included on the kites that make. I originally thought about silk Screening, but then thought, I wonder if there is a way to use an ink jet printer to print on fabric?

Has anyone done this or heard of anyone doing this?
_________________
Gentle breezes...

Marty Sasaki
Arlington, MA USA

[Stan]

Marty,
Inkjets don't work too well on fabric because the weave wicks the ink, but laser printers might if the heat doesn't melt it.
Maybe a stamp like Heads-Up uses?
Some interesting inkjet media is available from papilio.com that can be used to make various labels and transfers. I use some of their products to put logo labels on prototype mock-ups at work. May be worth a look.

[KiteSquid]

Are you wanting to mark on polyester or nylon as there is a BIG difrence in the methods....

You can squirt dyes thru inkjet priters, as long as they are not thermal heads so all HP printers are out as the dyes will clog up the heads in a big hurry. Let me know if you want more info but this is an expenisve path to go down.... I have done some extesive reasearch here...as it is where I want to go next. I need a older Epson color or for the big bucks there are some large format printers that will do the job. over $100,000 to get started.....

Oh and you should coat the fabric with some propritary anti wicking stuff..


Ken Conrad is dooing some wonderfull stuff with disbulimation(sp?) printing. He sent me some samples and WOW was I impressed!!!!!!! but you have to control the tempature VERY carefully!!!!!!!!


You can also directly apply dyes onto fabrics and then steam set them to make them perminant. Look at my Iris Edo:



This was my first attempt at dirrect application of dyes and I dont think I did toooooooo bad. 100% hand dyed fabric.


Also you can use markers to write on fabric. I have seen it done on RSN but not RSP yet but it should work too. If you are intrested I could look up the brand of markers....
_________________
VR/
KiteSquid
AKA TakoIka
AKA Harold
King George VA


P.S. Yet another post by the Squid..... Doesent he ever shut up???

P.P.S. The wind is like the air, only pushier.

[dpb]

I have thought about it for a home inkjet, but it would be tough.

First is the fact that most fabrics would not feed through an inkjet. You might be able to use Ripstop which has been attached to paper with spraymount, but then you come into the second problem: absorbtion.

Most cotton, silks and etc absorb too much. 1 pixel would spread out, become defuse and even bleed into other pixels. Coated Ripstop on the other hand wouldn't absorb enough (this is aqueous ink and Ripstop is waterproof). It would all pool on the surface, and run together. After it dried, it would probably flake off.

Then there is a 3rd problem: aqueous inkjet is water soluable. Get it wet and it runs. Some special and expensive media (ie:papers and such) have special binding agents which grab the dye molecules and preserve them in a static matrix afte the ink dries. This not true of paper in general, and definitely not true of most fabric and Ripstop. So if you get a picture to stick to a kite, don't get it wet.

The 4th issue is the fact that, in general, you will be restricted to small kites. Even if you buy a B-size printer, that's only 11"x17".

Now there are industrial inkjet machines which do use appropriately stable dyes and pigments and will print big enough to cover the side of a trailer for a Mack truck, or even a large billboard (I have seen the printers and their output). It is waterproof and UV resistant. The only problems are that they cost in the mid 6 figures, and I do not know if the the pigments are transmisive (in other words I do not know if the "paints" would look good with the sun behind the kite, or if it is opaque and thereby turns dark and blocks the sun). If there are "paints" which do look good, I expect we could see a large advertizing kite, if someone approached a major brand name obout it (e.g. "The Classic Coke Kite", 40 ft tall and 20 feet wide). After all, the technology already exists, and is cheap enough that it is already being used by advertisers (though it might be a bit pricey for you or me).

Dave
_________________
Cherry Blossoms fall like rain,
A lively kite steals the sky,
Paradise in a moment.

[dpb]

Dye Sublimation is a really interesting technology, though it is dying out (oof, an unintentional pun). The quality is excellent because each pixel can have as many intensities as you are capable of making.

Basically you have a transfer ribbon with 4 colors (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black). Then put each panel next to your paper and put down a pixel every you want a dot of that color. You put down a pixel running both ribbon and paper over a very precise heating element and heating up the transfer roll; you literally boil the dye off the transfer roll at that point/dot. If you want a light pixel, you heat it a little bit, and if you want a saturated pixel you heat/boil it much harder. That means that, like your PC terminal, each pixel can have 256 levels of saturation (the average printer has 2 levels per pixel: off or on), and like a printer, you can have 600 dpi (the average PC terminal is 72 dpi). This means that Sublimation Dye has an excellent, even photographic appearance.

The problem is that you have to use 4 color panels per page, no matter how little ink you put on the page. Even a page of black text essentially uses 4 panels, even though no Cyan, Magenta or Yellow is ever used. And each set of 4 panels is expensive (I don't know what the cost is now, but it used to be about $2 for B-size). Also it takes a special media/paper to absorb the dye completely, and the paper was expensive too (I don't believe that Ken uses that media for his kites, and so his colors are a little muted and appear coarser by comparison). It is also a slow technology (a page/min is fast for B-size). Laser printer now produce output much faster (25+ pages/min), and the pages cost somewhere about 5-10 cents. Also while inkjet costs can cost just as much as Sub Dye for a heavy coverage page on photo paper, they cost much less on light coverage pages regular paper. So Sub dye machines only exist in the specialty print shops now, and have mostly been replaced with other technology (economics over quality).

Dave
_________________
Cherry Blossoms fall like rain,
A lively kite steals the sky,
Paradise in a moment.

[The Phantom]

Hi, Dave.

I believe the Sublimation process that is being discussed is a heat trasfer process. It was developed make in the mid 70's. Remember polyester disco shirts? I had a screen printing shop at the time and got involved with an umbrella manufacturer. We heat transfered the art work onto the nylon panels before they were sewn together. Back then all of the transfers were printed on an offset press. Now, all you need is a dedicated Epson printer. About $300 for the ink cartridges and some kind of a heat transfer machine.

This system is widely used in the trophy, specialty gifts and awards business for metal plates, mouse pads, coffee mugs......

Here are a few sites that I found - GOOGLE search - epson sublimation heat transfer

http://www.bestblanks.com/inks.html

http://www.fineartgicleeprinters.org/ColorSurf_SintesiMutohColorGate/ColorSurf_SintesiColorGate.html

http://www.starlinepacific.com/

http://www.sublimationmaker.com/products/general/whatissub.htm

After reading the information on the bestblanks.com site I found that they sell Sublimation Ink sets for the Epson C84 printer. This printer was on sale at Fry's last week after rebates for $0.00. I own one and it's a great printer. A standard Ink set is around $50.00. Buy a printer just for the Ink? Go figure. The Sublimation Ink set, though, is $337.00.

The Phantom
Lindsey Johnson
_________________
If you don't think too good. Then don't think too much.

[dpb]

[KiteSquid]

[KiteSquid]

Here are a few examples of printed or possabily dyed fabrics:

Banners

Kites


Owl Quad Line

or the ones that realy started me thinking down this path... look at the Deutsche Mark Kites (especaly the 1000 note as it is backlit) and is made from a single piece of fabric.

Deutsche Marks at Gomberg Kite Productions This photo was posted in October of '01





Also HERE is were you can buy the large format printers to squit dyes onto fabric with all the support equipment less PC and most of the software to get the job done.

The Acid dye family is for Nylon and the Disperse dyes work on Polyester.

Price????? the whole kit that includes the printer, steamer, Color correcting software (I cant remember what it is called) costs about $150,000......... You provide the PC, Power and the images from your favorite drawing or photo editing package....

Oh, they also recomed puting their coating on the fabric first at $5 to $11 per yard plus shiping


So Dave..... can you see anyway to do this at home on the cheep????? I need to start watching dumpsters for large format printers....

Where are the Mutoh, Epson and Miamki large format printers built/repaied at here in the US?????
_________________
VR/
KiteSquid
AKA TakoIka
AKA Harold
King George VA


P.S. Yet another post by the Squid..... Doesent he ever shut up???

P.P.S. The wind is like the air, only pushier.

[marty]

I love this place. Ask a simple question and get a lesson on technology that I never knew existed.

I should have picked up that large dry mount press that a friend was getting rid of years ago. Of course I don't have anyplace to put such a thing. If I had the press I might order some of those inks just to see what is possible.

I was thinking about printing onto polyester film (aka Mylar) as well as PC-31 and/or Texlon polyester.

What do the "big boys" do?
_________________
Gentle breezes...

Marty Sasaki
Arlington, MA USA