Minimise imprints from heating plates

What does it mean when a heating plate leaves an imprint?

Sometimes, when applying heat transfers, the heating plate will leave behind a so-called imprint on your garment after the decal has been applied. This creates an indented rectangle surrounding the print where the heating plate was applied, but all textiles vary in how sensitive they are to heat and pressure when you’re applying prints.

How do I get rid of heating plate imprints?

On some materials, the imprint fades away after a while, once the garment has reabsorbed some of the moisture in the surrounding environment. On other materials, the imprint disappears after the garment is washed, but unfortunately there are also others where the imprint is permanent.

It’s a good idea to handle polyester and other synthetic materials carefully when applying transfer prints. Since these are most often made of plastic, the garment melts wherever the heating plate is applied. Fleeces are a product you need to be particularly careful with.

To minimise the imprint from the heating plate, we recommend using as small a sub-plate as possible for applying the transfer print.

Another alternative is to use a rubber pad to raise the area you want to print in order to minimise the area that the heating plate will be applied to (see art. no. 3003, 3011, 3012 & 3014).

If you’re using a rubber pad to raise your printing area, we recommend reducing the pressure even more.

The imprint from the heating plate will also be less prominent if you use a lower temperature for the application, so we recommend using our FLEX Heat Transfer when working with slightly more sensitive materials as this has a lower application temperature.

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Use our FLEX product to reduce the temperature during the application, thereby minimising the risk of leaving behind an imprint from the heating plate.