How to Print on Mylar Bags at Home?

The best printer to print Mylar Bags is Canon PIXMA TR150 Printer, which is not only high in demand but also a professional’s choice. But not everyone can afford a printer for the digital printing of mylar bags. 

So, if you are planning to print mylar bags at home and don’t know where to start. We will be discussing a complete step-by-step procedure to print mylar bags at home with minimum investment and effort. 

To make sure you have all the supplies needed for the dispensary, the best way is to print your own mylar bags. These bags are a great option to carry things along because of their extremely handy nature. We will discuss some tricks and DIY steps to make your task easy.

how to direct print on Mylar bags

Myler bags are especially used to stock some moisture and air-free items. These are lightweight bags that help in preserving the stock. Mylar bags are made of aluminum foil, and further coating of polyester film is applied to them. 

Printing your custom mylar bags comes as a necessity if you are running your own brand and want to sell products under your name.

Silk Screen printing, gravure, flexography, and printing labels and putting them directly on the bags are the few main methods we use to print the mylar bags. Putting printed labels on the mylar bag can be the easiest way to achieve the task. 

Though you won’t be able to achieve a branded look on the bag for a beginner’s startup, this method is the easiest and most cost-effective. Also, flexography and gravure are unsuitable methods in homes because they require professional experience and skills. 

A piece of heavy equipment and technical tools are also necessary for gravure and flexography at home, making it cross the budget line.

After a series of tests and reviews, we reached the point that silk screen printing is the best printing method used on mylar bags. You must need a wooden pad, squeegee, ink, screens, inkjet printer, and transparency positive to do printing on your mylar bag at home. Here in this article, we will discuss a step-by-step process to make your printing easy.

1. Printing The Design Onto The Transparency Flim

First of all, you will require a proper design that will be printed on mylar bags. To create the design, you will need software like adobe photoshop. After the design is completed, it is to be printed on an inkjet transparency film with the help of an inkjet printer. To achieve the best printing format, you need to mirror the image.

2. Production Of The Silk Screen

For making the SilkScreen at home, you must require a wooden or an aluminum frame. For home-based printing, we recommend you use a wooden frame because it’s cheap and easy to use at home. We will talk about DIY screen printing techniques at home just to avoid extra money on ready-made screens.

The technique and procedure to make a silkscreen are as follows,

● Use a 100 mesh screen and attach the silkscreen to the wooden frame.

● First, attach the two adjacent sides, then attach the two remaining sides.

● While attaching screens to the frame, a staple gun is best used.

● In the meantime, constantly pull the screen utilizing your thumb and forefinger. You have to pull the screen hard while the remaining fingers should push the wood outline simultaneously. After this task is done, trim the leftover screen to the left along the borders.

3. The Process Of Applying The Photo Emulsion On The Screen

Initially, mix the photo emulsion with a sensitizer or diazo activator before applying it to the screen. The sensitizer or activator is applied because its main purpose is the make photo emulsion light-sensitive. 

Here the perfect ratio of emulsion to the sensitizer must be 9:1. In simple words, you must mix 90% of the photo emulsion and 10% of the sensitizer/activator. It may be more or less as this quantity totally depends on your requirement. Now we will discuss the mixing of emulsion and the diazo activator.

● First, fill in the diazo activator container with tap water; you must be very careful as the powder can mix with air and cause breathing issues.

● Fill the container up to the shoulder, and shake the container well while it is closed.

● After shaking it for some while, the diazo activator in the water must thoroughly be mixed, now pour this solution into your emulsion.

● Mix the emulsion into the activator by using a mixing stick. Be patient while mixing because we need a fine and even greenish color which will come after good mixing.

Procedure Of Applying photo emulsion mixture to the screen

● A sufficient amount of photo emulsion blend should be poured on the extension coater and then applied on the screen

● At this stage, we have to tilt our screen 45 degrees backward so the thin side of the scoop coater must be pressed against the mesh. Now let the emulsion slowly drip down so good contact with the film can be made.

● You must keep pushing your scoop coater against the screen and pull it up. Keep doing this process until it reaches the top of the screen.

● Lastly, flip around your screen and repeat the same process on the print side, which is actually the back side of the screen.

● Until the emulsion-coated screen is dried, you have to keep it in the dark place.

4. Preparation Of Screens For Printing

● Take a suitable wooden pad of decent size which is suitable for printing mylar bags

● We need a flat printable surface because we need to put the pad inside the bag while printing.

● Then stick the design positive on the screen with the help of cooking oil. Stick the design positively with the screen carefully by using your hands. The texture should be evenly distributed.

● You will notice that the unprinted part of the paper has turned transparent after applying the cooking oil.

● Now expose the screen to 40 watts of LED lights placed at a 20 ft distance for approximately 6 minutes. This helps clean the excess amount of photo emulsion from the design.

● Now at this point, you will notice the screen stencil. Immediately remove excess water from the stencil using cotton pads.

● After waiting a while, when the screen stencil is dried, apply a photo hardener to it. The photo hardener is used to make the stencil hard and durable.

● A ready-to-use photo emulsion is available in the market that does not require a photo hardener to be mixed afterward.

● After the photo hardener dries, we need to place packing tapes on the edges of your stencil to prevent damage and paint leaks.

● When the taping of screen stencils is completed, we are ready to begin the printing on mylar bags.

How to Print on Mylar Bags at Home (Step-by-Step-Method)

● As we have already discussed, put the soft pad or platen inside the bag so the folds and damage won’t affect the printing.

● We also need a plastic squeegee of 70 durometers – a plastic squeegee is way cheaper than a wooden squeegee.

● Use a Jacquard water-based ink because it offers ultimate strength. Using water-based ink here is very necessary for printing mylar bags.

● Drive the ink straight through the screen by pushing the squeegee filled with ink.

● At this point, you can see a successful clear and clean print on your mylar bag.

● In the end, drying the mylar bags is very important for a long-lasting print.

Pro Tips

Decide the right size of the mylar bag you want to use for printing. Choosing the right size is very important; after all, the bag needs to be filled with heavy things. Also, while printing your own mylar bags, you must be well aware of how the bag looks from different angles. 

The design must be in perfect dimension, and the colors need to be well-saturated. When you are done with the task, place the mylar bags in a dark and dry place and let them dry for a good one hour. This time is very important for fully setting up the print.

Otherwise, smudges can appear on the print. The best recommendation is to keep the bags for drying overnight.

The next process is proper sealing of the mylar bags to prevent damage during travel. For a proper sealing process, you may need a heat sealer, or mylar bags need to be sent to form a flex or seal machine. 

Here the mylar is folded by sealing it to give it a perfect pouch shape. This sealing is important so it can handle heavy weights and rough transits.

If you want the mylar bags to be used for food items, then you can use an arrow jet water-based pigment ink. This ink allows safe food packaging than other inks in the market. It is always better to have little contact with the interior of the material; however, the ink used here is nontoxic.

If you don’t know which printer is best recommended by professionals for printing high quality Mylar bags, check out our guide on the best printer for Mylar bags to make the right decision.

Conclusion

Finally, we have discussed silk printing and some other methods to print on mylar bags. Just because we are in favor of the DIY method, we did not go into professional techniques like conveyor drying for the curing process. Instead, we opted for the sun-drying process or the light process. 

However, it is a bit time-consuming, but at the same time, it makes it budget-friendly and easy to print a small number of bags at home. We hope this article has helped you to learn how to print mylar bags. Let us know your experiences in the comment section.

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