Do the Caswell dyes work at room temperature?

[kiwijetpilot]

... as the LCD manual says they do? Has anyone tried and if so, are the results better or worse than heating the dye?

My own feeling is that the hot dye will start to seal the pores as soon as soon as the work is placed in it... surely this would lead to problems? 140F isn't boiling, but it is hot.

Any info appreciated...

Cheers,

Simon

[M_D]

You can dye at room temperature, we have done so at times. But for our production parts we heat the dye to 130-140º F. It does seem to improve the dye process, and from what I know it is supposed to help the color fastness in the long term.

The temperature of 140ºF doesn't cause premature sealing, although if you got it too hot it certainly would. Unless you dye tank is agitated, it may get hotter on top. So it is a good idea to stir the heated dye to keep the temperature even, especially if the top layer was significantly higher than 140ºF.

[rclint]

I think with the thicker coatings (1 mil) that heating the dye really makes the pores take the dye.

[mcaswell]

The dye temperature of 140f is the setting recommended by the manufacturer. If you try dying at any other temp you will not get the described color.

The dye is designed to work at 140f. However it will work at lower temps like 110f, BUT the results may not be the same as at 140.

Change the temp at your own risk.

This particularly applied to reds.

[Paintbalaguy]

I do all my parts at room tempurature in certain dyes and then some dyes I feel need to be heated up. I left some parts in the florecent pink and it was about a shade away from being red in about 3 minutes, I had to redo that becuase it took to well. With the blues, reds and yellow a4 I find that they have to be heated to work, with black, pink, florecent yellow, olive and orange (forgot wut number) they do well at room temprature but my orange is a little dark so i am thinking it would be better if i heated it.