Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
-
hi I'm Nick Regine
the professor of crystal. Welcome to the fourth episode
of "asked the professor". I'm here in Wattens, Austria with my colleague Ralph
Schwaiger
Ralph welcome! Thank you Nick, glad you could do it
i'm happy to be here. Ralph do you mind telling me a little bit about what you do for
our customers
of course, I'm in technical customer support department and we do
application trainings for our customers worldwide
so just to let customers know that we do have technicians
located all around the world that can serve as at customers
we do have technicians in Asia, we do have technicians in america
and we do have few technicians here at the headquarters in wattens
going out wherever you need us perfect thank you so much
today on the episode we're going to learn how to work with the hotfix
flatback crystals we are that we're gonna learned to decorate whether it be
a shoe
or a textile or we working with the flat backs for jewlery
ähm, so Ralph I am gonna need your help to explain to our customers how
this is actually done Glad i can be of help it is a honor for me
thank you so much so ralph we have some of the flat back Swarovski Elements
lay down in front
would you mind explaining to our customers exactly what they're looking
at?
yes of course, I show. Here we have the
cut side, the shiny side and
on the back side you can see the hotfix glue
can you tell me what the melting temperatures would be of the hotfix
adhesive on the back of the crystal
so our temperature range is between 120 to 170 degrees Celsius
which means 250 to 340 degrees Fahrenheit
we do have the lowest melting temperature on market
so Ralph, is this hotfix material, is this good for the washing machine and also
for dry cleaning?
yes of course it is
ralph, we have got two different types of equipment here to apply the Swarovski
Elements Hot Fix crystals
so I'd like to turn around and maybe I'll show you one and then you can show
me the other way of
placing on the Hot Fix crystals. This one here is known as a crystal applicator a
robo stick
Basically you would have different size tips that are here for the
different sized crystals
My favorite one to use is really the flat tip
on here as it works well with the larger ones, also the smaller crystals
and also with different shapes that we have. So what I will do is, I will heat
this wind up
and then once I have it heated, i will place it on top of the crystal
and maybe place it here for, well I don't know, 10 to 12 seconds
once that the heat radiated through the top of the crystal
it would melt the adhesive on the back and then
I don't have to go through where I am changing a larger tipped to a smaller
one
I could come over to my pattern and place it on the star
and then would do the same exact thing, it would radiate through the top melt the
adhesive
so it's really really a great tool to use. the other possibility is using a simple
iron
you put on highest temperature press on the
hotfix crystal keep it there
10 to 15 seconds and that's it.
so Ralph, the one thing that I do notice about the iron that you're using
is that it's completely flat you don't have a any steam holes
most irons that are inside the US have
steam holes. Could you tell me if somebody could use one of these irons and
how they would go about doing it?
of course, you can also use these kind of iron
you just have to switch off to steam function
drain the water and make sure you have
not the hole on the crystal
so Ralph when you're saying about making sure that one of the crystals doesnt end
up inside of the
steam hole, I think it is really important that our customers know that
you really just place the iron on top of the crystals
and really they don't iron, they just putting some
little bit of pressure so I would say if they were iron like a cotton shirt
just a little bit
to make connection on the crystal wait about ten to
12 seconds where the heat would radiate through the top of the Crystal
and melt the adhesive. Do you agree with that statement? yes Nick
I totally do agree. We just need to
transfer the heat. Ralph I guess what some of the information that we have given to
the customer talking about
some of the temperatures, some of the time and some of the pressure
is there a way this is written down somewhere inside of a book or a manual
for our customers?
yes of course it is. We do have our
application manual for these purposes. so here we have our
application manual with
one chapter on hotfix technology with a lot of information about
tools, about crystals and
also about the temperatures depending on the kind of fabric
and crystal. so as you're flipping the pages we definitely don't want to scare
our customers but we do have the information there
if somebody was running into a problem so it's just great
that we have this book that really explains all the hotfix technology.
All this information is here in this book
yes thank you! okay ralph I guess the next thing that you need to explain is
we talked about the loose hot fix stones
some of the other products we have there are also
used with hot fix so whether it be the metallisee
or some crystal mesh or maybe some of the flat back banding that are
here
but next we also have to show them how that we've taken
some of the loose hotfix stones and actually created a motif
or a design using these flatback crystals
and ralph if you would, would you please separate one of these so that they can see
how it is attached to the foil
of course I would like to. I do have a motif here
we can make almost every motif
you would like to. we just
take off the back foil, place it
on the fabric just fix by slightly pressing it
and then the next step would be, as we would bring this into the heat press
so now then the next thing that we need to do is we need to cover this with the
teflon paper
so ralph if you would cover this with the teflon paper and explain to me
what the teflon paper is used for?
that teflon paper we use for protecting the heat press
if there is additional glue coming out. here it's
easy to clean it. So now we need to bring the press over
then we are closing the heat press
in our case here we need approximately eight seconds
opening it and now we just have to let
cool down. so the glue is really wet right now a little but it really needs
to kinda cool off just a bit
yes it is. the time would be 30- 35 seconds or so? 30,35 seconds yes
that is just okay. So we really just kind of cool the touch
you take the foil slowly
start to remove the foil
if a crystal didn't stick you can always placed the foil
back over the motif. maybe make a little change on the heat time or pressure
asn reheat it again. would that do anything to damage the crystal on the motif? No
not at all. you're absolutely right, you can redo it
if necessary. perfect!
Great job we got it on the first shot
perfect application Nick thank you thank you ralph also to you it looks fantastic
this is really creating your style. so Ralph we did one
piece of transfer on a small piece of fabric let's make a t-shirt
we're going to take a piece of the crystal fabric
that is another hot fix product. Gonna take a piece a crystal fabric
of course you will see how good it will look like. I will place that crystal
fabric
on the top of the t-shirt. I am gonna place a piece of the teflon
paper
from the inside just in case any glue was to leak through so that it wouldn't
stick both sides of the fabric together
and we're going to again take the topside
of the teflon paper, cover it just in case any glue
it's on the top. and again over with the press
give that about eight seconds or so. Do you think it's
okay? I think its gonna work
So we're going to do the same process as we did before we're going to allow it to
cool off for about 30 to 35 seconds to just cool to the touch
once that's happened we are going to slowly
and
look at this ralph. it looks fantastic! it's great butsorry it's not your size
professor
it's not but we definitely did create a style. we did!
I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Ralph coming on the 4th episode of
ask the professor working with Swarovski Elements and hotfix
ralph thank you so much for helping our customers see how easy it is to work
with hotfix
thank you. Thank you Nick, always a pleasure working with the professor
and next time you're here we're doing it in German language
this would be quite interesting thank you. DANKE SCHön!
BITTE SCHön. Again I'm nick regine the professor of crystal
answering all your crystal application questions
we look forward to bringing you new episodes featuring fun, creative in
easy ways to use Swarovski Elements. remember to visit our website at www
dot create your style dot com in please share your designs on our Facebook fan
page
and follow us on Pinterest we also welcome your postings comments and
questions
END