Hi there I have been lurking these boards for a few weeks now and have gathered a wealth of knowledge, Im just starting in garment printing and I am a little confused!
I have some shirts to do for a local band, can someone give me some advice on the best process of printing the following designs:
The Equipment I have at the moment is a epson 1290 inkjet with durabrite ink, a single colour screen printing unit, a 38x38 heat press.These designs may have to be printed on white, red & black shirts.
Any help or info would be appreciated
Many thanks
Last edited by gidwick; September 5th, 2006 at 12:53 AM.
Based on the fact that some of your designs may have to be printed on darks - sublimation may not be an option for this particular job. Also you would need to use dye sub inks and can only be used on 100% polyester shirts , or brands like
Hanes Soft 'L'Inks and Vapour Apparel.
If the order is a large one, you may want to consider outsourcing the transfers and using plastisol tranfers. Then you could simply heat press them according to what the order was ( sizes, shirt colors ). It will save you time and money in the long run !
This one looks more like a CD cover then a shirt design ( I like the design dont get me wrong ). I dont think the fine text print would go over well printed on Knit Fabrics via plastisol (durability sake).
Hi Lucy - Good eye ! I barely could see the fine script ..
You are absolutely right - that wouldnt hold up very well....Nor would that image
turn up well if you were to size it at say...7" x 7"..The fine print would be hardly
noticable...
I'd say get a few tranfers made up first and see what it looks like on a shirt...
I can only think of sublimation to get some real nice small detail like that design that would also hold up pretty well.
#1
Spot print. Design needs some sort of border effect. One big rectangle might look funny.
Butt registration for all colors and possibly put the small type on its own screen (high mesh) and print directly on top of the flashed orange. (for registration purposes)
#2, #3 & #4 all regular spot.
Sub the job to a traditional screen printer with a larger color press.
#1
Spot print. Design needs some sort of border effect. One big rectangle might look funny.
Butt registration for all colors and possibly put the small type on its own screen (high mesh) and print directly on top of the flashed orange. (for registration purposes)
#2, #3 & #4 all regular spot.
Sub the job to a traditional screen printer with a larger color press.
good point Richard,
I though that there was no background. The sample I assumed it was the color of the shirt or something.
But yes, you are right, printing the fine text on a base background would make it better. Still not too keen about micro-tex though, the ink goes fat sometimes, or the transfers paper shrinks a micro dot, it always makes me nervous with really picky clients. If you miss an I-dot you will have to re-run the job.
Hey I waited ages for these replies and was thinking that I had no friends lol!
No seriously, cheers for your advice, the designs were forwarded to me by someone who probably knows nothing about the printing procesess, and ulness there will be a great volume to produce the design that all have picked up on will not be cost effective!
As for the other designs, i went to see my local vinyl supplier today and tehy reckon that they could be done with standard vinyls even if they have to be layered, they even showed my a 5 layer job that was still quite flexible to touch!
So what do you think of the other designs are they more straight forward!
Newbie Needs Help please first post..... 
