Discuss the various aspects of heat press technology. Transfer paper, inks, plastisol transfers, vinyl cutters, printers, commercial usage, durability, suppliers, etc.
Hey everyone. My name is Joshua. I am new to this whole t-shirt world... well not t-shirt cuz I wear one everyday but the whole custom shirts. I have been thinking about this for about a year or so and just haven't done anything about it.. I have been coming up with designs and have some in photoshop but still havent bought any equipment or anything... Just today I decided on making this a reality and giving it a shot. I search the internet and after a bunch of pointless websites just tryna get my money I found you guys!!! Everything seems real laid back and helpful here so I hope you guys can guide me though my struggles I will be going through. I have many questions and ideas swarming around my head but I figured I am going to take this one step at a time and learn as much as I can first before I go crazy...
So here it is... I want to create a website/forum for car enthusiast and I am going to make T-shirts to sell that are auto inspired/related. Now I am not looking to get rich of the shirts by no way... Just to help advertise and draw people to my website.. I just want to break even and maybe make a few dollars here and there... Now I dont have lots and ots of money to go buy a plotter So I am thinking abuot my other options.
I have considered screenprinting but they require minimums and I am not sure if people are going to like my designs or not. I dont want to end up with a closet full of 20 shirts of each design and be all in debt. So I am really leaning towards screen printing. I know the quality is no where near screen printing but what I have been seeing with the plastisol shirt look phenomanal!!!
I understand tha I myself cannot make plastisol paper designs that I have to get them from a company, but can this company use my designs? Also a lot of my designs are on a small scale.. when I try to enlarge them they become pixle-ley(really blurry like) so I am trying to figure out if I send my design to one of these companies are they going to be able to print my design the size I want and make it look clean and smooth? Or am I stuck with re-doing all my designs?
Again thanks for all your help guys!!! cant wait till I start making shirts
understand tha I myself cannot make plastisol paper designs that I have to get them from a company, but can this company use my designs? Also a lot of my designs are on a small scale.. when I try to enlarge them they become pixle-ley(really blurry like) so I am trying to figure out if I send my design to one of these companies are they going to be able to print my design the size I want and make it look clean and smooth? Or am I stuck with re-doing all my designs?
When you create the designs in photosho, you should always do them at a high resolution (like 300dpi at the size you want them printed)
If the designs are really small and you want them bigger, you would either need to redo the art, or pay the plastisol transfer company to redo the artwork for you to make it print ready.
There are services like vectordoctor.com and artworksource.com that can create vector files that are print ready for you for around $10-$20 per design.
Some designs may be easier than others to enlarge or make into a vector.
If you don't want to do the printing yourself, and you have a lot of designs, you can use a t-shirt printing and fulfillment service like cafepress.com,printfection.com, etc. You just upload your designs and they handle the website store creation, printing and shipping shirts to customers. They print with direct to garment printers so there are no minimums and no costs involved until you actually sell a shirt.
thanks for the fast reply... I just invested in a plugin for my photoshop called Genuine Fractuals... it is amazing. So most of my designs I am enlarging with no problems.... some are still a lil blurry so i will look into those sites you listed.. uhmm this may be a extremely noob question but what exactly is a vecotr? Is it so when the printer goes to print the file from a plotter all the lines are outlined to be cut? In otherwords I have some files that I was able to enlarge... would I be able to send them as a .psd or .jpeg to say first edition and have a plastisol sent back to me...
also forgot to mention my main concern with heat transfer is that I dont want that white box background and I wont them to be somewhat crack and fade resistant.. I know they wont be but from what I have been reading I think plastisol is the best for this. Thanks again Rodney for the quick respons
damn the vector looks amazing... I should of just paied him to do all my re-sizing instead of buying that photoshop plugin.. oh well live and learn
so far I am thinking of going with the vector doctor to clean up my images...now if I plan on sending them to be put on plastisol paper what format do I want the vector doctor to give me my images back in? or what format do i want my images to be in when i give it to the plastisol people?
and to clear this up to make sure i am on the right track... when i get a image made on plastisol paper i should have a white box background right? I seen the plastisol company comparision and they looked pretty good. Thanks again everyone!!!
now if I plan on sending them to be put on plastisol paper what format do I want the vector doctor to give me my images back in? or what format do i want my images to be in when i give it to the plastisol people?
Check with your plastisol transfer supplier. Each will have different file format preferences, but an EPS file should be fine for most. Some prefer coreldraw files.
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when i get a image made on plastisol paper i should have a white box background right? I
I just asked one of the companies about this last week. For the designs where I wanted black ink, I put it on a white background, if I wanted white ink, I was able to make the background color of the vector file black, so the white colored designed showed up on the page.
Using a white background for everything should be fine though.
Big key is to TALK to your plastisol transfer company (or screen printer or DTG printer or embroider) directly and ask them lots of questions. That will let you know, directly from THEM exactly what you should be doing. Each will have different preferences and ways of doing things.
thanks for all the replies.. you are helping me alot!!! I think my last question would be who would you recomend for a newbie such as myself? I mean which plastisol company would you recomend...I am real new to this.. I see there are hot and cool papers... don't really know which would be better... but which company from your experience has the best quality and easiest to use. I seen your post on your trial on all the samples they sent you.. again thanks for the help!
thanks for all the replies.. you are helping me alot!!! I think my last question would be who would you recomend for a newbie such as myself? I mean which plastisol company would you recomend...I am real new to this.. I see there are hot and cool papers... don't really know which would be better... but which company from your experience has the best quality and easiest to use. I seen your post on your trial on all the samples they sent you.. again thanks for the help!
That post you saw will give you the best information on which to try. I posted a lot of tips there
New guy looking for some advice/ guidance 
