Discuss the various aspects of heat press technology. Transfer paper, inks, plastisol transfers, vinyl cutters, printers, commercial usage, durability, suppliers, etc.
I am new to business and worried to death. I was going to invest in silk screening equipment, but after joining the forum I have changed my mind. I have emailed the company and told them I would rather order the heat press equipment. Since I have paid so much money already over $3000 and I owed another $800 I will probably have to go with the same company. I thought you could not print on dark colors with heat press.
I am 60 years old and I have several churches and family reunion orders of 200 or more shirts. I believe that the heat press will be more efficent and less complaicated for me. I need to print large numbers of shirts so time is important to me. I see that you are very experienced with heat pressing and I would like to communicate with you and others who have heat press experience. I now need to buy a printer I was thinking about buying a color laser printer, could you let me know what ideas or suggestions you have regarding heat pressing, transfers on dark colors, and printers to invest in.
I am so glad I joined this site. I know you all are going to be invaluable to me. Everybody is is kind and friendly that I wish I had known about it earlier. I did some heat transfers with an iron a few years back and I loved it.
I was just going to get silk screening because I thought you couldn't do transfers onto dark colors and many protenial customers are asking for darker color tshirs.
thank you so much and any idea,suggestions or advice will be followed and appricated greatly. Thank all of you that replied and I look forward to a very good time learning and sharing with all of you.
Vivian
Last edited by Solmu; March 30th, 2007 at 02:17 AM.
Reason: started a new thread
Screen printing equipment is expensive, but it can be a good investment if you're doing the business full-time. As a side project, though, I'd definitely say heat press is the way to go instead.
You can do dark shirts in a few different ways with heat presses. The easiest way is by using an 'opaque' transfer paper, printed with a printer. These offer full range of colors, but the quality is very low; they don't hold up over time (and some, including myself, don't use them at all).
Your next option is vinyl. Ideal for small runs (less than a dozen pieces) on dark shirts, vinyl gives you a high quality print, but is limited in colors (each needs to be applied seperately, and 3 is usually considered the max). You would also need to invest in a vinyl cutter, which would run about $1500 for a good one.
Finally, you can use plastisol transfers. With these, you order printed transfers that are basically ink screen printed on to a carrier paper. You can then apply the transfer to a shirt for a very high quality print. The disadvantage here is that you'd need a minimum like screen printing (usually about 12 or so), and the more colors you get the more it'll cost.
As far as a printer goes, most peple are using ink jet printers instead of laser (though some people have had pretty good luck with lasers as well). For an ink jet printer, some variety of Epson is usually recommended, with pigmented inks (OEM Durabrite inks or 3rd party inks such as the Magic Mix). A cheap, workable example would be the C88+, which runs less than $100.
Re: NEW Digital Transfer Paper: DuraCotton98 
