Discuss the various aspects of heat press technology. Transfer paper, inks, plastisol transfers, vinyl cutters, printers, commercial usage, durability, suppliers, etc.
Hi everyone, although I have never posted a question here, I read alot of info and I need a few things answered........I started in the screen printing business 8 months ago, as a side job to my "real" one as a teacher, beings that I am in the schools, my business has really taken off!
First, I would use a seperate person to do my printing, I would design it, send him the shirts, he would print them and send me the finished shirts, blah blah blah.....That worked well until I became tired of being the middle man. Then I found EASY PRINTS, they are great! I bought a heat press, then bought a bigger heat press and it has worked really well. The problems are: you have to wait a few days for the images to come in, and on small orders they tend to be very expensive, on larger orders and smaller prints, their prices are great.
What can I do on my own to deal with small orders besides Digital garment Printing, I dont have 15,000 to put out yet!!!! What can a vinyl cutter do for me, what about transfer papers? Which ones are good as to were they do not leave that residue! I have used Pro World for transfers, but they are not custom and if someone wants 3 shirts, what can I do? Hey people, give me some advice and some good ideas?
welcome to the forums, glad you come out of the shadows. A vinyl cutter is great for up the 3 colors. I use mine all the time for small runs. I use some of the spectra vinyl and have recently started using Hotmark 70. I use a cx 5000 all in one epson for inkjet transfers with jet flex paper(works good on light colored shirts). I hope this helps. Good luck...JB
I'm not sure what "easy prints" is, but have you thought about using plastisol transfers? They are the same kind of transfers that Pro World sells, but they are custom made with your design. Check out these threads for more info:
Hi and thanks for the response. Easy Prints are from Transfer Express. They are plastisol Transfers and they are great! I like those, but like I said, what can I do with a vinyly cutter? Can you print basically any image and Press it on to a shirt or does it only have to be names and numbers. Lets say, my cousin says "hey I know you run a t shirt business, can you mae me 1 shirt that says "Today is my birthday with a design on it" What can I do? HELP!!!
Hi and thanks for the response. Easy Prints are from Transfer Express. They are plastisol Transfers and they are great! I like those, but like I said, what can I do with a vinyly cutter? Can you print basically any image and Press it on to a shirt or does it only have to be names and numbers.
Not any image (no photographs or images with gradients). Basically, if the design is a single color and not too complicated, it's a good candidate for vinyl. You can do designs with up to 3 colors, you just have to cut out and apply each color separately, so it can be time consuming.
If you click on the vinyl links I posted, you can see the entire process start to finish.
Thanks! I would like ti try a couple of Vinyl Transfers or cuts.....Any idea where I can get some free samples or what would be the "cheapest yet nice vinyl cutter?
There are several inexpensive cutters on the market that will work. If you want to do inkjet transfers as well as cut vinyl you really need to have one with the optical registration eye. Depending upon how much you want to spend and what you want to do you might want to look at the craft robo or the craft robo II from graphtec. There are also some CoPams from China selling on Ebay. I've used one of these for over 3 years now and never had any problems. Unfortunately mine doesn't have the optics but that's life.
People, Help Me Figure a Few Things Out!!! 
