Chopper

We would like to start making our own heat transfers instead of outsourcing to have them made. 99% of the printing we do is on Black t-shirts with White ink or Red. What will be my best bet to get good quality and also save money? We have a HP deskjet 5550 we would like to use. I looked into getting Alpha Gold paper from Alpha Supply, but don't want to waste our money so I thought id ask for advice first. What is our best bet for transfer paper, and what special ink should we look into getting if needed? Sorry for the "newbie" questions but figured there is no better way to get answers then to just ask. Thanks in advance.

 

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angelic_endeavor

I'm a newbie too, but I'll try to help. From what I've read on this website...

As for creating transfers for use on black shirts, you'll need a transfer created for dark substrates, such as IronAll dark. There is a great video on YouTube of Badalou making a shirt with the new IronAll dark paper. Just search "Badalou", and you'll find it amongst the 21 videos that he's done on there.

If you're creating designs in white text, that will be a problem using an inkjet. You see, inkjets cannot print white. They only have ink for C,M,Y,K. For those you'll probably need to outsource -- I believe your choices here would be screenprinting or plastisol, maybe vinyl (although I believe vinyl have a heavier hand).

The other issue you'll be dealing with is that transfer paper is white. Therefore, unless you "box-out" your text (and carefully trim away all excess paper), you're going to have a problem trimming or weeding your design. With text, you'll need a plotter/cutter (?), to remove all the areas inside the letters of the text, as well as the un-designed areas of the transfer paper. Again, the more experienced people here will probably advise that you outsource your design to be produced in via screenprinting or plastisol. I believe vinyl could also be used, but you'd definitely have to have a cutter to do this yourself.

Again, I am a newbie here, so if I am incorrect on anything, please let me know! I am simply drawing inferences after reading many, many threads here.

HTH,
Melissa

 

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Chopper

yea I think your right. Ive played around with screen printing in the past. Had alot of troubles. Maybe we can get away from using white inks. Also think ill invest into a Epson C88 with the special ink delivery setup off ebay for heat transfers. Then look into ordering the paper needed. Hopefully this is nail the professional quality we are looking for. Thanks for your reply.

 

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rrc62

Considering you are printing on black almost exclusively, your best bet is plastisol transfers. I would outsource them. Screen printing is messy and time consuming. I have all of the equipment to do high volume screen printing and I would even outsource them if I needed them. My time is just better spent doing other things than running the screen press. The occasional black shirt that I do, I use laser1 opaque.

 

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Chopper

the Everlasting that is mentioned in the video. Where can I order that along with whatever else we made need to get started. I guess pigment ink is the best to use on this application it sounds like.

 

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