Discuss the various aspects of heat press technology. Transfer paper, inks, plastisol transfers, vinyl cutters, printers, commercial usage, durability, suppliers, etc.
I'm doing heat press (and ATM, I don't want to consider doing "regular" screen printing) and I'm wondering if someone can help me with what my options are for decorating black t-shirts.
I've got a three color text based design (gray, red and white text) that I'd like to put on to a black shirt.
I've never worked with opaque transfer paper, but would that be really tricky as I'd pretty much have to cut out all the letters, would I not? Does that mean my only option is plastisol transfers?
Plastisol transfer or heat press vinyl like thermoflex plus. You would need a vinyl cutter for the vinyl and that could run ya some cash. I do a bunch of text based designs with the cad cut vinyl and it works quite well. I am looking into the plastisol transfers for more options with multi colors.
Look, I've been selling shirts text based for a while,I bought the craft robo machine and I can tell It's a great machine for text on shirts purposes,
This is basically what I do:
-design some kind of text
-load a dark transfer sheet into my craft robo machine
-THEN IT starts cutting my phrase
-when it stops I remove the backing area of the sheet AND THE PHRASE REMAINS on the transfer
-finally I heat press it and bingo you get a great black t-shirt text based on your hands.
The craft robo is for about 400 bucks against the other cutters out there that cost more than 1500 dollars so If you wanna make just text that would be a solution I hope this help.
If youre layering the text to get a different color outlines, Plastisol may be your best bet. I do alot of layering with my sticker/banner/signage side of the business. And if your run is 20+ or more, you aint gonna have any fun. If you do go the vinyl route, remember that all your designs are reversed. If you wanna see just how crazy some layering can get, these took about 30 min. per.
It's not layered, as such. I'm a bit hesitant about the vinyl cutter route - I'm in Australia and haven't seen this much shy of $1000AUD. I'm thinking perhaps Plastisol transfers or see if there's someone who could cut vinyl for me?
if you are looking for someone to cut vinyl for you, perhaps you should check out if your local sign maker has a machine.
I got the lead to Roland's local distributor from a signshop after promising the guy i wont be going into the sign craft industry and will be strictly be doing tees.
i m still waiting on Specialty Materials to get back to me on a local distributor for thermoflex plus tho... Is there a supplier for vinyl is Aus? Cos there sure isnt any in Singapore.
heat press options for black t-shirts 
