Discuss the various aspects of heat press technology. Transfer paper, inks, plastisol transfers, vinyl cutters, printers, commercial usage, durability, suppliers, etc.
Most people recommend using some sort of pigmented inks for printing transfers because they won't bleed like dye-based inks tend to. You'll likely need to get an Epson printer to use pigmented inks (as far as I know anyway), and then either use the OEM Durabrite inks or 3rd party inks such as the Magic Mix (which are designed for t-shirt printing).
While a shirt can still look fine after being washed if the inks bleed a little bit (it should wash right off if you notice it), it really doesn't give the customer the feel of a professional, quality product.
I actually did some tests with their inks... Vivera inks...
I did a shirt as I usually did.... then I threw some water on the image let and let it sit on it for a while.... Then I rubbed it in... There was no bleeding...
Then I took some detergent and threw some on the image and let it sit there for like 10 minutes... Then rubbed it into the image, and there was still no bleediing...
Then I washed the shirt 3 times in cold water inside out as I always reccomend to my customers and the shirt came out great!
I'm very happy with my purchase of a hp photosmart 7850... The vivera inks are working great, now if I could only get these inks wholesale!
Ah, interesting. Googling up some more research, it looks like these 'Vivera' inks are indeed pigmented inks - so they should work well for heat transfer.
Do note that most people won't care enough to wash your shirts carefully in cold water; you will probably want to test it on hot to give a good comparable test of how most customers will likely treat it.
hmm, I have an HP Photosmart 8450, I wonder if I could use vivera inks with that and print transfers?
If it didn't come with it, chances are that you could not. As far as I know from what I've heard, the printer itself needs to be made to work with pigmented inks; if you use dye-based inks in a pigment-based printer (or vice-versa) you will probably run into problems.
I don't have a heat press though, but it's nice to know that I wouldn't have to buy a new printer if I wanted to test out some presssing later.
I had a completely different experience with the HP Virera inks. Using the same transfer paper (for lights - that's the only testing I did), my "HP shirts" faded badly after only one wash while my Epson printer (with Durabrite inks) based shirt did not.
To be fair, after the original fade, the HP-based shirt didn't fade much more. However, they did fade badly - to the point where my red heart design is now pink. Also, to be fair, I washed my shirts as I would guess most of my customers will wash them - not turned inside out, and in hot water. Perhaps that's why I had a different experience than the original poster??
I actually just tried making a light colored shirt... with the light color paper... and the ink really sucks for that... I made a shirt and just went to pay basketball... the sweat just killed the shirt.... Definately not good for light colors.... but for the dark colors it seems pretty good...
It good for me cause I only do black shirts.... I never use the light color paper anymore, it seems so much cheaper in quality than the opaque paper. I use the opaque paper even on white shirts... I've been using the blue grid line and they are working great....
So I agree with the last guy that doing white shirts with regular heat transfer paper with vivera ink sucks big time! I got good results with a black shirt w/ opaque paper
I don't have a heat press though, but it's nice to know that I wouldn't have to buy a new printer if I wanted to test out some presssing later.
And it didn't come with those inks in the first place?? Strange.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hustle101Clothin
I actually just tried making a light colored shirt... with the light color paper... and the ink really sucks for that... I made a shirt and just went to pay basketball... the sweat just killed the shirt.... Definately not good for light colors.... but for the dark colors it seems pretty good...
It good for me cause I only do black shirts.... I never use the light color paper anymore, it seems so much cheaper in quality than the opaque paper. I use the opaque paper even on white shirts... I've been using the blue grid line and they are working great....
Wow, I've never heard that before. All the opaque transfers I've seen & tried were not professional quality at all; they had a rubbery hand to them and didn't look like they'd last more than half a year. And of course, most of our designs are not big blocks where we could ever hope to trim off all the white excess...
All the opaque transfers I've seen & tried were not professional quality at all; they had a rubbery hand to them and didn't look like they'd last more than half a year.
You would be suprised how "in" that rubbery hand is nowadays in some markets. People actually LOOK for that type hand and print.
You would be suprised how "in" that rubbery hand is nowadays in some markets. People actually LOOK for that type hand and print.
Now that you mention it, I do recall someone looking for that type of transfer specifically, noting how popular it was with pictures of rapper and the like. Always some wiggle room in what people like and what they think is quality!
Hp Photosmart 7850 
