Discuss the various aspects of heat press technology. Transfer paper, inks, plastisol transfers, vinyl cutters, printers, commercial usage, durability, suppliers, etc.
I remember some conversation on an earlier thread regarding carrier to make templates for rhinestone transfers. I was flipping through the channels yesterday when I came upon this product on HSN.
The part that caught my attention was the plastic tray with dimples that you could put the rhinestones in. The way I understand it, you could put your design under the tray, and place the rhinestones in the dimples as per your design. Then you put the transfer tape over the rhinstones and you've got your template ready for pressing. Seems like a quicker way of laying out rhinestones when doing it by hand.
There was also a pretty interesting hobby screen printing machine for less than $300. The demo I saw on tv was pretty impressive.
This might be okay for hobby ...lite....but doubt it for commercial use. Read the reviews...average rating 2.7 out of 5 stars...not a good sign..BTW..last review was in Nov I think...I would say..buyer beware
I was thinking of using my laser engraver and some thin acrylic to create jigs/templates for doing these... kinda like screen printing. One jig piece for each color of a multi-color design. .
Essentially you are cutting some holes in something so the sparkies fall into the holes. Then you schlep the transfer tape over it to suck them off the jig. Repeat for multi-color. The trick is alignment of the color "separations", but that seems like an engineering problem (I like those!). We can build a fixture that has alignment guides.
Alignment really hasn't been a problem for me. The mylar tape is clear, so you can easily see how you are lining up each color application. For designs with a "tighter" fit, I just print out a copy of the design on paper, and make transfer marks on the mylar with a marker if I need additional guides for lining up the various colors.
We use a laser to cut our templates, but we use oil board. We buy the 24 X 36" sheets and you can get quite a few templates out of one sheet. I think we pay about $100 for around a 108 sheets. This make the templates really very inexpensive to make. We just glue the oil board template to a piece of card stock and pour the rhinestones over and brush them in the holes them put the mask over and pick up the stones and either put a backing paper on them to use later or go ahead and tape them to the product and heat press. The templates last for a long time and are really inexpensive to make.
I did a search for it online. There are several places it can be ordered from. It might be available in smaller sheets from an art supply store also, but haven't checked into that yet. I had the same thought, if it could be cut with a regular cutter like the stone stencil system
I've tried this site as a comparison to what I do. Not bad, but still way more expensive. They may "say" you are eliminating the labor charge, but not really.
It seems Miami rhinestones will only make a 2 color template. If you guys and ladies are makeing 4 color with different size stones and you gap the stones reall close say- .015 how can you do it. I understand the concept but it seems very tedious.
WE use the CAMMs Robotic and I can gap stones as close as .01 and the stones look like they are one. Once in a while a stone will touch the side of another when set and it flips. But in a 1,000 stone design if 1 or 2 flip and I can get production spped I have no problem.
So if you are doing multi color/size then do you have to make a template for each size and color.
Bob
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Bob, basically, you are right. At least that is the way I do it with my DAS rhinestone system. Typically, I cut a separate template for each color and/or size of rhinestone in the design and piece together on a single sheet of mylar tape. However, if possible, I will sometimes do a template with more than one color and/or size. It depends on the separation distance of each piece. On the attached photo of the "Terps" design, I did the first template to contain the outer gold layer, 4mm, and the inner red layer, 3mm. Then I did a separate template for the middle black layer. So instead of 3 templates, I cut this one down to two. The das does give you the ability to place stones close, but because you are "cutting out" circles to hold the stones, you obviously can't have every stone touching, or your template is just one big hole. On designs, like the Tweety attached, that have very intricate colors, I still do these by hand depending on the order size, or I would outsource this one, if it were a big seller.
I'm actually kicking myself for not thinking of this very simple template method, while I spent HOURS hand placing some very large designs. Anyway, I love the rhinestones and I'm happy now
Rhinestone application 
. Anyway, I love the rhinestones and I'm happy now
