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Originally Posted by dre746 |  | | | | | | | | | thanks for post i appreciate it.
Ya thatd be awesome if you could send over a sample.
I dont even know the difference from transfer to screen print. Seems like all my shirts are transfer i have in my closest, but i know im wrong. anyways do you wwant my address? and waht can i do in return.
brian | |  | |  | |
Hey Brian
There are a bunch of different types of heat transfer /and/ screen printing inks, so it can be a little confusing.
The stuff on football jerseys for instance - that's almost always
heat transfer vinyl, cut on a plotting machine. There's really thick stuff,
and really thin stuff out there. The shirt I'll send you has "Thermoflex Plus" on it, a very common heat-transfer vinyl that is not as thick and rubbery as the stuff you might find on the football jersey.
Screen-printers use some different types of 'inks.'
There's
water-based screenprinting ink, which is usually very soft on the shirt, almost like the shirt is dyed there instead of having something on it. That's what I've used, and if I find one of those test shirts, I will send it over to you.
There's also "
plastisol," a gel-like liquid made of PVC and other chemicals that generally has a heavier, rubbery feel to it on the shirt. If I want to print a bunch of full color images on shirts, I'd use plastisol so my colors won't bleed into eachother like the waterbased stuff could. Also, plastisol needs heat to dry -- the waterbased stuff will dry in the open air. This is what you'll usually see on nice graphic shirts at the store.
Back to
heat transfers - there are sheets that are a lot like iron-ons -- you print on the sheets witih a printer and pigments or special ink, then put the paper on the shirt and heat-press it on. I don't have any examples of that, but if you see a multi-color shirt that doesn't have any rubbery feel or anything on it, it might be a
printed heat transfer.
It might also be what's called
dye sublimation- very similar to the process above, only the special ink turns into a gas when you hit it with the heat press, and that 'stains' the fabric of the shirt. Problem with those is that you can only print on items that have a special coating on them to receive the ink, or polyester blended t-shirts (not cotton shrits) -- and using dye sublimation to print on dark colored shirts isn't a perfected process. If you see a black shirt in the store with graphics on it, it's probably screen-printed with plastisol.
There's a gob of info, hope it helps. Keep reading the forums
Blake
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Decided to post this here for the sake of newbies and forum searchers. The information is not entirely complete, but roughly accurate enough to give a good idea how to tell what's what in your closet.
Samples by peers 
"I am keeping my small press for pressing the dollar bills that I will make from my large press!" -Lou
