Some questions on foil printing, fuzzy printing, dyed printing, etc
As i go to start my new company, we are expanding our styles. We want to use foil printing for one. Another thing I have seen a lot of lately, are screen printed shirts that then have like a felt type matter on top of the print, not really sure what to call it or how its done. Any info on that would be greatly appreciated.
Also, there are a lot of shirts that are dyed with designs. I see a lot of these type shirts at Pac Sun, etc. Does anybody know of companies that do this type of manufacturing?
I think the felt like look you are talking about is called flock. As I understand it you screen print a base and shake the flock onto it then make the flock stand up with a static charge. Then you have to remove/vacuum the leftover flock. I hear it can be messy. M&R's website shows a flocking machine for their automatic presses. There is a video of the machine here: M&R Textile :: Flocker 2000 :: Overview
The designs you see at pacsun that are dyed might be discharge. We do that kind of printing. It is printing with inks that have a chemical in them that when exposed to heat in the dryer causes the dye of the shirt to be removed leaving the raw un dyed shirt material exposed. You can pigment discharge ink so that it leaves a color behind or you can discharge an underbase and print water base or plastisol ink over the top. It's how many of the shirts at pac sun or buckle have such a soft feel to them.
Foil can be done by printing a foil adhesive or plastisol ink where you want your foil to stick and then pressing the foil on with a heat press.
There are some foil prints that are a 2 layered screen print. The "dyed" feel could be either DTG or discharge as the guy above me mentioned. Best way to find some of this stuff is contact the printer and open a conversation.
The felt type printing would probably be flock printing. This can be done by heat transfers or by a screen printing type process. More info on this can be found in the search as well. From what I understand, flock can be a messing process when done the non-heat transfer way. I love the way it looks though. I've made a few flock t-shirts using flock heat transfer/vinyl material and they look great.
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Also, there are a lot of shirts that are dyed with designs. I see a lot of these type shirts at Pac Sun, etc. Does anybody know of companies that do this type of manufacturing?
It depends on the type of design. Some things that "look" dyed are actually screen printed using water based inks so you can't feel the design on the shirt. You would just need to find a printer that can do water based ink printing to handle that.
Some designs that are dyed are done by the 1000's by overseas manufacturers. It can be a complicated process.
For specific vendor recommendations, it's best to start a separate topic in the Referrals section of the forum so as to avoid the temptation of self promotional posts in this area of the forum
This is a discussion about Some questions on foil printing, fuzzy printing, dyed printing, etc that was posted in the Screen Printing section of the forums.
Some questions on foil printing, fuzzy printing, dyed printing, etc 
