Hi all,
I love working with vinyls. It's clean and crisp and fun. It's great fit for my designs, which are mostly pop-ish.
I have used Spectra Eco Films that came with the Roland GX-24 package, and now Easyweed, since USCutter is 10min drive away from my day job. I hear Easyweed is one of the softest vinyls available, but sadly they are still not as soft as screenprint.
Every time I search something like "screenprint-like vinyl" or "as soft as screenprint", I find discouraging news. No vinyl is close to screenprint. But kept searching on, until I found a couple of posts talking about this minor vinyl called "Flexcut Sweet". They are about 50 mirons. Easyweed is about 80.... Whaatt? That's a huge difference! I googled to get more info, and learned that Flexcut Sweet does not come in many colors and backing is not sticky, but there is Flexcut Sticky which is also 50 microns and has sticky backing.
I found someone who was selling Flexcut Sticky on ebay. I decided to give it a try and bought a white. Then one thing led to another, I ended up buying all 10 rolls (different colors) of Flex Sticky he had for a very good price. Anyhoo, the box arrived today.
I am making custom tech shirts for my friend's business right now. He only needs about 6 shirts. Naturally, I want to use vinyl because screenprinting or custom plastisol transfers is not cost-effective for small quantity job like this.
Several days ago, I made a test shirt (Hanes tagless cotton) using Easyweed. I still hated the hard hand. The graphics is rather big.
Today, I cut the same design using Flexcut Sticky. Here is what I found about Flexcut Sticky, compared to Easyweed.
Easyweed is easier to weed (okay say that 3 times very quickly). My design has a lot of tiny splash pieces. With Easyweed, I did not even have to worry about them. It weeded perfectly, without lifting those little bits. With Flexcut, quite a bit of small pieces and inside of "a" and "e" were lifted up and did not stay. It did not cut as clean as Easyweed either. Maybe I should change the blade settings. Weeding slowly helped a bit.
But as far as the hand goes... Flexcut Sticky is definitely softer than Easyweed (or Spectra Eco for that matter). I even asked my husband to feel it and he agreed.
To compare, I pressed some of the plastisol tranfer samples I had to the same shirt. One is Spot Sports formula and the other one is Fashion Formula, both by F&M. Flexcut Sticky is comparable to Spot Sports. Fashion might be slightly softer than Flexcut.
Now the question is - if I had my design silkscreen-printed by someone who has screenprinting equipment, would it be softer?
From what I gathered from spending months reading posts here, plastisol transfers produce pretty much similar results to regular screenprinting, which uses plastisol inks. Correct? But are there other methods that can produce softer-hand design?
By the way, here is the info on Flexcut Sticky:
Flex Cut Sticky
Composition
Base: Hotmelt Film (polyurethane)
Adhesive: Synthetic Resin
FlexCut Sticky is a PVC free, water based, 100% Polyurethane heat transfer film. It has a low tack sticky carrier allowing very fine cutting and fast/easy weeding.
Kay
I love working with vinyls. It's clean and crisp and fun. It's great fit for my designs, which are mostly pop-ish.
I have used Spectra Eco Films that came with the Roland GX-24 package, and now Easyweed, since USCutter is 10min drive away from my day job. I hear Easyweed is one of the softest vinyls available, but sadly they are still not as soft as screenprint.
Every time I search something like "screenprint-like vinyl" or "as soft as screenprint", I find discouraging news. No vinyl is close to screenprint. But kept searching on, until I found a couple of posts talking about this minor vinyl called "Flexcut Sweet". They are about 50 mirons. Easyweed is about 80.... Whaatt? That's a huge difference! I googled to get more info, and learned that Flexcut Sweet does not come in many colors and backing is not sticky, but there is Flexcut Sticky which is also 50 microns and has sticky backing.
I found someone who was selling Flexcut Sticky on ebay. I decided to give it a try and bought a white. Then one thing led to another, I ended up buying all 10 rolls (different colors) of Flex Sticky he had for a very good price. Anyhoo, the box arrived today.
I am making custom tech shirts for my friend's business right now. He only needs about 6 shirts. Naturally, I want to use vinyl because screenprinting or custom plastisol transfers is not cost-effective for small quantity job like this.
Several days ago, I made a test shirt (Hanes tagless cotton) using Easyweed. I still hated the hard hand. The graphics is rather big.
Today, I cut the same design using Flexcut Sticky. Here is what I found about Flexcut Sticky, compared to Easyweed.
Easyweed is easier to weed (okay say that 3 times very quickly). My design has a lot of tiny splash pieces. With Easyweed, I did not even have to worry about them. It weeded perfectly, without lifting those little bits. With Flexcut, quite a bit of small pieces and inside of "a" and "e" were lifted up and did not stay. It did not cut as clean as Easyweed either. Maybe I should change the blade settings. Weeding slowly helped a bit.
But as far as the hand goes... Flexcut Sticky is definitely softer than Easyweed (or Spectra Eco for that matter). I even asked my husband to feel it and he agreed.
To compare, I pressed some of the plastisol tranfer samples I had to the same shirt. One is Spot Sports formula and the other one is Fashion Formula, both by F&M. Flexcut Sticky is comparable to Spot Sports. Fashion might be slightly softer than Flexcut.
Now the question is - if I had my design silkscreen-printed by someone who has screenprinting equipment, would it be softer?
From what I gathered from spending months reading posts here, plastisol transfers produce pretty much similar results to regular screenprinting, which uses plastisol inks. Correct? But are there other methods that can produce softer-hand design?
By the way, here is the info on Flexcut Sticky:
Flex Cut Sticky
Composition
Base: Hotmelt Film (polyurethane)
Adhesive: Synthetic Resin
FlexCut Sticky is a PVC free, water based, 100% Polyurethane heat transfer film. It has a low tack sticky carrier allowing very fine cutting and fast/easy weeding.
Kay
