Joined
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2 Posts
Hello there!
This is my first post on here, so I'm excited to join the community!
Quick back story. I used to work at a screen printing company until it had to close its doors at the start of the COVID lockdowns last year. However, a lot of my clients still needed shirts printed and, out of necessity, I bought a cheap heat press from Amazon to start doing plastisol heat transfers from my home. Surprisingly, it lasted over a year and did a pretty good job until it finally started to bend out of shape and loose proper pressure rapidly. I made the dumb mistake of trying to buy another (but different) cheap press from amazon to replace it. Again, this was out of necessity as I had two orders waiting to be finished when my original press broke. However, this second amazon heat press was so cheaply made that I watched it start to bend and lose all pressure within a few presses. I was barely over 50 presses when it happened and, needless to say, I was mad at myself for even thinking it would work out as well as my last one. I think I got lucky with that first press.
ANYWAY, I'm wanting to bite the bullet and upgrade to a better heat press. I don't have the money to drop on some several-thousand dollar press and I'm not sure I even need one like that, because I'll eventually want to upgrade to a full screen printing machine like I was using before and just use the heat press for small labels and smoothing out prints, etc. But that is a long ways away still so I want to get a nice solid heat press that will work without question and last a long tinme.
TL/DR: I've been debating between the Heat Press Nation (HPN) Signature Series PRO and the TransPro Select Semi-Auto from ProWorld. I like that they both have the automatic release and the slide out base platen. It seems like a lot of people like both of them, so I wondered what all of you thought on these two types of presses?
I generally only do things no larger than about 12x12 so I was looking at the 15x15 sizes, but I have also been toying with the idea of getting a 16 x 20. What are the added benefits of getting a larger platen size aside from the obvious larger print area?
This is my first post on here, so I'm excited to join the community!
Quick back story. I used to work at a screen printing company until it had to close its doors at the start of the COVID lockdowns last year. However, a lot of my clients still needed shirts printed and, out of necessity, I bought a cheap heat press from Amazon to start doing plastisol heat transfers from my home. Surprisingly, it lasted over a year and did a pretty good job until it finally started to bend out of shape and loose proper pressure rapidly. I made the dumb mistake of trying to buy another (but different) cheap press from amazon to replace it. Again, this was out of necessity as I had two orders waiting to be finished when my original press broke. However, this second amazon heat press was so cheaply made that I watched it start to bend and lose all pressure within a few presses. I was barely over 50 presses when it happened and, needless to say, I was mad at myself for even thinking it would work out as well as my last one. I think I got lucky with that first press.
ANYWAY, I'm wanting to bite the bullet and upgrade to a better heat press. I don't have the money to drop on some several-thousand dollar press and I'm not sure I even need one like that, because I'll eventually want to upgrade to a full screen printing machine like I was using before and just use the heat press for small labels and smoothing out prints, etc. But that is a long ways away still so I want to get a nice solid heat press that will work without question and last a long tinme.
TL/DR: I've been debating between the Heat Press Nation (HPN) Signature Series PRO and the TransPro Select Semi-Auto from ProWorld. I like that they both have the automatic release and the slide out base platen. It seems like a lot of people like both of them, so I wondered what all of you thought on these two types of presses?
I generally only do things no larger than about 12x12 so I was looking at the 15x15 sizes, but I have also been toying with the idea of getting a 16 x 20. What are the added benefits of getting a larger platen size aside from the obvious larger print area?
