laser or inkjet ?

Tabz said:

sorry if this is in the wrong place.

having never seen a laser transfer .. or even a laser printer for that matter, which gives the best results, inkjet or laser ?

the reason i ask is, i need to get away from the trimming around the JPSS, i only print onto white shirts, but still from a retail point of view i would prefer no transfer sheet showing around the images at all..

so im thinking a laser printer and image clip sheets, but having never seen one, i dont want to spend a small fortune and they look and feel pretty crappy

any help in this decision would be greeted extremely thankfully

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Lnfortun said:

You can't go wrong with Imageclip Laser Light. That is all ever used for light garments. No trimming and self weeding. Good for pastel if you print with spot color black or if you don't mind the shirt color affecting other spot colors you can other spot colors also. But the point is there is not polymer window. One caveat the manufacturer says it will not work with gradient or photo. I overcame that limitations by converting the image to high resolution RGB color halftone.

If you want to evaluate the transfer buy or ask free pre-printed and/or pre-weedied from one of the vendors.

I gave up on inkjet printer long time ago after I tossed 5 printers due clogging.

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paradigmprint said:

If doing nothing but light color shirts .... then either Neenah Image Clip Laser Light or even Trim Free from Paropy will work fine.

Personally, I've only used Laser .......... and, to be honest, I basically call them "throw away shirts" (those used for minor fundraisers such as 5K runs, etc). Durability isn't what you get with the 'better' laser paper (Foever Low Temp or Neenah Laser Dark) but they're fine for the low cost fundraiser shirts.

You never mentioned what your "niche" is ..... are you looking at producing high quality shirts? Mass shirts for the general public?

Until you answer that question, it's impossible to give real recommendations.

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Tabz said:

in a nutshell, ive been sublimating tees etc for the last 3 years, but just lately the shirts from gildan are just getting so see through its time to shift the axis towards cotton, and the rest of the polyester tee manufacturers are too expensive to compete.

so obviously i need them to be (and look) good enough to sell.. and im not seeing any other realistic options besides screen printing or buying in screen prints,, hence the reason to hear good things towards laser / imageclip

if that makes sense, thank you for replying

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Lnfortun said:

I can tell you this much for me based on my experience with Imageclip Laser Dark or Forever Low temp is not as durable as IC Laser Light. You can get printed sample of IC dark and Forever Low temp also then compare durability with IC Laser light sample. That way you find if the product meets your expectation before investing lots of money.

One thing I found out about IC Laser Light was after Neenah change it to cold peel the polymer gets brittle after 24 hours before wash. So I pressed it again with the same settings with shirt covered with parchment paper then stretch the shirt while it is warm. The polymer became pliable.

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Lnfortun said:

In general any OKI printer will work. To be certain ask a vendor if you can test print your artwork on a demo printer.
1) Take IC A sheet
2) Take your artwork
3) Set the printer
---- a) Select page size to fit the artwork
---- b) Select the Multipurpose tray source
---- c) Select Ultra heavy weight
Note: You may have to run 5 to 10 blank regular printer papers to preheat the fuser.
4) Feed the A sheet in Multipurpose tray
5) Print the artwork

Marry the IC A and B.

Follow this instruction.

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Tabz said:

excellent idea..

the reason i asked about the printers was.. i see a few posts regarding various oki printers and transfer papers melting or jamming on certain models.. thank you again for the info

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Lnfortun said:

The reason the transfer jams is not because the coating is melted. It is the toner that causes jamming. If the fuser is not hot enough the toner becomes sticky which will make the transfer stick on the fuser roller and enventally wraps around the roller. To adjust the roller temp the print speed must be slow enough to fuse the toner properly. To slow down the print speed the media weight must be set for thick media. Usually Uhtra Heavy will suffice. If not use Label or transparency. However, if the print speed is way too slow traces of the toner will stick to the roller and cause ghosting.

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