[missesdisney]

Hi! My name is Maria and I am interested in learning about creating tshirts for a youth sports program my husband runs. We do about 150 shirts per year and bought a small heat press last year but haven't had the time to figure out how to do the transfers ourselves.

We can purchase a low to mid-range printer/plotter/whatever but I am looking for some direction as to what would be a good place to start for this type of volume.

Not sure if I should post on other forums but since I wasn't sure where to start this seemed like a good spot.

Any input would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Maria

 

[bornover]

Maria, at 150 total shirts a year I would not invest into any equipment. It will be more expensive than having a good printer print the garments for you. If you were to buy equipment to make shirts, it would take many years to recover the money you spend on equipment over having someone print them for you.

One big problem you would face is that the inks and print head (if you go with a digital printing method) would go bad on you because you need to use the equipment regularly to keep the ink flowing. If you went with a starter screen printing setup, again, your inks and emulsion would go bad before the next year and all the equipment is expensive.

Unless you want to print every week, you are better off not buying equipment but having a printer do the work for you.

 

[lben]

I suppose it all depends on what kind of transfers you want. If you want plain inkjet transfers you can get some JPSS paper and a printer (Epson) and print your own for white T's. If you want darker T's you can get a vinyl cutter and cut your own simple designs out and heat press them on. You can also do plastisol transfers but those you will either have to farm out or get some screen printing equipment. I'm just starting making shirts with vinyl and screen printing. The vinyl is easier than screen printing, but there are a lot of things I haven't been able to cut out with the vinyl cutter because the vector image has lines instead of shapes in the wireframe view. Frustrating.

You will also need some design software. I suggest CorelDraw because it's easier to learn but a lot of people like Adobe Illustrator. But before you do anything, so a search on here about the different types of transfers and read all the pros and cons about each type. You did come to the right place.