[FrankSensei]

Hi Folks,

I'm new here. I spent much of yesterday cruising the forum. Wow, it's great.

Here's my situation:

I have a martial arts school in Northern California. We offer t-shirts for our students. Up until now, we've had one design that everyone wears. The difficulty is that to keep all the different sizes in stock, we need to get short runs from our screen printer. It's really not worth it. We’re very low on stock and now it’s past time to make an order.

What we'd prefer to do is print the shirts in-house. We want to be able to offer several different shirts designs. We’d also like to offer one-off designs for special events, including birthday parties. I would also like to be able to customize our uniforms. Having each uniform screened is too expensive and wouldn’t be customized for each individual.

I've never done any of this type of printing before. (I am quite familiar with ink jet printing for quality photography.)

I am wondering whether I will be able to get high enough quality printing out of heat transfers. Our shirts really do need to be quality and they need to last. I have a new Epson R1900 (I wore out my R1800) with a continuous ink system using pigment inks.

I’m not looking for some huge ROI. Rather, I’m looking to be able to offer our customers more choice, customization and have more of our shirts around the community.

I would appreciate information about all of the aspects of this, including whether it’s worth the bother or if I should just stick with out-sourced screening.

Thanks and hi!

 

[SAKTEES]

To my knowledge, direct screen printing is the most durable. Unfortunatly, your artwork has to be screen print frinedly also. You can screen print some pretty fine detail, but the art and printing process may be overkill for you quanities per design.$$$ Transfers will fit your needs, but won't be nearly as durable. And if you go the inkjet transfer route, they probably won't last more then a few washings.

You get what you pay for. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.
sak

 

[FrankSensei]

Transfers will fit your needs, but won't be nearly as durable. And if you go the inkjet transfer route, they probably won't last more then a few washings.

If heat transfers only last a few washings, they are worthless to me.

But if heat transfers have such short life spans, how does anyone sell heat transfer shirts and keep a customer?

If you're right, I won't do heat transfers and I'll have to consider a completely different approach.

 

[SAKTEES]

Plastisol heat transfers, or vinyl cut, as done on a Roland Versacamm, will serve you best.

InkJet transfers, unless they are sublimation dye transfers. are only a novelty product. Inkjet Sublimation dye transfers are for light colored 100% synthetic materials, and will never wash out. they are not very durable when used on those special papers made to transfer to 50/50 or 100% cotton.

Any one, correct If I'm wrong.

 

[FrankSensei]

I just spoke with a fellow from Imprintables Warehouse who largely confirms what you say. He said that the straight printed heat transfers will really be shot after 20-25 washings and may start to crack long before that.

However, he said the vinyl cutter approach creates graphics which will outlast the life of the garment. But multiple colors become a problem because of too many layers of material.

That approach may be too costly and time consuming for me to justify what I have in mind.

I have some serious thinking to do!

Thank you for your help.