tote bags on brother gt-541

Since the ink is transparent without a white underbase, there is no way to tweak the color to get it to show up on a dark background.

HPS said:

Does anyone have a good source for canvas totes and are they easy to print? Should I lower the platform and do bi-directional as well?

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totes are pretty easy to print. we lower the platen and just place the tote on top. we print totes the same as we print t-shirts, so uni-directional works fine.

One other thing about totes, if you go with light colored canvas like natural or white, be sure to test it under the heat press before buying your entire stock. A lot of the natural colored canvas totes we tried would scorch at 365F for 35 secs. We ended up testing a few different bags and used the one that scorched the least which was purchased from Sanmar.

Thanks again, do you think using a parchment or silicone or teflon sheet would help any with the scorching? I use the vendor you mentioned and am very happy with them and lucky for me am next day ground with them so i will grab some samples and do some testing, maybe family members initials so i can kill 2 birds with one stone, test and produce gifts.

We use a teflon bra on the heat press at all times and it really didn't help with the scorching. The natural canvas just tends to be less tolerant of high heat. We might have saved some money in bag buying if we had done wash tests and lowered the temp to say 340F and pressed for 60 secs instead but I really didn't want to have to change and remember different settings for different materials. We already wreck at least 1 garment when we switch between DTG and vinyl since vinyl doesn't really like to be pressed 60 degrees hotter than it is rated for and the mask is just as unhappy. I know it is just carelessness but when you're running through as many jobs as you can in a day, the simpler the workflows the better in my opinion.

I have an ecosolvent printer, an sp540 roland that contour cuts, do you think i am better off doing transfers on the totes as the cost may be the same or less and the temp is lower for adhesion and the feel is really not as important on a tote like it is a shirt, again , I really appreciate all the insight and help. Best Regards

I think it matters more what the artwork looks like and what color tote you are dealing with. Weeding, masking and placement is labor intensive which makes the job a bit more costly to the client when using vinyl but if they want dark colored bags, I wouldn't even attempt to use white ink on a tote. Vinyl is my only choice when doing dark bags.

For light colored bags I'd much rather use DTG as I can place and print pretty much as fast as the printer will spray ink and if the design is small, I can even run 2 heat presses and just knock out jobs that much faster and easier.

Regarding colour matching, the best approach is to print a test pattern of standard colours and their RGB values. That will give you an idea of what colours are achievable on your bags.

Then just pick the yellow you want and use those RGB values.

Brother have a standard spot colour pattern, I've uploaded it here (about 15MB):
http://www.directprintsolutions.com.au/temp/bgjtpcc.arp

Distributors get all sorts of nifty tools

I sell alot of totes. I put all my small orders in a tote with their design. They love the surprise and about 80% order more totes. Its a nice presentation and a little " wow " factor.

I use non gusseted totes from Watsach...$1.40 cost, in natural. The key is a simple graphic. The weave is wider so there is more bleed, so tight designs are blurrier. I print on a G setting, bidirectional, and let it rip. Just be careful of the bends in the bag, you can get smearing. I put the totes in the press for 20 seconds to really flatten them out first .

hope this helps