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Was it screen printed or plastisol? How to tell.

1134 Views 6 Replies 4 Participants Last post by  Celtic, 
lben
This is going to sound like a stupid question, but I need to know. Not really, but I want to know. I just got a hoodie that I bought for my granddaughter's birthday. It's from her school and cost me $49 w/shipping. Ouch. :( Anyhow, the image on the shirt is a thick gray and I don't know if it was screen printed or that plastisol stuff. I'm not really sure what plastisol is anyhow. :confused:

The image has a very heavy hand and actually feels like vinyl on the shirt. You can't see the shirts material through it either. There is no shadow around the letters.

Come to think of it maybe it's vinyl. I don't understand the vinyl or plastisol part of this business at all. Can someone explain it to me? I do heat transfer with chromablast and sublimation dyes and with regular heat transfers.
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out da box
Plastisol IS a type of screen printing ink. There is also waterbased ink used for screenprinting. Plastisol ink can be really heavy, if made to deposit that thick and heavy. Could be vinyl also.
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pwapparel
Plastisol is the ink for screen printing lol...

But what you are explaining seems like it might be vinyl
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pwapparel
right... what he said.

but I just thought, it might be a screen printed heat transfer. some of these can leave a nasty vinyl-like hand to them
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lben
OK, so what you're saying is that if I wanted to use plastisol I would be screen printing rather than heat transfering? For some reason I thought it was just a different, thicker kind of ink that needed a more heavy duty printer than my epson 88+ that would go on transfer paper and then onto fabric. Wow, wonder where I got that idea from? Now what about vinyl? Is that a heat transfer or screen print? I'm so confused.

I told her I could have made her a really nice shirt for a lot less than fifty bucks that wouldn't crack or peel off, but she wanted this one. She didn't want a white shirt and I don't know how to make transfers on darks yet. I don't have a cutter either and I've heard that you need a cutter/plotter in order to make transfers for dark fabrics.
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pwapparel
vinyl is actually a sheet of vinyl plastic that is cut using a cutter then applied using a heat press

heat presses can be either what you are using now, inkjet (i assume) , sublimation, or you could even get plastisol transfers (screen printed many at a time, then applied later with a heat press)
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Celtic
what you're describing also sounds like high density ink, screenprinted.
You can get really tall (thick) prints, depending on how many passes.
I've seen them as thick as 1/3+ inch thick.....amazing!
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