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can anyone advise on the best way to screenprint transfers?
I have a small textile print and embroidery shop. I also dabble with Sublimation. Mugs, photos on t’s etc.
To print the garments I use vinyl with a cutter and heat press.
I have a lot of customers asking for prints with the names of all the class mates from school. Usually 30 shirts with 30 names on the back. Takes nearly an hour to weed the vinyl.
I dont have much room in my shop, 37sq mtrs. So no room to set up screen printing. I wondered if it is possible to screen print tranfers. Its only in one colour and I have a quiet corner I could work in.
My question is ..How do you Screen print tranfers. Is there a special ink and what about curing ? Can that be done with a heat press?
Hope someone can give me some help on this.Earl
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11 Replies
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Hi
It is possible to Screen Print Transfers but I wouldnt want to do individual names on a screen as the setup is really only useful for over 25 Shirts, not names – We vinyl Print Names – Its a pain but its not so bad.
Nick -
I do alot of this type of thing for end of season hoodys and tee’s the only real way to do it is screen printing. Your best to sub it out. There is normally a good enough margin on these things to make it worthwhile.
Dave
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It shouldn’t be taking you an hour to weed 30 names, more like 10 or 15 minutes.
what size are they?
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Shouldn’t take more then 30 seconds to weed a name.
We use the same inks (plastisol) for transfers as we do on normal prints. We print in reverse on a special paper (need a vacuum table to keep it in place) then we run it through a special transfer glue, then we cure it as we would on clothes in our dryer.
Screenprinting transfers for names sounds abit overkill though, unless everyone is named the same. 😉
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Hi, being first a screen printer I originally bought my printer/cutter to avoid doing all of the names by screen printing as the cost is prohibitive. As steve sais 30 names in the sizes your talking about, weeding should take about 10 minutes tops! keep the fonts simple (should be anyway on football shirts and the like) and a sharp knife with the right pressure and presto! quick as you like! I use poli-flex transfer material for names which is extremely easily weeded (printed in reverse) and have never had a complaint yet.
Steve
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I could be wrong but i think Earl means 30 names per top and probably small text so if that was me i would screen it, as 900 small names maybe with nicknames as well would drive me crazy.
Dave
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Hi again, Hihi, yes Dave I understand what you mean, if its like you say then screen print it! Because weeding that would send you to the mad house! The way I read it first was that every shirt had an individual name.
Steve
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Yeah, if it’s 30 names on 30 t-shirts I can see the benefit. Still it uses the same gear as when you print the shirts directly, so you might aswell skip making the transfers and printing directly on the shirt.
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Hi Everyone,
Thanks for the reply. Sorry about my late reply, I have just got back from a family visit in "sunny" England.
Every shirt that I print will have the individual students name on the front, thats OK for cut vinyl. On the back of every shirt is ; at the top the name of the school/class and underneath this are the names of ALL the students in the class. Size of design a little smaller than A3. Could be 20 to 35 students names, both first, middle and last names. To make it fit on the shirt the name text is about 1cm high , very fiddly and time consuming to weed. Believe me it takes nearly one hour for each shirt. The names here are not short, German names are usually long with many umlauts and these dots come off the vinyl very easily.
So that is why I want to try printing transfers.
If I use normal Plastisol ink, what paper do I print onto?
Also as Tobias said I could print direct onto the shirt. I dont have much room in my shop , I must do some investigating and see how much space a small screen print setup would take. Anybody have ideas where I can look for a small setup??
Thanks again Earl
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You print on a special transfer paper that has a release coating. Your local screen printing supplier should have everything you need. There are some papers that have a glue component built in with the release coating aswell, so you don’t have to add glue, unsure how good those work though. Our setup takes around 5×5 meters. That’s with a 4 palette rotary printer, dryer, heat press and space to put the clothes while processing the jobs. Add to that space needed to store the frames, space for the exposure unit and washout booth and it does take some space.
A smaller table printer with only a few palettes would take alot less space. And if you can get someone else to make the frames for you thats even more space saved.
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Ah ok now its clear, yes screen printing is the way to go, or dye sub depending on the shirt colour, dye sub would have to be white.
I buy my transfer paper from revolution transfers at 20p a sheet for a size thats a bit bigger than A3, Im sure they export too so I know you can get it there
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