Choosing a Heat Press ( swing away )

[Kevin Flowers]

Tim
received an email yesterday from Target Transfers re discounted deals on heat presses might be worth a phone call

Kev

[Steve Underhill]

We bought our Thermopress swinger from Revolution, its worked hard almost daily for 2 solid years with not one problem ever.
German engineering for you!
Ours cost £1300 at the time and it looks a lot different to that one but they dont seem to do ours any more.
Go with it, speak to Jan (a man) and ask him to do you a deal on some paper or something, hes good like that.

[Ian Bingham]

Adkins presses are the best, ours from express is great, had it 5 years not one problem

Ian

[Steve Underhill]

Ive never heard of Adkins, but to say they are the best is a little biased.
A heat press,
if working and reliable is the best to whoever owns it no matter what make it is.
The presses from George Knight and Hix are the probably most widely known and I would imagine they all claim to be the best,
Unless you buy a cheap oriental one any of the brands should be reliable and give you years of service.

[TimDouglas]

Thanks guys , think adkins is the one from xpres, Steve maybe your the right man to ask as you do alot of shirt printing, trying to get the correct material for shirt printing onto motocross shirts , poly, need to withstand alot of abuse, there is lots of people at it but unsure on correct stuff to buy , I have xpres stuff but it seems a little thin compared to the shirts i got made for myself. My own shirts are a real heavy vinyl and have been through extreme conditions and washed many times and still going strong with no signs of wear , would love to get the same stuff.

Thanks TD

[Ian Bingham]

http://www.aadkins.com/

there you go steve, maybe a little biased, got 3 of them and they’ve never failed yet. The ultra cut and easy cut from xpress is great, although ive heard a few say the stuff from victory is good too. I have a shirt we printed 4 yrs ago and its not failed yet, its all down to how the garment is looked after.

Ian

[Steve Underhill]

For motocross shirts I would use duracut, Ultracut etc, Xpres versionis ultracut, not sure about others, I have just got some flex from Grafityp so will let you know what its like, but for tough durable stuff ultracut is the stuff, its nice and stretchy too so with all the bending involved in motocross itll stand up to it.
One word of warning with it, get it right first time as unlike normal flex it turns to mush when used with transfer remover spray, turns into a paint like substance that smears into the garment and your fingers and you cant get it out.
Only ever used xpres and dorotape ultra/dura cut and only ever cocked one up and thats xpres vinyl so cant speak for any other brand.
But thats the stuff you have if its got a thick feel to it, it has an ultra sticky backing and is quite hard to see while weeding till you get going,
but thats the stuff you want for motocross unless you are going to dye sub it, but obviously they would have to be white or very light to use dye sub.
Cheers
Steve

P.S I believe you that Adkins are good, I just cant see how anyone can profess to be "the best" a lot of companies say this but Carlsberg are the only ones that are "probably" the best.
:lol1:

[Robert Lambie]

we have had a heat press for over 20 odd years now. (before my time)
Very heavyweight swing away one that i believe was bought from Xpress at the time. its knackered now, but lasted very well… we used it on occasion but mainly for our own staff tops etc

i was looking at buying a heat press only recently. (no, i’m not for getting into the garment game) i like the look of this one… not the cheapest of grafityps range but has the option of doing caps also… which i thought was very good.
http://www.grafityp.co.uk/HeatPress/hea … main.htm#1

[Steve Underhill]

I was looking at some presses by a company called tek press, way way cheap and was probably cheap chinese imports but for what I needed them for it would have been ok if they lasted 2 weeks, they had 5 or 6 attachments and did plates, caps, mugs, T shirts, etc and were £130 each, looked cheap probably performed cheap but all I needed them for was to press about 5000 screen printed transfers I have to do for a big beach wear firm.
would have been quicker than putting them through a tunnel dryer and cheaper, even though the dryer would last longer I suspect.
But as a rule for a normal flatbed press you are looking at £600 plus for quality.

[Ian Bingham]

not being funny but why would you print 5000 transfers and not print direct to garment?

[Robert Lambie]

i know what you mean steve, i did look at the budget type presses available because like i said, i am not intending in getting into the garment game in anyway. but i do have uses for it which will save me allot of time and money should i go this route. so i think if i do, then buying a good one is the best way to go…

[Steve Underhill]

because they take 10 seconds to spot cure and wouldn’t be printing them all at once.
maybe in batches of 100 to 1000 at a time.
also with one person doing it I would print a transfer, cure it while printing another, stack them up and repeat, not having to move from the spot i was stood in.
then I can press them as I want, rather than have to print one shirt, spot cure it, take it off stick it in the dryer, come back to the carousel line up another shirt, print another take it off the board put another T shirt on line it up etc.
Make sense now?

[Ian Bingham]

Yes all clear now, cheers

[Steve Underhill]

Im not too limited on space but we are so busy muggins here will be printing the lot, so to have 5000 transfer stacked up as opposed to 5000 T shirts to be folded then stacked with all that ink about, its a no brainer for me, little more expense on materials yes, but time saved is well worth it.
if there was 2 or 3 of us then I wouldprint DTG.
What would happen is I would print all the transfers then press as we need in one big run when there are more of us available, thats why i was looking at the cheap presses.
Also with reduced plastisol ink you get a nicer finish on the heat pressed transfers than DTG prints I think.

[Peter Normington]

I’ve got to agree with Ian,
adkins for me are the best, the engineering quality alone makes them stand out from the rest (the ones that I have seen anyway)

The main qualities to look for in a press are
1 must be robust
2 must have a solid platten
3 must have good constant and even heat retention
4 must provide even and adjustable pressure over the whole area.

We got ours from the magic touch, used it for 3 years and sold it for 60% of what we paid for it, they do hold there value, which to me proves their quality.

Only my penniesworth

Peter

[Steve Underhill]

Thats what I was saying earlier Pete, about if it does the job and well, naturally it will be "the best" in the eyes of the beholder.
The Thermopress one I have looks like it came out of a Porsche factory with all the precision german engineering on it, it cost £1300 and the same model 2 years on still is still almost the same price, its never let us down.
I dont think there can be a best make as long as its solid, constant heat, and reliable then I dont think you can go wrong with any of them.
Just had a look at the Adkins site, they look quality, I especially like the large format one last but one from the bottom, if i buy a mimaki JV3 for dye sub I will get one of those to fit it.

[TimDouglas]

thanks Steve, must check my invoice to see which one xpres recommended when i visited them, I purchased 6 different colours while I was there, hopefully its the same stuff. Think what Robert says that his lasted 20 years that will justify the extra £200 quid to get one from xpres or Adkins direct depending on price but I’m guessing they will be approx the same, its the delivery which may be the selling point! Some people think Northern Ireland is like sending to America !!! The prices some companies charge !

Thanks – I think I’m clear on what I’m doing, have been asked so many times " when you going to do my shirt? " Reason I want to get it right first time is as I have been told on here many times is to get the quality right first and each of these shirts I will be working on costs £30 / 40 quid each !! Will have to dig in my garage for practice shirts .

Thanks
TD

[Steve Underhill]

Here you go,
£9 from dorotape (or used to be)

5kg pack of wipes, its a big bale of cut up T shirts, you even get some designer ones in there I had a roxy T shirt cleaning my tiled floor the other day. but they are also ideal for test prints.
I use them for everything from cleaning vans to screen printing test prints.

[Peter Normington]

Tim
http://www.themagictouch.co.uk/
deliver to NI and also have a depot in Eire so may be worth a look, their press although with a magic touch logo is an adkin, and probably a similar price as buying direct.

Peter

[Steve Underhill]

I forgot to add, My thermopress swinger has a removable platen so you can fit a Cap press, mug press, plate press badge press etc, they are all a bit less than buying a separate press for each job and smaller as they are add on units.

http://www.thermopress.de.

[TimDouglas]

Purchased my heat press from the magic touch couple of weeks ago but been so busy not getting much time to play on it, Went with them as I seen the press in operation and was impressed and when I contacted themagictouch and xpres , only themagictouch got back to me with a quote and very reasonable shipping to Northern Ireland. I just realised I cant add photos in this forum so may start a new topic, I know Steve underhill said I should use Ultra cut from xpres for the motocross t shirts( 100% polyester , the stuff I was recommend to use by xpres on my visit to them was Super flex. Does anyone know what the real differences in these two are? Look familiar to me except it looks like you can use the silver / gold with ultra cut and not with super flex but super flex has opaque white which was also recommended. Should I use what stock I have and change over ? Or keep working with the super flex.

Next problem I am having is that when I was at xpres we pressed logos from a ink jet printer onto a dark jet paper. I purchased XP3133.
I used this on my Epson stylus photo R340. Problem here was that the quality was far from what I was expecting , On light colors it was passable,on darks you can hardly make it out , the shirt colours shine through which is terrible.
Did I buy the wrong stuff? should I be using XP3127 Ultragraphics ink jet dark? Do I need to be using a D88 / R1800 printer first?

Thanks for the help again
Tim Douglas

[Steve Underhill]

Ultra cut is way more durable than super flex.
It can be washed at up to 90 degrees and tumble dried.
seeing that motocross riders are always covered in mud that’s why I recommended it.
Super flex is fine for normal T shirts etc but just isn’t as hard wearing the jerseys would be fine if they aren’t being subjected to harsh conditions but I imagine being motocross jerseys they will be.
once you weed some ultra cut compared to super flex you will see what I’m talking about in regards to toughness.
I don’t use the opaque white and seeing as most of our T shirts we sell are black, and I’m using the normal white with no opacity problems Ive never seen the need to use it.
You can use the gold/silver with superflex just fine and overlay it too, I have plenty of times with both types.

Regarding the dark jet transfer paper, Xpres do 2 types one for normal ink and one for durabrite/pigment inks, the D88 and the R1800 both need the paper that ends in an X.
They just wont print onto the normal T shirt paper.
Also if using an epson R1800 turn off the glossy option as this glosses the registration dots in the Ultragraphics templates and your cutter wont read them.
These are the 2 things I found out when first using the Xpres stuff, so hopefully you wont have to go through all that hassle I did now.