27/02/2009 by admin.

Modern technology has started to revolutionize the sports side of t-shirts. Man made materials like polyester offer Dry-Fit garments that give the advantage of clothing that can breathe, with the added characteristic of not absorbing sweat. This prevents them from becoming wet, heavy and uncomfortable to wear.

But from the point of view of a t-shirt printer it creates a problem. If the image is multi-coloured or has a soft edge, you cannot use DTG. DTG needs at least an 50% cotton mix of material for the dye to bind properly.

The solution is a clever product called Sublimation which creates a chemical reaction with the synthetic material and permanently dyes it. There are only a few companies like Crisp that can provide this product, but it is very handy to know you can still put sophisticated designs on Dry-Fit clothing.

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11/02/2009 by admin.

DTG printing is the greatest innovation for t-shirt printing ever!

It solves all the problems of normal garment decoration. This is done by a machine that works on a very similar way to your ordinary desk top printer. It is actually about ten times larger and the printer head sprays dye rather than ink.

So you can design anything you want and it will print onto the garment in the same way your household ink jet, onto white paper.

White paper being the operative word. If you put a black sheet of paper into your desk top printer, you wouldn’t expect a very good result. The reason for this is the printer doesn’t have a white cartridge. This is because it relies on the white  paper to provided the white needed in the image. The other problem is the reds, blues and yellows don’t show up if you print them onto a dark colour.

This is where the DTG printers fall into two types. One type that can only print onto white or light coloured garments. The other that has an extra process that prints a layer of white first, and them prints colour on top of that.

Great I hear you say, problem solved! Well maybe

I have just got back from the Printwear & Promotion exhibition and have studied all the available options for direct to garment printing on coloured or black garments.

Brother has a fantastic reputation with the machine it produces for printing on white garments. They are due to have a coloured version of the machine for sale in this country by this coming October. The other problem is that it is rumoured  to cost about 50,000 Euros.

There are plenty of other cheaper versions of direct to garment printers in the market place, but there are serious issues with usability and reliability. This is generally caused by the white ink which is a suspension fluid and clogs the jets up on the printer head. 

So having looked at everything that was on offer at the exhibition I found the HM1-C printer made by Yes Ltd to be the best product on offer. It has a circulating ink system which seems to be very  effective at stopping ink clogging and various new technologies that put it ahead of the game.  In fact we were so impressed that we have bought one, so watch this space and we will keep you informed  on how we get on with it.

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10/02/2009 by admin.

Also known as Digital Transfer or Vinyl Transfer.

This process is based on a very thin vinyl film which comes in a variety of different colours. The film can be placed on a digital plotter that cuts out the shape, and has been created on a design program like Coral Draw or Illustrator.

This technique is ideally suited to logo’s that are based on simple type or silhouette images. For example if your logo is “RAC” or “Honda” then this is the technique for you.

Because the origination is created within a graphics program and goes straight to the plotter, there are no expensive screens or digitization to be done. This means there are no expensive setup charges!

So if you are only after 10 or 20 t-shirts it is quite viable. You can literally phone up the t-shirt printers and say ” give me 20 medium black t-shirts with my company name, printed across the shoulders in red using  Arial bold,” and you would get a nice result.

That is the other point, you can print light colours onto dark garments. The vinyl is totally opaque so white comes up beautifully clean and bright when printed on black or navy blue. The colour will not fade and the vinyl is happy to stretch with the garment.

The material is not actually printed onto the garment. The plotter cuts the shape of the logo out of the vinyl sheet and the excess material is peeled away. This is then pressed into the garment using a special press that applies extreme heat and huge pressure. If this is done properly the end result is as permanent as embroidery. But you constantly come across people who have had bad experiences of the film coming off or the garment or cracking.  Good Transfer printers will guarantee the work for the life of the garment provided you adhere to the recommended washing instruction for the garment.

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