Of course this is not too much of a problem if you have a shop with a changing room facility. The trouble starts when you have an on-line clothing catalogue. At typical senario would be that a company is having an exhibition with about 20 staff maning the stand. A great deal of effort goes into the t-shirt printing design, so that everyone will look great on the day. Then someones secretary is given the task of collecting all sizes of the staff. This usually is done by either a memo or a phone call requesting their size. Back comes a mish-mash of sizes ranging from 38″ chest to medium and also dress size 14. This either get sent on in its raw entirety to the t-shirt printer or the secretary takes it upon herself to do the conversition.

Finally the member of staff attending the exhibition (usually a man) who was asked their size, did not have a clue what size they were because their wife has bought all their cloths for the last 10 years. He still think he is a medium, when he grew out of being a large last Christmas. I don’t think any man (me included) knows what neck size he is without taking off his shirt!

Of course, come the day of the exhibition when everyone turns up in t-shirts 3 sizes too small or large, it is the t-shirt printing company that gets the blame.

The repercussions of the forthcoming general election, where it is widely believed that there will be a new government this time is a source of some concern to our industry.

When the OFT report on school uniforms came out under the Labour government, suggesting that every school should get rid of school uniforms completely, we had to form the Schoolwear Association. This group had great success in convincing MP of the benefits of school specific uniform.

The Conservative view is that they think it is very important that school kids should look smart. Michael Grove has said that although blazers and school ties would not be obligatory they would be very much encouraged.

I think the figure that proves the point is that out of the top 50 best performing schools in this country, only one does not have a school uniform.

The individual or company concerned usually does the marathon for a good cause and that usually means sponsorship, which in turn raises the much needed money for the charity.

The person or team that is taking part on the day has spent the cold winter months training for the big event, rapped up to the eyeballs to keep warm. Now the Spring weather has arrived and temperatures have risen, thoughts turn to the need for a decent running vest.

Unless you are quite sporty or involved in sport through your kids, you may not be aware of the new generation of dry fitting sports wear that is now available. The good old fashioned cotton vest when caught in a shower or just soaked thought with perspiration, starts to hang of you like an old rag, looking terrible and feeling awful. Modern materials have made it possible for the garment to get rid of any moisture and not loose its shape. This sportswear is usually made from some form of Polyester. Gamegear specialize in this type of garment and produce the Cooltex Running Vest.

Gamegear Cooltex Running Vest has a moisture management finish. It has contrasting side panels with flatlock stitching. It is finished with a contrast white V lower hem. The running shirt is made from 100% Polyester and has twin needle stitching in the armholes. The front hem is straight and the back hem is curved.

It comes in White/ Navy and White Grey.

One of the problems with this great new material is that you can not print it using DTG printing, which would give you great versatility of designs that you could use for decoration. This is because the ink used by DTG can not penetrate the material, so it sits on the top of the fabric. When you wash the shirt it comes off!

I can not recommend embroidery either. The stitching goes through the light weight structure of the shirt and gives a rough finish on the inside, which will cause chaffing and discomfort.

Vinyl transfer does a very good job on this type of fabric but is limited in the types of design it can handle.

Up until now, if you were printing on dark or indeed black t-shirts, it was necessary to print a white layer first. This is partially for any white areas of the design, but  also so the lighter colours woulds show up. If you printed a light blue or yellow onto a black t-shirt, they would not show up. If you put a opaque layer of white onto the t-shirt first and then print the light colour onto that, you get a nice bright end result.

This meant the old process needed to do one pass under the printer head to receive the white layer, allow the white ink to dry, and then print again using the other colours. As you can imagine this takes rather a long time.

At this point in time it all sounds a bit implausible to me. At the end of the month there is the Printwear & Promotion Exhibition being held at the Birmingham NEC. Yes have got a stand and should be demonstrating the new process. I will go, observe and report back.

Yes the basic principle is the same. Both spray either ink or dye at the the surface to be printed. In some cases, both machines use the same printer head, but that is were the similarity ends.

It is slightly more realistic if you want to print onto light or preferably white t-shirts. This is because there will be no need to put a white layer onto the garment first. If you do want to print images with lighter colours or white onto darker t-shirts then the real problems begin.

The white pigment used to print onto black or darker t-shirts is much thicker than the printer head was designed to cope with. Therefore there is a great tendency for clots and eventually permanently unblockable printers heads that will have to be replaced. The is not a cheap repair. The head alone without fitting charges will cost around about £200 to replace! This problem can re-occur very often, which will wipe out any profit on the work. On top of that the job will be delayed while you repair the printer which will probably make the job late and upset your customer.

Then there is the problem of ripping software, I am not going to bore you with the technicalities of it, but needless to say you will have to have it and it is not cheap. Add to that you will have no maintenance or technical backup and I would say you are onto a looser.

If you are thinking of printing t-shirts with DTG technology, get onto the t-shirt printing forums, read what the customers of the different companies are saying and choose the one with the happiest customers.

Schools use polo shirts for school uniform, because the can take the rough treatment they will get from the kids and are not to expensive to replace. Plus the tend to look smarter because they have a collar.

The other positive attribute of the polo is that you can embroider it. T-shirts tend to be too thin and can chafe. With the polo’s longer life expectancy the permanence of embroidery is worth the extra cost.

As far as printing is concerned the major concern is the type of material that is used to manufacture the t-shirt. Most t-shirts are made from 100% cotton, others are made from all sorts of man make fibers.

Some processes like DTG can not print onto man made fibers such as polyester because it would not absorb the dye. Most DTG printers will cope with a 60% cotton to 40% man made fibre mixture but I would not recommend going as low as 50% -50% cotton to polyester mixes. It will look ok when you first get the t-shirt but will soon start to fade and washout.

The most common place to have a company logo is FLB or front-left-breast. Now how could that be a problem? Well for a start, is your FLB or my FLB looking at you? The best way to remember is that it will end up on the same side as your left arm. At least that is the industry standard interpretation.

As with sublimation the end result is very durable. Because it is made of material rather than a vinyl sheet, it blends with the garment better and looks less like a stuck on badge. The other advantage is that you can press it into most types of garment.

The down side of the process is that because you have to cut the image out of the material before you press it onto the garment, you can only have logo designs with a hard continuous edge.

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.