HOW TO PRINT ON THE LEFT CHEST One of the most popular imprint areas on a shirt is a left chest print. In the industry, a left chest print always refers to “left chest as worn” on a shirt. This means that the imprint will appear on the left side of the shirt when an individual is wearing the shirt. Sometimes the left chest print will be the only print on the shirt. Other times the back of the shirt will also be printed. If you are printing the front and back of the shirt, it does not matter which side of the shirt you print first. You should be able to print the left chest print faster since it is smaller in size, requires less ink and effort to print.
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An important aspect of screen printing a T-Shirt properly is getting the print straight on the shirt. A print that is not square and runs up or down hill will surely end up in the rag pile. Once you line up the screen to the image to be printed, you should be ready to print a full run of shirts without the screen moving. Then it is as simple as putting each shirt on the platen in the same place to get a consistent placement of the image. Printing on sweats can be very profitable but requires different printing techniques. There are a few things to watch out for when printing sweatshirts or sweatpants. First, you will need to use more platen adhesive than usual to hold the garment in place and the sweatshirt or pant will absorb some of the adhesive. As a result, you will need to apply new adhesive to the platen typically after every third shirt. Failure to have adequate adhesive will cause the garment to lift resulting in a shadow print and a ruined garment. A word of caution is to not use too much adhesive as it will remain on the inside of the garment until laundered. Unlike printing on white or other light colored t-shirts, printing dark colored t-shirts can present certain challenges. There are certain tips and tricks to printing dark shirts. In this article, we try to cover everything you need to know about printing on darks ranging from the PFP (Print-Flash-Print) technique, to the proper mesh counts, to the time saving “coating stroke” technique. GENERAL CONCEPTS Multi-color printing on dark shirts will almost always involve the use of an underbase. An underbase (usually printed with white ink) is used to “seal” the surface of the garment and to provide for a white background on which the artwork will be printed.Furthermore, single color printing on dark shirts is best achieved with the use of specially formulated ink known as “super opaque” to achieve the opacity of an acceptable print. Keeping information on orders is always a good idea. You should have a record system set up to retain all order information such as customer name, address, shipping address and contact information. You should also be recording for future reference, information pertaining to the quantity of the order, specific shirt brand and color you used and the ink color of the order. Having all this available makes it very easy when the customer wants to reorder. Your customer may likely remember that the ink color you used was blue, but there are many shades of blue. Not to mention that each manufacturer will have their own spectrum of blue inks. Another good idea is to keep a test print of each order that you print. Not only will this be a great method to record your order details but you can use the test print to display in your shop or keep as a scrapbook. You will commonly see a letter accompanying the mesh count e.g. "T" (regular), "S" (Small) or "HD" (heavy duty) with "T" being the most commonly used designation. Here are some sample mesh counts 30, 60, 83, 109, 140, 162, 200, 255, and 305. There are of course, lower and higher sizes available, but these are the most common and readily available from screen printing supply vendors. Custom printed transfers can be another way to add a profit center to your t-shirt printing business. Screen printing transfers (especially single color transfers) is easy and they can be produced very quickly if you have the right equipment. Many shops started printing transfers as a side line and developed into transfer specialists producing only custom transfers exclusively because of the high profit factor. Another great feature of custom transfers is for servicing repeat customers who have small orders. By printing extra transfers of the customer's art, you can save the transfers for their next order. And without having to burn new screens, you can fill the next order easily and quickly. ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO SELL “TEAM” WEAR? If you are one of the many people who enjoy sports and think that getting into the screen printing business to print athletic apparel will be a great way to make money, let's discuss some of the realities first. Sure, there is money to be made printing team wear and athletic jerseys, but you are usually going to be dealing with a type of customer who is usually less than ideal. You will find that most team shirt orders are usually small and complicated involving personalized names and numbers with each shirt having to be a specific size for each player. Printing team wear for leagues, school teams, and other organized sports groups often involves a certain amount of politics often making it difficult to land orders if you are an outsider. All over t-shirt screen printing, commonly known as "all over printing" has become a popular method of shirt decorating. The name "all over printing" pretty much sizes up what the print technique is all about–applying a screen print to most or all of entire print surface of the garment. This is accomplished by having large size artwork, using large screens and printing the shirt on top of large platens. The shirt is coated with a solution to stiffen it to make it print ready and is held to the platen with adhesive. |
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