Many of my clients have asked me why we print their products using different methods at different times.

This is a valid question and in the interest of educating the larger masses and for those who are interested I will describe the difference between the printing process and how they can be applied to your project. There are generally four methods of printing, they are screen printing, heat transfer press and embroidery “well this isn’t really a print but I put it there as you still need to put an image on a t-shirt”. The latest and greatest technology is direct to garment. This process can produce a fantastic high-resolution photographic print, but it comes at a cost.

screen printing

Screen printing is probably the most popular method of printing promotional t-shirts, the setup process is similar to traditional offset printing methods where you need to provide your images in separable color files, for example if you have a four color file that needs to. to provide a CMYK file where the print production company can break down each color and isolate them from each other by creating four separate print images, one for cyan, one for magenta, and one for yellow and K for black or the gray scale.

Now that the CMYK files have been separated, a separate screen is produced for each color in a total of four screens, a C screen, an M screen, and one each of the Y and K screens. So each color gets its own screen. separated. Once the screens have been produced and quality tested and all adjustments made, they are mounted on the screen printing press where each color is aligned with the next using registration marks on the screens. What this means is that each color is printed separately on the promotional t-shirt. Now that the screens have been set up and tested, we can start printing the t-shirts.

Summarizing screen printing, we note that there is quite a bit of setup work to be done, you need to allow considerable lead time for the delivery of the promotional t-shirts, furthermore, since the setup process is so intensive that it involves a substantial cost. about $70 to $150 per color, so in a four color print it would be $280 to $600 depending on the print, and you still have a good promotional t-shirt to print.

The good news is that setup is the most expensive part of the screen printing process, and from now on, every t-shirt has a minimum price. In short, screen printing is the best process for producing large quantities of promotional t-shirts, with a minimum order of a few hundred or more.

heat press

Printing promotional t-shirts with heat transfers involves digitally reproducing a heat transfer image onto a specially coated paper which is then reverse printed and heat pressed onto the promotional t-shirt.

The advantages of printing T-shirts with heat transfer are that it favors short runs. For example, it is possible and profitable to produce just one promotional t-shirt. So if you only need a few t-shirts this is the method you should use unfortunately this process comes with one big restriction you can only print on white t-shirts now you may think that’s not really good but considering over 80 % of promotional t-shirts that are printed in white the option is not so bad.

Embroidery

As I mentioned earlier in the introduction to this article, embroidery isn’t really a printing process, you’re essentially putting an image on a promotional t-shirt, which is why I’ve decided to include it, if only to clarify the process used to embroider. promotional t-shirts.

In a very simple explanation, embroidery involves re-scanning the image into one or more stitch patterns, so that this creates a digital stitch map for the embroidery machine to follow. One of the limitations of embroidery is that it only allows you to sew small images such as a logo on the chest pocket of a jersey or a club emblem on the sleeve of a polo shirt.

Embroidery produces highly durable products, commonly used for corporate clothing, not limited to t-shirts or polo shirts.

Direct to garment printing

This is the latest in promotional t-shirt printing, a fully digital process; it works similar to your home inkjet printer. The t-shirt is placed on a moving platform and guided through the print heads with extreme precision to produce some of the highest quality print graphics to date. This printing method is capable of printing on any color t-shirt as it uses white ink as the base color on colored promotional t-shirts.

With digital direct-to-garment printing, all you have to do is mount the t-shirt on the platen and hit print on your computer just like you would when printing a Word document. The direct-to-garment process is mid-priced and is becoming more profitable as new technologies are brought to market. From a single high-quality T-shirt to several hundred can be produced cost-effectively.

summarizing

The screen printing process is very labor intensive and expensive to set up, but when done, it is the most cost effective method for printing large volumes of promotional t-shirts. The heat press method can only print on white t-shirts, but it can print very small runs and is perfect if you only want one t-shirt.

Embroidery is a process that stitches colored cotton or thread onto a T-shirt to produce an image and is used primarily on corporate uniforms. Finally, direct to garment printing is a digital printing process.