Hey friends, Dave here with Transfer Express, and today we are talking all about screen printed
transfers! now, with the growth and interest in heat printing in the industry on social
media like Tik Tok, we figured we'd dive into some plastisol screen printed transfer basics,
we're going to talk about what they are the benefits of using them and then we'll even
get in some quick and basic applications to show you just how simple they are to use.
So, all you need is a heat press you ready? let's jump on in
if you are new to transfer express we are the world's largest supplier of screen printed and
digital heat transfers heat presses free customizable designs wholesale apparel and
expert advice to help grow your t-shirt business if you haven't already subscribe we are kicking
out new videos like this one every single week before we jump into transfers let's talk about
screen printing real quick screen printing is a process of pushing ink through a mesh screen
to transfer a print the design is burned into the screen as a stencil with emulsion and then ink is
pushed through with a squeegee leaving behind a very beautiful print now screen printing has
been around for a good long while but really came to popularity in apparel decorating in the late
1950s screen printed transfers give you that same look feel wash and wearability as a traditional
screen printed t-shirt all without the hassle of all of that mess i just mentioned dealing
with the screens and emulsion inks squeegees up and of course the steep learning curve
of screen printing yourself it personally took me months to be able to consistently get retail ready
results when i was learning to screen print over a decade ago now with screen printed transfers
will take care of all that mess and hassle so that you could achieve the same beautiful final
printed result with just a heat press there's no weeding involved either now these prints come
ready to apply and print quickly in just four to six seconds screen printed transfers are produced
using the same exact plastisol inks that have been the industry standard for apparel printing
for over 60 years it's by far the most durable and flexible ink that's opaque enough to be printed
on light and dark garments and be able to be mixed into just about any color you could imagine now we
test all of our transfers here at transfer express to 50 plus wash dry cycles to ensure that they'll
meet the durability standards of the apparel decorating industry and be great to represent
you and your business as well now screen printed transfers are just printed on a paper carrier
instead of direct to the fabric like you might be used to so it also eliminates all of those high
minimum piece requirements when you're going to a screen print print shop or justifying the setup
for you to set up the job to print your own shirts at home or in your shop all you have to do is pull
everything together when the order comes this allows you to reduce risk and your investments
into all of that pre-printed inventory that might not sell you could effectively print on many
different colorways or styles with transfers or even print on demand just pressing the design into
the t-shirt when each order comes in now that's great for those small businesses using uh those
online marketplaces like etsy now with turn times as short as the next day you won't be waiting long
at all for any of your designs to ship to you either as with all screen printing we're using
spot colors which is one solid layer of ink for each individual color so with each additional
color the price will increase however just like with all printing the higher the quantity you
order the lower the rate there are typically price breaks in the quantities there as well and here at
transfer express we start at six quantity and then the price will drop at 12 18 24 36 etc
you get the idea now one huge advantage of screen print transfers is purchasing by the sheet here at
transfer express we have both standard which is 11 and a quarter by 14 inches and jumbo size sheets
at 12 and a half by 17 and a half giving you the ability to group multiple pieces of artwork all
onto one sheet what we call gang sheets now you could really drop the print cost even further
by fitting as much as you can on the sheet via different customers artwork maybe different print
locations like a logo for left chest and then a full back or even sneaking in some inside tag
prints as long as it's the same color there will be no increase in pricing so say for example if
this entire sheet is four dollars and we have four different images on the sheet each print
is then only one dollar really building in tons of profit into your print costs right up front while
we're talking about costs screen printed transfers really drop any initial investment into equipment
down to just a heat press and you don't even need a super top of the line one you don't need
to buy any expensive screen printing presses or dryers flash units stocking all of those
inks and emulsions and you don't even need to buy any cutters like a cricut or silhouette if you
were using vinyl or stock any of those materials the only investment you will make into equipment
is your heat press now ordering screen printed transfers from transfer express is easy too you
could select from thousands of pre-made layouts and clip art in our free to use easy view online
designer and you could also just upload your own designs using this feature right here arranging
them on the sheet duplicating them as many times as you want or easily resizing them as well
so not only can you design here in the program but you could select and configure your different
transfer types or effects and get instant quoting right here at the bottom for our example today
we are going to be using our goof proof screen printed transfers they are our number one most
popular transfer type and have been for the past 30 years here at transfer express they are super
simple and easy to print here you will see your accurate turnaround time at the bottom of our easy
view session as well no guessing the date that you see here is the date that your order will ship and
with maximum transit times of two days anywhere in the continental united states those transfers are
going to be getting to you in no time flat now that we've seen what they are and the benefits
of screen printed transfers along with how transfer express makes it so easy to order
let's screen print a t-shirt with just our heat press we are back here at the heat press with
our gildan 50 50 shirt and i'm just going to get this all set up for goof proof so we're just at
365 degrees a six second pre-press on our first timer and a six second press on our second timer
now on our hotronix 16 by 20 auto clam one great feature of this heat press is the ability
to easily swap out the platen and here we have the tagalong platen now what this allows us to
do is print the front of the t-shirt and the tag at the same time just reducing the steps needed to
be able to print that retail ready apparel so all i'm going to do is open this thing up and
just thread it onto the press like it's a pillow case and i'll go ahead and grab the bottom here
pulling this up and around this top tag portion when we're printing anything with a heat press we
just want to make sure that we are pre-pressing to remove any moisture from the fabric it's a
lot like a sponge and it just picks up moisture from the air and while that steam is releasing
out if we're trying to push inks down it's going to be a bad time so let's just go ahead and get
that moisture out of the shirt next step is going to be to remove our label up here because we'll
be printing one of those ones that we just cut out so holding it down just removes right out
nice and clean like it was never there now for this shirt i just want to show you how
easy it is to use all of those elements that we just took from our gang sheet of those screen
printed transfers we'll put this one on the back nice big wide 11 inch print the four and
a half inch logo we'll put on the left chest and we'll grab one of these inside tag prints
and put this on the inside of the shirt as well three print locations all from one transfer sheet
and you saw we have a ton left over too this is the value of these screen printed transfers that
i'm telling you about so we'll go ahead and grab our tag print here and just align it down and make
sure that we're all nice and centered and what we're going to do with the left chest is we're
just going to grab where the seam meets the collar up on the shoulder and draw a line straight down
that's going to be right where we're going to center our artwork and then we'll just
do about four fingers down from the collar to the top of the artwork which is going to put us
about right there so i just want to make sure that we're aligned and centered looks good and
then we'll do just one extra double check and maybe we just come up just a little bit perfect
right there once we're happy with that placement we're just gonna close our press for six seconds
we'll peel these carriers away immediately and i'll show you that screen printed plastisol result
once the press opens we'll peel those carriers away immediately
and as you can see look at that awesome premium printed t-shirt so just as easily as we printed
the front side we'll just do the same thing here for the back and we'll give this one a pre-press
as well now that we're all pre-pressed we'll go ahead and grab our large transfer and i'm going
to set it down right here just want to check and i'm going to make this one about a little bit
maybe just a little bit higher four fingers five fingers a little bit spread you get a
little bit of more wiggle room on the back make sure that we're aligned nice
and centered check where we're going to be with our sleeves there will be right on the shoulders
and we'll go ahead and press this one exactly how we press the front side
we'll peel this carrier away immediately as well
and there you have it a beautiful durable plastisol screen print so we'll just remove
this one from the press and just like that we have a screen printed t-shirt the inside tag a left
chest and of course that beautiful full back print you can see on this dark color that these inks are
nice and opaque as well and that's it just four to six seconds to print a t-shirt and we're left with
a perfect durable and opaque plastisol screen print on our shirt no setup or learning curves
required and we don't need expensive and bulky setups just the heat press right here that's all
we needed but we are pushing out new videos every week here on our transfer express youtube channel
so if you're not already subscribed what are you waiting for as always we're happy to help in any
way we can for the apparel decorating community if you need to reach us you can always comment below
call or email us at info transferexpress.com but until next time i'm dave happy pressing