Hey friends, Dave here with Transfer Express and today, I want to show you how easy it is
to print t-shirts at home! Now, whether you're just starting your own business or looking to
print t-shirts as a hobby we're going to discuss the different ways that you could do it how much
each one of those ways costs and then we're even going to jump into the process so you
could be printing t-shirts yourself like a pro are you ready let's get to learning if you are
new to transfer express we are the world's largest supplier of custom 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're kicking out new videos like this
one every single week printing t-shirts at home is fun and a great way to get creative regardless if
your end goal is a business etsy shop online store or just maybe printing some shirts for friends and
family now what makes it not so fun is big startup costs and investments frustrating learning curves
and expenses when something goes wrong like ruined or misprinted shirts now there's no one set way to
print a t-shirt either so let's discuss those different methods starting with the tried and
true method you probably already think of screen printing now screen printing uses mesh screens and
ink that you essentially create a stencil on the screen then push ink through it using a squeegee
to leave a print behind on the finished t-shirt it's what i started printing shirts with in
my own basement almost 15 years ago and while it gives you that durable high quality printed result
it doesn't make the most sense when you're just starting out that's mostly because of the learning
curve involved i'm talking weeks of learning curve you're going to have to learn about inks emulsions
screen densities a squeegee durometers and different types of inks and chemicals that
you're going to need for cleanup it took me a while before i could achieve retail ready results
fairly consistently it doesn't make a lot of sense if you're just printing those
low quantities or one offs now speaking of low quantity shirts one of the latest technologies for
apparel printing is direct to garment now while you're not limited by the colors you're printing
or that huge setup for printing shirts here and there like with screen printing you can be limited
to printing on cotton shirts only now there's a pretty large learning curve with artwork prep
software or rip software chemical pre-treatments curing and maintenance on the machines themselves
they have a tendency to clog if not used every single day and all of that compounded by the fact
that this is the most expensive investment that you're going to make into t-shirt printing and
that leads direct to garmin or dtg as they call it in the biz off the table for a lot of people
looking to get into t-shirt printing on a low cost budget now another method you may have heard about
is sublimation sublimation uses a special kind of desktop printer to print inks on a piece of
release paper and then you apply that with a heat press like this one right here behind me
it's great because you're not limited on colors in your design and they're fairly easy to apply with
a heat press the cons you're mostly limited to 100 polyester fabrics or in some cases some blends and
you need that polyester fiber so that the inks can adhere to it now the cost of a heat press and the
printer and then inks can start to add up putting your budget to the max right out of the gate now
while this does have a easier learning curve than traditional screen printing or even direct
to garment you're still going to need to hook up your computer to the printer and tweak those print
settings to get the right amount of ink down so that your prints are turning out nice and colorful
and vibrant now since we are talking about using a heat press like this one right here that i
mentioned one of the most popular methods is using heat transfer vinyl now it's fairly inexpensive
with the cost of a hobby grade vinyl cutter like a cricut or a silhouette even some of those rollins
are down in just a couple hundred dollar range in addition to the cutter you're going to need
a heat press to apply your graphics some people use household irons but with varying temperatures
and pressure they don't come close to the results that you can get with a heat press for ease of
use and the quality of your finished shirts now using quality heat transfer vinyl leaves you with
the ability to print some different effects like foils foam metallics and options for cotton and
polyester garments and what's real cool is that you could go from idea to printed shirt in less
than a couple minutes it's great for customization like names and numbers on the back of jerseys but
you're going to have to learn how to use the cutter software and printing graphics with two
or three colors require some careful layering of each color to ensure that all of them line up in
your design the good thing though with both the cutter and the heat press maintenance is minimal
to none if you're not using them every day they're going to sit there and be perfectly ready to work
when you need them no clogs or messy inks to worry about fixing or replacing now that brings us to
our last option and my favorite custom heat transfers now using heat transfers your only
upfront investment is a heat press now no need to go buy expensive software or any other machines
and with just a heat press you could print t-shirts from the corner of your bedroom or even a
closet they take up almost no space something like our clam basics series or even the craft press are
super affordable options that you can get printing right on your desk in your bedroom at home
now when you need to print some shirts you just place an order online using
your artwork or designing online and then you receive your transfers in a couple days or so
no need to stock any other materials and using the free online design tools like our easy view online
designer at transferexpress.com you don't even need photoshop or illustrator or any background in
graphic design you can design it all i'm talking t-shirt designs that people actually want to buy
all online now once the transfers arrive all you have to do is apply them to shirts
using your heat press and essentially you're done almost no learning curve and you're going to get
retail ready results with your first press custom transfers give you the power for big or small jobs
too with varying transfer types screen printed transfers like our goof proof formula utilizes
the exact same inks you use when traditionally screen printing they're called plastisol inks
but without the mess of all of those inks and the squeegees the emulsion and the cleanup digital
transfers like our ultra color max direct to film transfers are available without minimum
quantities so if you need just a few of each design it's super affordable to get them there
are no limitations on colors with those designs on the digital transfers and they apply to light or
dark cotton or polyester garments really you can't get an easier scenario now with all of that said
let's run through the process here quickly starting from an idea and going all the way
to a finished t-shirt so we're going to start here at transferexpress.com and click on over
to our design center for our example today we're just going to be doing a few shirts
so we're going to go down here to the bottom left and change our transfer type over to our full
color ultra color max transfers that i mentioned just a little bit ago here we're going to add some
art from the clipart library toss some text up on here too size them for what we need one for a left
chest and one for a full back print and then we're going to group these together with some other
small logos on the page for some alternatives if we want to print on say different color shirts
you'll see there is a 25 order minimum here but with just four quantity we make it over that 25
now the majority of our graphics here are just single color but we could print any color we need
with these ultra color max transfers once we're set up we get to order our transfers right here
now these ultra color max transfers shipped the next business day when ordered before production
cut off now once our transfers arrive we're going to fire up the heat press here we're going to
be using the hotronix 16x20 autoclam but like i mentioned you could use any other heat press we're
going to set our temperature to 290 degrees here on our press and set our time to 15 seconds just
using the buttons and the controls up top 290 degrees and 15 seconds on our timer now once
we cut our transfers out from our sheet that they arrive on we're going to align them and just press
so let's do it all right so the first step to heat pressing a t-shirt is just going to be putting
the shirt onto the press we're just going to lay it over top our lower platen here
and trace all of our sides down to make sure we're nice and centered so we can see by this
big rectangle that we have that we're going to be right where we need it to be now we're
going to pre-press this for three to five seconds removing any moisture and wrinkles from the shirt
now with heat printing there are three elements that we need to worry about time temperature
and pressure we set our time and temperature already but pressure is controlled with this knob
on the top of our press whatever transfer you are applying it's going to come with instructions
we need a medium to firm pressure for these so we just want to make sure it's set to a
medium to firm pressure now we're going to take our first graphic for the front side
and place it right here now a great way to do your left chest is taking where the collar meets the
shoulder seam and putting a line straight down the garment you're going to align your graphic
there and then go about four fingers up or kind of aligned with the sleeve right here
making sure that we're in the right spot now we could just position the shirt back to where it was
and we could press our shirt with this little baseball guy right on that left chest
we'll press this for 15 seconds and this is a hot peel so we'll
peel the carrier away immediately and that's it our graphic will be applied
and just like that we have an awesome print on our t-shirt that's truly how easy it is to use these
transfers no weeding cutting or printing yourself involved you have a great printed shirt let's do
the back side so what we're going to do is just flip the shirt over and do exactly what we did
before and we're just going to make sure that everything kind of falls off the printing area now
if like this our front collar is underneath this right where we want to put this back graphic just
like this but if that area is there that's going to affect our pressure and it's going to give us
bad adhesion so what you could do is just roll the collars up to match each other a little bit
and so when we lay it down it's going to be much more up there where it needs to be instead of
being all the way down here now what we're going to do is we're also going to keep it
off of the platen just like we did before and we'll make sure that we're nice centered
and aligned so that if we're centered to the platen we're going to be centered on our shirt
we'll take our second graphic put it right on up there near the back side of the press and center
it by eye on the garment now we'll go ahead and press this one just like we did that front side
once the press opens we'll peel our transfer carrier away immediately while it's hot and there
you have it a quality printed t-shirt and just like that we have a printed t-shirt you can see
how little space the entire setup takes and look here at this retail ready quality printed t-shirt
are you interested in learning more well you found the right spot we just quickly showed the entire
overview here today and the process but we have an entire youtube channel dedicated to helping you
and your t-shirt business thrive be sure to check out transferexpress.com too to learn
more all about these heat transfers you'll get a full welcome kit mailed to you for
free with tons of samples just for signing up for a free account
you don't even need to put a credit card there's a little spot for a tax id in there
but if you don't have one you can just click the check box and that's fine as always thank
you for watching and be sure you're subscribed here to stay up to date on all of the videos
we're dropping every single week to help out but until next time i'm dave happy pressing
you