Hey friends, Dave here with Transfer Express and today we are talking about
inside tag printing... but with a slight twist! So in the past year or so we've been seeing the use
of these hand-held cricut easy press mini's just skyrocket in terms of popularity. Well... we have
waited long enough and it's time we give it a shot ourselves and we're going to see how well we can
apply our goof proof screen printed transfers as those inside tag prints. we're going to compare
some of the different techniques that we've seen on social media like TikTok and how it compares
when we are applying with a real heat press! Now, to top it all off we're even going to do some wash
testing to see if they'll hold up to the 50 plus wash dry cycles that we test all of our transfers
for so are you ready for some fun science experiments today i can't wait so let's get to it!
If you are new to transfer express, we are the world's largest supplier
of screen printed and digital heat transfers along with being a one-stop shop for heat presses custom
designs bulk apparel and advice to help grow your t-shirt business. if you haven't already,
subscribe we are kicking out new videos here on youtube every single week! first things first,
let's pop this easy press out of the box now we picked up the name brand on amazon here but
there's tons of alternative options available too now it boasts it's easy to use with three
heat settings a comfortable grip handle auto off feature and it even comes with a little
safety base so that you don't burn your table while it's heating up
first things first we're gonna plug it in and let it start heating up since it only has three heat
settings low medium and high and not a digital temperature readout that we're used to on our
heat presses we went looking for which setting to use for our goof proof and found that the
low sets the heat around 209 degrees the medium around 350 degrees and the high heat clocking in
around 360 to 400 degrees since we'll be printing goof-proof screen printer transfers today on a 100
cotton shirt we're going to opt for the high heat for that 365 degree temperature that's noted on
the goof proof application instructions now we've also got our handy temperature gun right here
so we're going to test and see what our high heat setting looks like and
we are a little bit under what it says it is at 341 degrees on this thing so maybe
it's going to heat up a little bit more maybe it's not but we're going to apply all the same
now let's start printing as a control for our experiment here we're going to apply our first tag
with our hotronix 20 auto open clam shell press we are set to 365 degrees a four second press
time and medium to firm pressure we'll pre-press the garment to remove any moisture in the fabric
then lay our transfer down and press with a hot peel when the press opens we're going to peel
the carrier away in a smooth motion immediately and it looks great now as we mentioned here with
the first application there are three elements to a successful heat transfer time temperature
and pressure the easy press mini here only has a temperature setting so the time and pressure is
completely up to us we're going to try this easy press in a few different ways just like we've
seen on the internet our first method here will press right onto the table a quick tack at first
then a nice little swirling motion not putting too much pressure on the print which seems to
be what we see most often for about four seconds next we're going to do the same exact thing that
we did last time just this time we're going to be preheating the garment first and then ironing
on the transfer with a slightly firmer pressure for just a little bit longer here at six seconds
for our next application we'll introduce a mouse pad under our print area which may
help with our pressure by offering a base with a little bit of firm give to it we'll
also preheat our shirt here before pressing the same movement same time and a hot peel
now we'll also pre-press our shirt here in this test
and increase our time because the iron wasn't up to the temperature of what we
thought it was so we'll bump our timeout to 10 to 12 seconds the same movement same hot peel
this one number two is e four second table six second table
pre press second
mouse pad
with a mouse pad
one number two number three number four number five now next up is our wash test since all of
these transfers appear to have applied uh this is where we're going to see which application is the
best so we're going to toss these in the washer and dryer for just a few cycles and see how our
transfers are holding up so we'll be right back two days later and we are back all right a couple
days later and a couple wash cycles so we have our freshly laundered shirt we threw it through
the washer and dryer two times with a little bit of you know ringing and and wearing simulation
up to it but these goof proof transfers here on this shirt held up pretty good i'm gonna say that
all of us were surprised but let's take a closer look here and look at how and why these made
it through the wash or in some cases didn't all right so now that we are up close let's bring our
guide back in so we remember what these are and now this one you may have not seen on the shirt
before we watched it and we actually did this for a tick tock video so if you don't
already follow us on tick tock go over to tick tock because we're doing a lot of cool stuff
and that's actually where we first saw of people applying these with an easy press
was on tick tick-tock but as you can see this one we did a slightly longer uh time and i added a
little bit more pressure i think this was around 10 to 12 seconds and with a nice firm pressure
and it actually adhered great and as we could see here there's no uh no lifting no nothing but let's
go down the entire list here and talk about the ones that we did here specifically for this video
first is the auto clamp the auto clamp still nice high opacity looks exactly the same as when it
came off the press it washed and wore fantastic and i have no doubts that this is going to last
perfectly on the garment for 50 washes or more exactly what we tested for let's go on over here
so this is the quick first easy press with the cricut press and as you can see through the wash
we lost a whole bunch of letters at least the end of the lines the the end of almost these two s's
and you can see they're already still lifting up it's a little bit more tacky and uh yeah it's just
not as quality of a transfer as what we expect with our screen printed goof proof transfers here
now this was a little bit longer but still on the table you could see that we lost quite a bit of
the line almost more than this one did and the s it also still has a pretty good tack to it as well
not nearly as tacky as this one but a little bit more into the fibers with that six second table
press now these two over here that we pressed with the mouse pad you could see that the ink is
100 fully into the garment now that's what we're going to get with a pre-press that's removing any
moisture so the inks are not sitting on top of the fabric but sitting more into the fabric and it's
not peeling not tacky anywhere so that's giving it that 10 second press with that firm pressure
the same here with number five a very very similar feel to this one but this one you can't feel the
inks barely at all so that was not moving at all a nice sturdy strong pressure against that mouse pad
that gave us a good surface to print on you are going to have to expect that that little mini easy
press will be cooling down as you can see the opacity of the inks uh just differs as we did
that in real time but if you look back up here to the inside tag where we turned everything off and
came back an hour later to print one it was nice and hot and a nice opaque white ink overall we're
fairly impressed with the quality of how they stuck on there i hope this shed some light on
this very very popular application technique applying our custom screen printed transfers
with one of the mini easy presses now is it a okay for inside tag prints like the one that we did for
the tick tock here it actually really surprised us with how well it did it here and apply and stay
on the shirt after some wash and dry cycles now would we recommend using the easy press to apply
any graphics on the outside of a shirt like a left chest a center chest or a sleeve graphic
absolutely not but for an inside tag the minimal lifting and the inconsistent results
may be perfectly acceptable and passable for your brand for something that's only seen by the wearer
or owner of the t-shirt of course using a heat press real deal heat press is going to always
give you the absolute best results just like our wash test showed you but if you are using
one of these handheld heat presses let us know if you've had similar results or any tips and tricks
that you've been using to get results better than ours let us know all of that in the comments
section below now we are pushing out new videos every single week here on youtube at the transfer
express channel so if you have a topic that you would love to see us cover just let us know
again in the comments section below but if you're not already subscribed make sure you're subscribed
and as always we're happy to help anybody anyway in the apparel decorating community if
you need to reach out to us for any reason at all you could always call
or email us at info transferexpress.com but until next time i'm dave happy pressing