Screen Printing With Just A Heat Press | Videos

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Hey friends, Dave here at Transfer Express and today we are talking about screen printing with just a heat press. That's right, we're going to be covering the absolute easiest way to put plastisol ink on a t-shirt or a hoodie or tank top or anything and this is all without the mess of inks, emulsions, screens, squeegees or those huge machines that are going to take up your whole garage.

Now, the best part of it all is we are going to have a t-shirt that looks, feels, washes and wears just like those screen printed graphic tees that you already love.

So are you ready to learn how you could do it yourself? Let's get to printing!

So before we get started, let's go on a little story time right here. So back around 2009, I learned how to screen print t-shirts on my kitchen table. I spent a good week dialing in emulsion exposure without it washing out and also printing different stencils on film. Then, once I had it all figured out, I had to swap out a squeegee for better suited one for apparel printing and the screen mesh that I was using. Then, of course, came the massive inks and cleanup and I still didn't even have a printed t-shirt that I could sell. So frustrating to say the least.

Well, I eventually got the hang of it but I knew there had to be an easier way. Luckily, if you're watching this, there is a much better way and that's using screen printed plastisol transfers, just like these Goof Proof transfers that we have right here that I got from TransferExpress.com.

Now, screen printed transfers are just that. They are screen printed with the same plastisol inks that I was using all those years ago to try to print a t-shirt, except here at Transfer Express, we take all of the hassle of those squeegees, inks, emulsion and cleanup so that you don't have to.

Now, that means that all you have to do is press, peel the carrier away, and profit!

Seriously, it really is that simple - no learning curve or learning those different squeegee angles, pressure or even registering the colors to each other. There's no bulky press setups or even cutters or printers or anything you need to have at home or in your shop. You just need a heat press like this one right here that I got behind me.

These transfers are produced with the same plastisol screen printing inks that all of the huge commercial print shops use with just a little mix of some secret ingredients to make the inks opaque on any color fabric and print easily on any tee made out of cotton, polyester, or cotton/poly blends.

At Transfer Express, all of the screen printed transfers are sold by the sheet, allowing for what we call gang sheeting, and gang sheets are essentially the grouping of multiple artworks all onto one page to reduce the print cost per image and maximize your profit potential. You're paying for the sheet, so take advantage of all the space on there to get the most out of your prints.

The best part of all, with an easy to use online designer you don't have to be an artist to create some cool t-shirts. Of course, if you are a graphic design pro, you can easily upload, resize, recolor, and arrange your artwork here on these gang sheets, too.

The screen printed transfers ship as quick as the next business day and when those transfers arrive, all it takes is a little quick cut to get your images out of your sheet and you're ready to go.

But enough talking about these - let me show you how quick and easy these print, too.

Back here at our Hotronix 16x20 Auto Open Clamshell press, we've got our press dialed into 365 degrees and just a four second press. We also have the Tag Along HP Platen installed here on our press, which is exclusive to the Hotronix brand of heat presses with their Quick Change Platen system.

This is going to allow us to print the inside tag of our shirt as well as printing the front graphic at the same time in just four seconds like I mentioned earlier. So it's not just easy, but it's super quick, too.

So first up, let's load the shirt on the lower platen and pre-press it here for just a few seconds. What this is going to do is remove the moisture from the garment. If steam is fighting up, while we're trying to push the inks down, we're going to have a bad time.

Once we're set, we're ready for our transfers. We're going to align our transfers here and we'll close our press. In just four seconds later here, will peel the carrier away from the transfers while they are still hot. And there you have it - just like that, a screen printed t-shirt.

There's no camera tricks, no movie magic. We have ourselves an awesome screen printed t-shirt along with an inside tag and yeah, that really just took four seconds for us to press this on here.

You could learn more and request your own free sample pack.

But if you've been wanting to print your own t-shirts, you've been put off by that steep learning curve, well there's really no reason to wait anymore.

Of course, our YouTube channel is filled with tons of helpful t-shirt business tips, tricks, and application instructions to help your small business thrive. Be sure you subscribe to stay up to date with all of the helpful videos that we're dropping every single week.

But until next time, I'm Dave. Happy pressing!