Printing & Copying

Well, I am sure you must have gone through a time when you all needed to print a few T-Shirts either for fun or for some ceremony in office. And then that Nth hour rush to get hold of a printer who can do this for you!! Well if you are lucky or have some good friends you might as well get it done in nick of time. But what when you cant, well here is my suggestion.

T-SHIRT TRANSFER PAPER (also known as IRON-ON HEAT TRANSFER PAPER) a quick remedy to your small quantity t-shirt requirement! Yes why i say so is for a reason, according to my studies what i suggest is IF YOUR NEED IS LESS than 20 Customized shirts, then this method is best and worth while, else search for "Screen Printer" around you.

Ok what will you need for this process, might be your next question? Well here is the list.

1) Inkjet Printer or Laserjet Printer - color preferably, else if your design is just B&W, a b&w printer would do. As for me I would prefer a Inkjet printer as the results are better and Inkjet printers are cheaper than laserjet. One thing which you need to be sure of, when using a Inkjet printer, is that you are using a genuine inks. As per my past experiences, with refilled ink cartridges the results are generally smudged out!! But this also depends on how many times has the cartridge been refilled perviously.

2) Inkjet paper or Laserjet Paper, now depending on the printer you have you might need to look for suitable paper. Also NEVER MAKE A MISTAKE OF INSERTING A INKJET PAPER in a LASEJET PRINTER!! you might spoil the printer itself. And if you insert a LASERJET paper in a INKJET printer it ink will never dry. So make sure when you buy the paper that it is compatible with your printer.

3)Cloth Iron, any iron would work. But i haven't experimented with the Steam type iron, and i think Steam type would not work. If anyone has past experience please let me know.

Now its a simple thing, print the design on the paper with your printer. But keep in mind the following things :

a)Make sure the profile settings of the printer suite your paper. Generally these instructions are provided by the manufacturer of the paper. Incase you get problem here, do contact me and i can help you out.

b)The image you want to be printed on the T-shirt should be printed as a MIRROR IMAGE. For this you need to first convert the image as mirror-image manually with any simple software or sometimes this feature is available on the print command. Since it varies from printer to printer, you need to be sure about this.

c)Also you need to make sure you face the paper in the right direction. You need to know that the TRANSFER PAPER's for this kind are uni-directional, meaning they print only on one side of the paper. Generally the Non-printing side is marked clearly with lines or squares.

Once you have printed the image on the paper, take the T-shirt place the image facing the cloth. Now the non-image area (the Lines or squares) shall face you. Place the iron on this side and slowly move the iron over the paper. The heat settings on the iron should match the cloth requirements. Run the Iron for few minutes, but be sure you are not keeping the iron in one place, always keep the iron moving. In 5 min the image would transfer on the cloth and the paper would peel off by itself.

Hope this was handy for you!! Should you need more help do contact me.