There are a wide variety of types of canvas bags out there in the world. They are all waiting to be decorated by the screenprinter. There are specifications of all the fabrics in terms of weight, weave, etc. In my many years of buying canvas totes and even working directly with companies that are manufacturing…
Thousands of shirts sit in New England warehouses. Seattle’s Kearse catches a ridiculous pass that should have fallen to the ground. Printers in New England groan, remembering the insane catch (and last of very few catches he ever made) by David Tyree in 2008 which robbed the Patriots of the Super Bowl that year and…
Nine recent questions I have received whether on forums, calls, or at shows: Q: What is the standard over/under on good shirts? A: You are free to make up whatever you want, but we usually tell people 1.5% per location is the industry standard. 300 shirts printed two sides on customer supplied goods means 9 shirts…
To “discharge” print a shirt is to use “discharge” ink and get the dye in the shirt to be neutralized. You add a catalyst to a specific type of ink and in the presence of heat and water the dye basically goes away. Only cotton discharges and not all cotton dyes discharge. We test shirts…
This is the third post of our pre-show Ink Kitchen advice on folks to check out at Long Beach ISS show Friday, Saturday and Sunday this week. Come by The Ink Kitchen “Know-It-All” booth #157 which will be located on the far left side of the show floor. We have some cool stuff for you, experts…
Q: Where does the image go on the shirt? A: Where it looks good to the customer. I know some shops have elaborate ways to decide where an image gets printed on a shirt. I know some customers try and give very specific measurements as to where they want their images. My advice is to…
We have spent years experimenting with foil on shirts. Rather I should say that we produced actual jobs with different foil applications and always achieved great results. However, in almost every instance we had to do a lot of “tinkering” to get those good results. I finally feel we have dialed in on a very simple process which delivers awesome and consistent results. Here…
I love simple yet effective printing techniques. Overprinting semi-opaque inks creates a level of transparency which reveals a percentage of the underlying color. It’s simple, but not as easy as it seems. A surprising amount of consideration went in to determining print order, flash positions, ink formulations, etc., to pull-off the effect.
A good customer recently sent me a quote request for a large volume program. Due to the size of the program, pressure from the “end user”, and because it was “commodity printing”. I was told that the job was going out for bid and that I needed to be very competitive. Being put in a bid situation is…
We’re pretty high-tech around here (well, at least by textile screen-printing standards). I’d love to say that our screen coating methodology follows suit and show off pics or video of a bitchin’ auto-coater, but I can’t. When it comes to screen coating, we still do it the old school way. It’s not that I don’t…
