Vinyl Shirts Vs Screen Printing

Comparing infusible ink and screen printing costs.

Vinyl shirts vs screen printing.

Screen printing with dark ink in particular the ink just soaks into light colored t shirts. The high speed is because nothing needs to change from t shirt to t shirt provided the designs remain the same. Specifically with heat printing there are many materials you can use just with this printing method alone. Vinyl rolls vs screen printed transfer sheets there are many different ways that you can print or decorate custom apparel.

Vinyl is well suited for very small runs which we would consider anything from 1 to 12 shirts this is because the set up time is much quicker than that of screen printing. When it comes to vinyl t shirt printing or screen printing if you re looking for vibrant colour screen printing is your best option. When a design is produced using the screen printing method actual screens are used in the process. Since a new screen has to be cut for each design it would not make sense to use screen printing on little jobs one website i looked at suggested a minimum of 500 shirts.

Vinyl t shirt printing does allow for some detailing but most will be lost. What is better using htv also referred to as heat transfer vinyl or screen printing. Why we use vinyl printing. Making screen printed shirts with vinyl requires a sheet of vinyl plus the ink color you wish to use for your design.

They can be found at michaels for 12 99 17 99 for 2 sheets. Since we use vinyl printing we don t have to have a minimum. Let s get right down to it. Screen printing lets you choose from a larger range of colours and each can be blended to create gradients to ensure that the.

Screen printing does not work for small jobs. Both that their. Setting up screen printing takes much longer compared to vinyl printing but as soon as the set up in done the printing process is swift. My moq acronym for minimum order quality for screen printing is 25 t shirts.

To create your infusible ink projects you will need the infusible ink transfer sheets. Htv was my go to shirt making process until i discovered how easy it is to screen print t shirts using adhesive vinyl and my vinyl cutter. In this video i answer a very common question i get. Ink is then spread over the screen passing through to the object underneath only in the areas you want it to be.

Essentially this screen is cut to make a stencil for the design.