Originally posted by: Zim Hosein
Originally posted by: LongCoolMother
i actually run a small, custom high-quality tshirt screening (silkscreen-not heatpress) business and can probably offer a better price/flexibility with garmets than any retailer. if you're interested, feel free to PM me with details.
What are the advantages/disadvantages to SS/HP LongCoolMother?
SS (i call it silk screening but the more common term is screen printing, since silk is no longer used in the process) is
generally considered to be superior to Heat transfer (admittedly, partially because the equipment for SS is far more expensive)
heat transfer involves printing an image on a "transfer paper" which is used to transfer the image to the garmet with heat. heat transfer is advantageous in that you can print some very complex, multicolored graphics with different shades, gradients etc. downside is that it sometimes feels very stiff (depends on the quality of the materials) compared to SP. It also fades more easily. some people may notice "cracking" or wrinkling of these graphics. generally you should probably wash these shirts inside out in cold water and hang dry them, as extreme temperatures can stretch/crackle/fade the graphics. when you take a shirt with a heat-transfer graphic on it and stretch the shirt, the image will sometimes appear to "stick together" and become taut or crack apart. the graphic has a glossy appearance, and oftentimes it distinctively looks like its on the surface. heat press is very cost-friendly if you only want to purchase only a few shirts.
screen printing involves directly transferring ink into the garmet a single color at a time. the ink is heavy duty and is embedded into the garmet. the quality of screen print shirts are usually superior to heat transfer shirts (although resolution still varies depending on the equipment. also, there ARE exceptional heat transfer shirts). the main disadvantage to screen printing is that it is difficult and costly to make graphics that contain many many colors. each layer of color has to be transferred by its own "emulsion"(a stencil, if you will) and making the these is usually costly. this is why it is usually far more cost effecient to buy multiple screen printed shirts rather than just one. the images on screen printed shirts look very natural on the shirt; they have a matte finish and when you stretch the fabric, the image appears to stretch along with the shirt. they usually dont fade very much.
both process are capable of achieving very good color/detail/resolution. it only appears that heat transfer has poorer graphic quality because a lot of the equipment or material used for heat transfer shirts are cheap. HT shirts can be excellent however. screen printing can also have crappy detail but is usually used only for higher quality shirts because of the cost.
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