castironrobbie

HTV recommendation?

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Just got my heat press in, and now the task of buying supplies. I am curious as to which other brands of htv are out there that are reasonably priced, and good quality ( oxymoron? )

Like for instance there's oracal, then there's greenstar.... you know what I mean? I am looking for something to mess with that is decent, but not a big deal to mess up as I learn.

 

Thanks

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No since in going cheap, get the good stuff and make your first shirt and make it painless, then you'll be wasting nothing, press and go and make some money! Sure, you'll make mistakes, I still do, no biggie, do it till you get it right. No need to reinvent the wheel. You can do it. If you buy junk vinyl, you'll be wasting more time & money, when you could just be making money. 

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Siser for me too. I do HUNDREDS of YARDS of vinyl every year and almost exclusively use Siser. Regular Easyweed for basic shirts and then if it's something like performance apparel I step it up the Easyweed Stretch. Best part about Siser is almost all their products go on at 305 deg for 12-15 seconds medium pressure and hot peel so you don't have to pay attention to heat and pressure settings as they stay the same. Multi layer you just press the fist layer for about 3 seconds and peel immediately and put the top layer on and press for the whole 12-15 and your done. Very fast and efficient. HTV will typically outlast the shirt in pristine condition. Occasionally you will have a  design that has some very thin lines like something with a thin circle around it etc... and sometimes you will get a break or crack in spots due to material stretch and shrink.  I use stretch in these conditions as it will resist any kind of cracking.  The only issue I have with stretch compared to regular is when you accidentally forget to weed the middle of a letter or something like that, you can usually pull it up out of there by heating it up in your press and grabbing it with a pair of sharp tweezers but stretch grabs hold too hard to get them out. I guess that should be a testament to how good that stuff stays put. So double check your weed before application with stretch or you will probably be tossing a few shirts. (It is possible to remove stretch with a special remover product sold by USCutter but its a LOT of work and on dark clothes you will still see an adhesive ghost unless you are covering that area back up.)

 

Good luck and I can tell you you're going to have a freakin' blast with HTV. 

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Heat Press is fun...but there are a lot of steps in the process that are time consuming.

First, you have to create a design, colors & lettering

Second, you have to create the vector file of that design

Third, MIRROR it....for cutting  -  it's too easy to forget this step!

Fourth, Cut the HTV

Fifth, Weed the HTV

Sixth, NOW you can press your custom designs for family, friends...and maybe even PROFIT!

Sue2

Brother_Sister_Shirts.jpg

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Yes, just get the Seiser and be done with it.  Your really not gonna make mistakes like you think.  As long as you follow the simple directions on application.  The right temp  (they say 305, I use 290) the right pressure and time.  Time is flexible some, if you go a few seconds long, no biggie.

The only place yo can possibly make mistakes really is in your own design work, spelling error etc.

Don't start with junk or you'll have a lot of junk left over you can't/won't use.

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Thank you all for your replies. I did place an order yesterday for a couple rolls of black and white easyweed. It should be in mid-week. I've been designing a ton of stuff and hope all goes well with this. 

 

I am pretty slammed on small projects, hoping to expand with shirts eventually and be able to do away with offering some of the small items that I currently offer. Funny how the cheapest, smallest decals get the most complaints and headaches from customers, and how they almost always try to get away with squeezing entire novels into a 3 inch square grrrrrrrrrr

Today is my day, soon things will get better ( positive thoughts)

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7 hours ago, castironrobbie said:

Thank you all for your replies. I did place an order yesterday for a couple rolls of black and white easyweed. It should be in mid-week. I've been designing a ton of stuff and hope all goes well with this. 

 

I am pretty slammed on small projects, hoping to expand with shirts eventually and be able to do away with offering some of the small items that I currently offer. Funny how the cheapest, smallest decals get the most complaints and headaches from customers, and how they almost always try to get away with squeezing entire novels into a 3 inch square grrrrrrrrrr

Today is my day, soon things will get better ( positive thoughts)

You could change your pricing structure tot something by the letter or some sort of hybrid per sq in up to XX letters etc... I would probably limit the size of the letter to a minimum 1" height (or more money for smaller) and also some of the thin fonts to 3". I don't have any kind of sales in that type of environment but when I do that type of work I get the order and then often steer them into effective changes that make the weed easier. 

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I hear ya. That's good advice. 

I just started posting some original designs and templates for personalized shirts that I think will be a hit. I sell a lot of some of my personalized designs as a decal, so maybe it'll be decent as a shirt.

 

Been a very slow weekend. When I started getting busy I was working 7 days a week, now I'm so burned out, and you do quickly answering emails all day and night, creating graphics , sending "proofs", that now I'm focusing on also cutting back the hours I put into this. 

 

Its my only income thankfully, but I need to have more steady hours and walk away sometimes. People think working from home is a dream and you just get rich doing nothing...HA!

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13 hours ago, castironrobbie said:

People think working from home is a dream and you just get rich doing nothing...HA!

Right!  Also, my customers know I work from home so they assume I am available 24/7.  I get emails, phone calls and texts at times your like WTF?  After midnight, weekends, 4 in the morning.... it's crazy.  Now, I have been known to work those weird hours..... but they don't know that.

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Also, shoutout to PA people here. I am currently in upstate PA outside Scranton heading back to NH. I had a great time visiting Gettysburg, and headed south to Maryland for a bit. Such a beautiful area.

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I like using thermoflex over siser . Maybe cause every place I shop only have that. I have used siser and it's thin but you have to have your blade perfect.  Don't forget to mirror your image. And for the sublimation printer if you don't have customers don't go with Epson .

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AMEN to what dj just said about the Epson. Way cheaper to get into but if you aren't moving a LOT of ink you'll plug up and be throwing your printer away. Any guess why I know this? Bad part about the Ricoh is it's a huge initial investment. I am actually GLAD I didn't go the Ricoh way because the sublimation, while totally radical, has not been a seller for my clients so I plugged up my Epson but am only out the $200 +/- that I spent on it and actually more than paid for that with the jobs I did do while it was still working but not a great revenue stream in my niche. I do mostly apparel and not that many folks want 100% white polyester shirts. If I had a brick and mortar store with walk in's or hit the fair or even flea market booths then the almost endless array of trinkets that can be sublimated probably would be a selling point. 

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Ah good advice. I got my easy weed and actually made a couple shirts already and they turned out awesome. 305 for 15 and it worked like a charm. 

 

 

Also much easier to weed than sign vinyl which I like a lot. Hoping to get into just apparel at some point. Decals are a pain

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On 8/20/2016 at 0:59 PM, djque said:

I like using thermoflex over siser . Maybe cause every place I shop only have that. I have used siser and it's thin but you have to have your blade perfect.  Don't forget to mirror your image. And for the sublimation printer if you don't have customers don't go with Epson .

I looked into thermoflex and it appears to be a tad more expensive than I can swing right now

 

The apparel is currently just a side project. I have minimal orders, but may check it out in the future. They do have quite the array of colors available

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On 8/14/2016 at 1:02 AM, Dawn's Design said:

And always remember to reverse your image before you cut

Found this out the hard way this week :)

Also found out that if you take a pic of yourself thru the mirror the design look fine :)

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Nothing like cutting an image and as you start to weed it realize you forgot to reverse it. Good times! I use to have a post it on my cutter that simply read T-SHIRT - REVERSE THE IMAGE.

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I have trained myself to save my HTV files already mirrored. Saves a lot of trouble. 

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16 hours ago, Wildgoose said:

I have trained myself to save my HTV files already mirrored. Saves a lot of trouble. 

That's what I do now as well. It's the easiest way to not mess up vinyl for sure.

 

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