Glad you asked. Instead of writing a for-ev-ver and asking you to read it, take a look at the infographic to the right and this awesome youtube video from the folks at Craftsy:
The ink is made from different compounds.
Plastisol is basically plastic. It floats on top of the shirt and feels like a very thin plastic sticker on the apparel.
Pros: It is incredibly long lasting and opaque.
Cons: It can crack if stretched too far, and feels like plastic.
Water-based ink: The pigments are suspended in a water based compound. It penetrates the apparel’s fibers instead of floating on top of them.
Pros: You can barely feel it’s there-if at all. It stretches with clothing.
Cons: Many colors are transparent, requiring an underbase.
Easy! Just request plastisol and we will be happy to accommodate.
If you are budget conscious, have a small run (less than 10 shirts) with a bold, chunky 1 color design then HTV might be a good option. It has a thicker, plastisol feel, no screen setup fees and often outlasts the shirts.
Our printing press is a smaller press with limited colors. We can pull off some amazing results blending inks but we are limited. That however, doesn’t mean we can’t get you the results you deserve. We work with a specialized transfer company that can do infinite colors. They send us the transfers and we press them to whatever apparel you need.
That is the next technique we are going to master.
Discharge literally takes the dye from the shirt fibers (imagine like bleach, but not bleach) and then we can put another color into those fibers. There are awesome results with discharge.
