What to Look For When Buying a T-Shirt Printing Machine for Your Small Business
Printing Method
DTG (Direct-to-Printer)
A DTG printer is a flatbed T-shirt printing machine that applies ink directly to the garment. These machines are the most expensive and usually cost several thousand dollars.
However, despite their large startup cost, DTG printing is one of the best T-shirt printer options for high-resolution CMYKW printing even on dark garments.
It must be said that they only work well with cotton blanks. Synthetic materials require a lot of pre printing treatments in order to work with the DTG inks. DTG printers also need to run daily to keep running smoothly, so keep in mind that you will need to print a lot of T-shirts possibly before you even have any clients.
Silk Screen Printing
The traditional method for making T-shirts, screen printing is an excellent option for large runs of the same design. If you plan to take wholesale orders from clients, screen printing is the best T-shirt printing process for cost-effectiveness. Since each design has to be burned onto a screen coated in expensive photo emulsion, it is not a good method for small orders or single items.
Sublimation / Heat Transfer
Sublimation printers look and act like a regular inkjet, but they use a special type of ink that transfers to polyester or a ceramic-coated surface when heated. Since sublimation ink bonds with the fibers of the shirt, it is the softest to the touch out of all of the T-shirt printing methods.
Heat transfer printers combine special inks with special papers to heat transfer their ink onto cotton or polyester garments. Some even use white toner, so they can transfer onto dark-colored garments as well.
These printers and their materials are typically more expensive than sublimation, but they are the best T-shirt printer for versatility.
HTV (Heat Transfer Vinyl)
HTV is a special type of vinyl that can be used on most types of fabrics. Your design is cut out from the vinyl with a cutting machine (sometimes called a vinyl printer/plotter) like the Cricut Explore Air 3 or Silhouette Cameo 4. After any excess vinyl is removed from the backing in a process called “weeding”, the vinyl is transferred onto the garment with a heat press machine.
HTV is the best T-shirt printing process for small runs (10 or fewer) and single-piece orders with simple designs. It’s also good for customizing garments, so it’s often the method used for sports jerseys where each one has a different name and number on the back.
Since you have to cut and weed each design, it isn’t time or cost-efficient to use it for large orders with the same design.
Design (Heat Press)
Swing-Away
Swing-away heat press machines are presses that lift up a few inches from the bottom platen and can swing to the sides 360 degrees. These are nice safety-wise because you can swing the heated part of the press completely away from you, which lowers your chance of getting burned.
They aren’t very space-efficient, however. While they take up less space while in storage than other types of heat presses, they need a much larger working area since the top platen swings all the way around.
Clamshell
Clamshell-style heat press machines live up to their name by their top platen opening upwards like a clamshell. They take up more space than a swing-away press and you need to be careful when adding and removing shirts that you don’t touch the top platen near the back where the two heat plates meet.
Clamshells usually have the largest working area of any of the heat presses, so they are a good choice when you plan to sublimate large items like leggings, sweatshirts, and even blankets.
However, they don’t work very well with thick materials, so if you plan to work with a lot of bulky garments, a swing-away press is your best option.
Draw
Draw-style (sometimes called drawer-style) heat press machines are very similar in design to clamshells. Their top platen moves up and back as well, but their bottom platen slides forward to make it easier to load and unload the shirts or garments without getting too close to the heated top platen.
These usually have a smaller working area than a clamshell, but they are a nice middle option T-shirt press between clamshell and swing-away. Like clamshell presses, they don’t work very well with thick materials.
Print Area/Plate Size
When buying a T-shirt printing machine, you need to consider how large you want your intended designs to be. Make sure your T-shirt printing machine has a print area large enough to accommodate your designs since you will be confined to that print size once you buy the T-shirt printer.
The exception there is with some sublimation printers that have an additional tray extender that you can purchase separately to print longer designs.
If you’re using a print option that requires a heat press machine to set or transfer your printed designs, you also need to consider the press’s plate size. It should ideally be at least slightly larger than your maximum print size to ensure that you don’t need to press a garment in sections.
However, having extra room when pressing is much easier, so it is always best to try to get a few inches of open press space between all sides of the design when possible.
Plate Surface
Heat press machines usually come with two surfaces for their platen: PTFE (Teflon) and non-coated. Teflon-coated platens are non-stick and generally don’t cause any scorch marks on your T-shirt.
Non-coated platen are at risk of things sticking to them and may cause black marks or scorching on your T-shirt, so keep that in mind when choosing a heat press.
Overall Size and Weight
Think about how much space you have available in your intended printing room. Some T-shirt printing machines are quite large and may not fit well in your intended area.
Cutting machines for HTV tend to be the most space-saving, with the larger ones even coming with their own wheeled carts. However, they need enough clearance for the vinyl to move in the front and back of the machine while actively cutting.
Heat transfer and sublimation T-shirt printing machines are usually the size of a small laserjet printer, making them another space-efficient option. Though it’s important to keep in mind that—like cutting machines—sublimation and heat transfer printers require a heat press to transfer their prints to the garment, so that is an additional space requirement.
Heat presses are almost always bulky and heavy. In the case of swing-away presses, you also need enough space for the top platen to move around freely. Since they are so heavy, they aren’t easy to move around, so you will likely want to find a spot for them and leave it there.
DTG printers take up the most space. They are very large and usually sit directly on the floor. These machines also need enough room for the print platform to move from the front of the machine to the back, so they can’t have other equipment too close to them.
Regular screen printing presses vary in size depending on a few factors. One-to-two-station presses can be quite space-efficient and can even be stored between uses.
Multi-station presses used for printing multiple colors and shirts at once are much bigger and come with their own stand.
Each station has its own pallet, so they stick out and take up quite a bit of space. Automatic screen printing machines are usually even larger a DTG T-shirt printer and can take up a large chunk of your workroom
Temperature Range
For heat presses, you need to consider their supported temperature range to ensure they can support the type of printing you plan to do. Sublimation prints need to be set at 400 °F, so you’ll need to make sure your press’s maximum temperature is at least that. HTV temperatures vary widely depending on brand but they don’t exceed 400 °F, so a press with a 32-400 °F range is usually the best.
Build Quality
As with anything, you want to be sure that your T-shirt printing machines and/or heat presses are built from durable materials that can withstand heavy use. This is especially important for small businesses since you will likely be running your equipment almost constantly once you get enough customers.
Look for products that say “industrial-quality” when buying your equipment. Heat presses should be mostly (if not all) metal in their construction.
For vinyl plotters, you can technically use the machines marketed towards crafters like the Cricut and Cameo (especially when you are first starting out), but you will likely find that they are not ideal when trying to keep up with huge T-shirt orders.
Some people use consumer printers like the Epson Ecotank inkjets for sublimation printing. While they technically work when converted properly, you will find the same issue with this as with the consumer cutting machines in that they aren’t designed to run constantly.
Tips for Using Your T-Shirt Printing Machine
HTV
HTV needs to be cut with a cutting machine first. You’ll need to use the right settings for blade depth and blade pressure on your vinyl plotter to get a clean cut. You want the blade to cut through the vinyl but not the plastic backing. These settings are different for each brand, so be sure to check with the HTV’s manufacturer for their recommendations.
Change your blade more often with HTV. A dull blade won’t cut through your material properly and will ruin it. HTV is especially hard on blades, so expect to change it more often than when using regular vinyl. Some blades are specifically made for working with HTV and will last longer than standard, so try using those where you can.
Press your T-shirt or other garment on the heat press for 10-15 seconds before applying the HTV. This will get rid of wrinkles and any excess moisture in the shirt fibers, and help the HTV bond with the fabric.
The temperature and time needed for the heat transfer process vary from one brand to another. Also, be sure to check the manufacturer literature for whether the product is cold peel or hot peel.
Cold peel HTVs need to be allowed to cool completely after being heat pressed before you can peel off the plastic backing. Hot peel HTVs need the backing peeled off as soon as it comes off the press.
Sublimation / Heat Transfer
Sublimation and heat transfer printers work very much like a traditional inkjet or laserjet, so all the basic printing tips apply to them as well.
Keep the print heads clean, perform regular printer maintenance (refer to your T-shirt printer’s user guide for specifics), and don’t use inks or papers not intended for use with your printer for the best results.
Like HTV, you should prepress your T-shirt in your heat press machine before applying the transfer. This ensures that your garment doesn’t have any wrinkles that could disrupt your design. The heat also helps the inks bond to the fibers more easily and consistently.
It’s also a good idea to secure your transfer paper to your T-shirt with heat-resistant tape. The plastic backing for most HTV brands has a built-in adhesive on them to keep them in place, but sublimation and heat transfer paper does not. Taping it down ensures that it doesn’t move when you close the heat press.
Also, be sure to protect your heat press from any possible ink bleeding by covering your design with a blank sheet of paper. Just be extra careful that you don’t press your shirt for too long if you choose to use regular copy paper, since it can catch on fire.
DTG
DTG printing can work really well under the right circ*mstances, but there are also a lot of things that can go wrong. DTG is mainly a means to print on cotton, so using high-quality 100% ring-spun cotton T-shirts is one of the easiest ways to ensure great results from your print.
However, when you have dark-colored T-shirts, you can’t just put them through the printer even if they are cotton. Dark T-shirts need to be pretreated with a special solution so the ink can bind to them more easily.
T-shirts made from polyester and other synthetic materials can have some success with DTG printing if you put them through pretreatments as well. You can find polyester DTG pretreatment solutions through most major apparel printing suppliers. These solutions help keep the ink from bleeding through the T-shirt since polyester has looser fibers than cotton.
Make sure your shirt is loaded into the T-shirt printing machine as tightly as possible. Most DTG printers use a loom that looks a lot like a large embroidery hoop to keep the garment in place.
If there are any loose spots in the fabric, it can really affect the print quality, so be sure there are no wrinkles before you attach the loom to the T-shirt printer.
