Serigraphy
Get ready to find out once and for all if your t-shirts should be Silk or Transfer!
If the company participates in an event and its team needs to show credibility and trust to its customers, in short, it needs a great strategy.
So the Marketing and HR team sends the following purchase order:
50 white t-shirts with the company logo.
Soon after, you call two suppliers and each one delivers a different quote, only one of them says, print in Silk, the other in transfer.
WHICH TO USE, SILK OR TRANSFER?
Silk Screen
Also known as Serigraphy. Silk is a technique based on screens (each color is applied to a screen), even so, they are superimposed between them to produce the print, from the application of ink on the fabric, in which the ink is leaked, by the pressure of a squeegee or spatula through a prepared screen. We provide the service of silk screen priniting in Dallas.
Just like this screen, it can have an aluminum or wood frame, and the screen itself is made with polyester threads, stretched on a frame, with variations from 55 threads/cm² to 120 threads/cm².
The ideal for printing T-shirts is the 77 threads / cm², which means that the 55 threads / cm² passes much more ink than the 120 threads / cm².
Want to know everything about Silk-Screen? Between here! You will find the whole process detailed.
Primarily this technique is millenary, the term serigraphy (serigraph, in English) is credited to Anthony Velonis, who influenced by Carl Zigrosser, critic, editor and in the 1940s, proposed the word serigraph (in English), from the Greek serico (silk ) , and graphos (write), to modify the business aspects associated with the process.
Currently the difference between silk and transfer is huge, but many companies that do not understand the techniques, receive and compare budgets as if they were the same thing.
Transfer
So Transfer is basically an adhesive that is attached to the fabric when it is heated.
Above all, this thermo-adhesive film solution was widely used and popular in the 2000s.
This solution is often used when there are many colors and gradients in the print.
In this way, the art is forwarded to our professionals in closed formats, such as PDF, PNG or JPEG, after which we adapt the Layout and print the sheet with the stamp on a printer suitable for this technique.
We usually use A4 or A3 sizes.
Therefore, we place the shirt in a thermal press together with the print in the desired location and press both for a period of time that, depending on the paper supplier, can vary from a few seconds.
In addition, there is pressure, which is very important.
Nowadays Transfer is primarily used on white T-shirts, but little by little with advancing technology, it begins to be applied to colored T-shirts, but this value is still very high.
Another solution for colored t-shirts is DARKFILM, which the process is very similar.
Who hasn’t had a photo taken at an Amusement Park or gifted a Family t-shirt to a loved one?
So let’s go to the advantages of each one:
Since the subject is professional uniforms that demand durability and integrity of the print even after several washes, the ideal is to use Silk-Screen.
Since in this case the employee will have to use the piece several times and it must continue with a good presentation.
Due to a correct procedure, on average the garment should last more than 20 washes. Ideal to last about 30 to 40 washes.
Therefore, if you need a few pieces to offer promotionally, or when they are small quantities, which will be used a few times, Transfer can be a good option, even if the print is full of colors.
On the other hand, the cost benefit of Silk is justified when the cost of the order is diluted in a shipment with a higher quality of parts , while Transfer is maintained or lowers the value very little in large quantities.
Especially when the order is large and the design of the print is complex, let’s say with many colors and applied to the whole piece?
Therefore, the ideal is sublimation, but this is the subject of a new article, as well as the sophistication of embroidery.
