When shopping around for custom t shirts tablecloths or tote bags you may see many foreign sounding printing types available on various printers websites.
Vinyl t shirt printing vs screen printing.
Especially on a scale the only significant expense is ink.
You re probably wondering what the difference is between all these very similar sounding printing options like heat transfer vs screen printing.
Deciding between vinyl t shirt printing or screen printing can be a hard decision to make.
Letters and designs are cut out from colored vinyl and are then pressed onto the t shirt by the machine.
This doesn t make it a faster overall method though as every shirt still requires individual set up which becomes too time consuming beyond the 12 shirt mark.
The screens used in this method are basically meshes on which negative images are printed.
My moq acronym for minimum order quality for screen printing is 25 t shirts.
This therefore makes it too time consuming and cost ineffective beyond the 16 t shirt mark.
Why we use vinyl printing.
However screen printing is perfect for bulk orders 12 or more because you don t need to change the setup from shirt to shirt.
Vinyl printing main device you need when conducting vinyl decal printing is a machine containing heated pressure.
Screen printing does not work for small jobs.
Vinyl is well suited for very small runs which we would consider anything from 1 to 12 shirts this is because the set up time is much quicker than that of screen printing.
Screen printing also known as silk screening is the oldest and also the most widely used method of printing t shirts on a commercial scale.
The mesh screens are particularly durable and last for many printing sessions.
Since a new screen has to be cut for each design it would not make sense to use screen printing on little jobs one website i looked at suggested a minimum of 500 shirts.
This is a popular printing technique on t shirts and presents 3 key advantages.
It s definitely the method that can help you work on the largest orders.
In this article we ll help you decide which printing process is best for you by.
This comparison will lead you in the right direction.
In fact screen printing bulk orders will take the same amount of time as doing a small run of vinyl prints.
You need a t shirt printing system that matches both your dreams and your budget.