Week 18

This week I decided to try thermal transfer technology, decided to make a T-shirt with a logo.

I will be using a large thermopress and plotter this week to cut a special material for the transfer

A special thermotransfer vinyl is used for transfer, which, when exposed to temperature, is imprinted into the fabric structure and becomes very resistant to abrasion

The first thing I need to do is to design the logo:

I used Adobe Illustrator to create it, the source file is attached below

AI source

Then I sliced up the blanks of vinyl and loaded them into the plotter. Then, with the help of Silhouette Studio, I load vector images into the plotter and it starts to cut the blanks according to the vector data

Logo

Text

Then, I load the t-shirt into the working area of the thermopress and put the cut vinyl out.

Note that the mounting film is also cut around it - ideally it shouldn’t be, in my case I just picked the wrong force to press the plotter knife, and he cut the film. If you don’t cut through the film, it’s much more convenient to take it off after printing

Now about the mode: you need to perform operations at 180 degrees, within 45 seconds. Different presses control these parameters in different ways, our presses have very convenient displays and a buzzer that beeps when time runs out.

The shirt should contain some percentage of synthetic fabric so that the vinyl is well imprinted. If the t-shirt is fully cotton, the vinyl can tear off quickly after printing

After printing, simply tear off the mounting film to get the final look

So, we have a great shirt.

Thermal transfer works well with fabric and ceramics, I want to try to work with a mug in the future