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Misprint Monday – Scorching Heat, Scorching Shirts

This time of year in the US of A it gets scorching hot. One of the hottest places in the country yesterday was South Carolina, a scorching 100 degrees in Columbia. Though that is mild compared to the world high of 118 F. in Kuwait yesterday. It was a low is the lower 48 US…

What is a Good Shirt to Print On?

We often get requests to analyze shirts for manufacturers. I can tell you that some folks like Hanes and SanMar actually do care about you printers out there and try to make sure their products can be decorated. They don’t always fully succeed but they are definitely trying hard and often with great results. Other…

The Little Guy

We recently installed press #5 at Motion Textile.  I’ve affectionately nicknamed this 8-color MHM X-Type Plus “The Little Guy” (maybe I was thinking of that Portlandia sketch?). A few thoughts on going small with this new install: Sleeves The majority of sleeve prints that we run are very simple (2-4 spot color) prints with a flash or two.  We…

Quick Advice on Adhesive

We just tried this Albatross hot tack spray adhesive. It is as good as any we have used and even costs less! Yikes. We already use their roll-on bulk adhesive, and this stuff is great for the times you have to spray. I have had people send me flash tack samples for ten years and…

Tote of Many Colors

Rick’s post yesterday on printing tote bags made me think of a tote print we ran a few years ago, the Dolly Parton “Tote of Many Colors”.  The text is a play on Dolly’s hit song “Coat of Many Colors”.  This print is one of my favorites for a number of reasons: 1. It’s a great design…

A Little Transparency

I love simple yet effective printing techniques.  Overprinting semi-opaque inks creates a level of transparency which reveals a percentage of the underlying color.  It’s simple, but not as easy as it seems.  A surprising amount of consideration went in to determining print order, flash positions, ink formulations, etc., to pull-off the effect.

Misprint Monday – Yellow Journalism

If you misprint something or if it is a close call, you have to get the info to the customer asap. For me, I don’t want them approving something that is clearly wrong, and I don’t want the customer to make judgements without all the information. Usually we don’t worry that much about yellow dye…

Multi-Color Foil: A Clever Trick

We recently pulled off a multi-color foil without an in-line foil setup.  How you ask?  A manual press, a super hot flash, and a teflon coated screen.  I think you get the idea.

The Ideal Box Cutter! I Love Simple Stuff.

Simple yet brilliant. Our Hanes/Champion rep dropped off some promo items. Love them. 1. Flash drive – who does not need more flash drives? 2. Pens – yeah, who has too many pens? 3. The world’s best box cutter – It took me ten minutes to figure it out because I’m not a genius, but…

Soft Prints – More and More Tools

More and more tools become available to give customers what they want. You want a soft print on a fabric that had dye migration problems and it also has to stretch and by the way, keep it bright white? No problem. Well… usually there are some compromises, but you have to deliver at least close…

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