Our A to Z of Wide Format – G is for Garment Decoration

Applications, Bleed, RIP Software…. We get asked lots of questions about the world of Wide Format on a daily basis. At Signmaster we are here to help and our lovely team of experts have pulled together a handy A to Z guide answering the most frequently asked questions.

Introducing the Signmaster A to Z of Wide Format

This is a series of helpful blogs, guides and articles that we hope you will find useful. We will post a new blog every fortnight and we’d love to know what you think so please comment or drop us an email. We’d love to hear from you!

This week it’s all about Garment Decoration

When it comes to Garment Decoration there are just a few pieces of equipment that you will need to get you started.

Most sign makers are likely to have a print and cut machine or a plotter running alongside their wide format printer, so adding a heat press to your print room is a small investment in comparison which will help you expand your business to a whole new market. If you are a start-up business an investment from as little £550 will give you the basic tools you need to set you up as a garment decorator.

That is the easy bit, the tricky part is selecting the right Garment decoration film for you as there is so much choice out there. There are many questions you need to ask yourself before getting started. Is the garment cotton or polyester? Is it Nylon? Will the vinyl work with your ink? Are you overlaying onto multiple colours? What is the price point for your finished product? Answering these questions will help you decide on the printer, material and other equipment that you will need.

Whether it is small company logos on workwear, promotional t-shirts, sportswear or if you are keeping up with the very latest fashion trends, there is a Garment Decoration film out there that will be suitable for you to use.

At Signmaster we try and test all machinery and garment decoration films and below is a short list of tools that we recommend that will help you get started:

Weeding tools

Weeding is removing the excess material, leaving your cut design in place ready to heat press on to your garment. There are a lot of different weeding tools available on the market so finding the right one for you and your application will all come down to personal preference. Some people like straight weeding pens or weeding tweezers and others prefer a more hooked weeding tool. Check out the Signmaster weeding tool.

Heat Press – Happy Press 3

A heat press will be an important piece of kit for your garment decoration projects. The Happy Press 3 is the heat transfer press for businesses starting to decorate textiles or for the ambitious hobbyist. A silicone pad on the lower plate allows the pressure to be evenly distributed across the plate giving a professional finished transfer! The digital timer can be set between 1 and 999 seconds and starts to count down as soon as the press is closed; the handy acoustic signal will remind you when you need to open the press back up.

Cutting Plotter – Graphtec CE Lite-50 Cutting Plotter

The Graphtec CE Lite-50 Cutting Plotter brings Graphtec’s market leading cutting technology to a whole new audience.

The CE Lite-50 offers the user an extremely high cutting quality, added productivity over a craft level cutting plotter and added cost-effectiveness. The CE Lite-50 has been aimed at small business owners who want to take the next step with their quality of production output and small shops where production on site is key. The CE Lite-50 is best suited to businesses where original goods are produced and works best with materials such as heat transfer material, automotive vinyl and sign writing vinyl with a maximum job width of 508mm.

Garment Material

We stock a wide range of Garment decoration vinyl at Signmaster. There are a wide range of colours in the Poli-Flex range and we have a Turbo print with a 5 second heat press in the printable range. We are constantly looking for new and exciting products including glitter and metallic products, so check our website and social media for our latest garment product news.

For more info please contact one of advisors on 01948 662669.