Heat Transfer T Shirts Part 1

 I came across this programme by Andrei Kashcha's  that I found through Keir Clark on his Maps Mania website and thought it was pretty cool. It would make peaks on a map anywhere in the world.

I though iot would make a really cool T Shirt design.
So I started looking into how to make T Shirt designs and came across this really cool lady doing screenprinting. I think Charli Marie's video and PDF download are great. A real talent:

 

Frames and mesh

So I started to look into screen printing further and there are some cool videos out there on the topic. Like the one below: Although the Fucia fish doesn't do it for me. A good process.

Then I thought, how do you clean the screen prints after you've done a couple and want to do them in different colours. The video below shows you:

So there was a lot of stuff that you have to get and setup. So screens and frames, the sponges, the paints the light sensitive medium for the screens, transparent paper to print on etc.
Anyway, I watched Charli Marie's video on bespoke labels for Tshirts :

And in the video she uses an ink jet printer and an iron on transfer. So I thought, thats a quicker way to do logos. So I started looking at Iron On Transfer paper for ink jets and saw that the WareHouse Stationary had a pack of A4 size 12 sheets for 37$. So I thought I'd thry that process instead.
Its a good way to test a design, and if it works then you can always go for a more complex method once you are happy with the design.

Process

I'm using the black on white design and using GIMP to remove the background to make it transparent.
I tried bringing it into Revit but the image is rubbish. I don't think it likes PNG files. So I used Word instead.
The backgroud came out a bit creamy so inside Word you can, when selcting the image, go to Format tab and choose color button and there is a re-colour section so you can get a white background. 
As you have to reverse the image there is a feature in the Format which has rotate button, that has a FLIP selection that I used.
As you cut out all the white/empty space of the image (otherwise you have a plasticky film over those parts on the Tshirt I decided to try putting some logos into those spaces. I couldn't put an image on an image in Word, so had to go back to GIMP to do that.
I did have a Floating Text box over the image, that worked fine.

 

 After testing the page size on a standard piece of paper in the ink jet printer, a useful thing to do as I had no margins on the page and the printer wouldn't print to the edges, so I had to shrink the image slightly so that it fitted.
After getting the size right I checked which side the ink went on the paper, so I had the iron-on transfer papaer face down as it prints on the bottom side.
I then put the settings to BEST and highest quality paper and fired up the printer again. All fine.
Then I took a scalpel knife and cut out the white spaces and and then ironed on to the Tshirt. I initially had a pillowcase over the sticker but found it was better doing it directly onto the sticker, although the amount of heat meant that the shirt discoloured slightly (browned)  around the sticker area. It'll be intersting to see if that washes out.

 Second Try

I decided to give it another try and tried an almost black logo. A couple of problems:

1/ I had the printer on best quality and the ink over saturated the label, so a bit of bluring at the edges. A bit dissapointing. It will need testing to find the correct settings for different colours and richness.
2/In my enthusiasm for trying it out, I forgot to reverse the logo, so its flipped horizontally and reads backwards.
This is the image that I sent to the printer:

 This is the image from the printer at BEST QUALITY. You can see there is too much ink and the edges between Black/white are blurred- Check the text.

This is what is on the T Shirt. I decided to go ahead, even though the image was reversed. The Black area is quite saturated, so that is good.

T shirt folder

 I was watching one gentleman showing off his T shirt logo making space, very interesting , a great setup with some expensive machines. He had to make and package a T shirt in under 10 minutes and went through the process of how this was done. At the end he had a T shirt folding machine (all plastic with hinges) that I thought was pretty cool.
On googling the T shirt folding machine I saw there was a Wiki How on making one out of cardboard, also a video with an evolution development process adding enhancements.
I'll have to keep my eyes out for a cardboard box big enough so I can give this a try. See link

How to Make a T Shirt Folder

Here is the video: