LEARNING CENTER

With over 75 years of experience on our staff, we want to share some of that knowledge with you.

What's the difference between cotton and other fabric options?

Cotton tees have always been the standard. Blended tees are half cotton/half polyester. They tend to breathe more and shrink less, but still have a cotton feel to them. This is a nice combination of both. Our most commonly used fabric option for work shirts. Polyester, also known as performance or dry fit, allow for more comfort and airflow in warmer conditions. These are most commonly used in sports uniforms and other athletic wear.

Can you explain what vector and raster images means to me?

At its root, a vector image is really just a math equation that allows you to stretch an image to the size of a billboard, but still maintain clarity. Most common files for these are eps and pdf files.

A raster image is the size that you see it and cannot be made larger without distorting the image. A jpg or png file are the common versions of this. Any photo you take is a raster image.

What is the process to make a screen printed shirt?

Step 1: Prepare the artwork - Each color in the image to be printed has to be separated from each other. Each color is converted to black and printed out on a transparency, thus creating the film positive.

Step 2: Preparing the screen - Each color requires its own screen. We use the film positive from Step 1 to 'to burn' our screen. There is a light sensitive film added to the screens which reacts similar to photographic film. The screen becomes our negative, or our stencil.

Step 3: Prepare the Printing Press - Each screen has to aligned to the press and to each other to make sure that the image is put back together properly on the shirt. Once aligned, the proper ink color is added to each screen. A test print is usually done to make sure everything looks correct. If not, the previous steps may have to be revised to insure a properly printed image.

Step 4: Printing the shirts - The shirt is loaded onto the press. The ink is pressed downward through the stencil on the screen with a squeegee, making a positive print on the shirt. Each screen is printed individually to add its color to the image. Once all of the screens have been printed, the image is complete.

Step 5: Drying the shirts - The shirt is removed from the press and placed on a conveyor belt dryer to dry the printed image to the shirt. Most inks need to exceed 300 degrees to fully cure.

Your order is done!

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