Difference Between Heat Transfer Vinyl And Screen Printing

In this method you need actual screens.

Difference between heat transfer vinyl and screen printing.

Heat transfer printing on the other hand did not start until the 1940s. Since i shared my first screen printing tutorial many of you have asked why i prefer screen printing over heat transfer vinyl. Common kinds of heat transfer printing include vinyl heat transfer and digital print heat transfer. With the vinyl heat transfer process a machine is used to cut out designs and letters in pieces of colored vinyl.

Vinyl printing is all about heat transfer. See heat press machines on amazon. Vinyl printing depends on a combination of pressure and heat. Screen printing produces better quality printings than heat transfer.

If you ve been following me on instagram you may have noticed my new obsession hobby is screen printing with oracal 651 vinyl. This doesn t make it a faster overall method though as every shirt still requires individual set up which becomes too time consuming beyond the 12 shirt mark. No it s not because i needed another excuse to buy craft supplies. For years i had been making heat transfer vinyl shirts with.

Vinyl is well suited for very small runs which we would consider anything from 1 to 12 shirts this is because the set up time is much quicker than that of screen printing. One of the most common questions we get here at monograms by k k is what is the difference between screen printing and vinyl printing. A heat press is then used to transfer each vinyl color of the design onto the object being printed. Think iron on transfer but with a really big really.

With that being said let s look at the pros and cons of each of these methods.