Heat Transfer Printing
The in-house custom heat transfer printing service at Global Recognition is a popular way to decorate small quantities of garments with your custom design. It’s also affordable to personalize apparel with names, numbers or any message you want making it a great option for teams, fanwear, bachelorette parties, and other special occasions.
heat transfer printing photo gallery
Learn About the Heat Transfer Printing Process
A behind-the-scenes peek how your apparel is decorated and personalized
Printing and Weeding
First, the design layout is created in a graphics program. Next, a special printer cuts the design into the heat transfer vinyl material as a reverse image.
The weeding process (shown) is where the excess vinyl is removed using a pick tool so all that remains is your custom heat transfer design, letters and/or numbers. It’s a time consuming process to manually pick out the background including open areas of the design and the center portions of each letter and number.
Heat Transfer Printing
Heat transfer printing uses a precise combination of temperature, time and pressure. Each of these factors vary depending upon the fabric and design.
Temperature – the ideal temperature to properly adhere the design to the garment. If the temperature is too hot, the garment will be damaged; if the heat is too low the design won’t fully adhere.
Time – the number of seconds to apply heat to perfectly adhere the design to the garment.
Pressure – the operator applies the proper amount of downward force to apply the heat transfer. If there’s too much pressure, there will be an outline around the design that cannot be removed.
