# How best to align your shirt on a silkscreen carousel prior to printing



## Tshirt Terrorist (Aug 24, 2008)

Hi. 

I'm generating small to moderate orders through my business (a typical print run consists of 100 - 800 units across various designs). 

I employ a silkscreen factory to print for me, and they're doing a great job. 

One thing though... every now and then I get skew prints. Either shifted to the left or the right of center, or angled along the vertical, ie: printed at a slant. 

It bugs me, especially with designs that have plenty of straight line references, but I realise, it's a manual process with people physically placing tees on a board to print, often as part of a bulk process, where they have 100s of jobs to complete in a day. 

So, I asked them. How come some tees are printed straight and some are skew (and the spoil rate varies - sometimes none of skew/ sometimes 10% of the order) and the factory manager said: when we place a tee on the printing board of a carousel we use the neckline to determine that the shirt is straight for printing (there's a little lip at the top of the board that sticks through the neck). 

To me though, this makes very little sense as the neck is round. If the shirt is straight on the board then the neckline is round. If the shirt is skew the neckline is still round. This could be why I am getting slanted prints - the tee is placed at an angle, if some guy with a strong right hand keeps putting them on this way, strong right + weak left/ look at neck = looks OK, but shirt is skew. 

Any ideas, anyone, what the best practice is for aligning a shirt on a carousel during bulk orders (quickly iow) to ensure the lowest spoil rate re: skew prints?

Thanks 
Harry 
Tshirt Terrorist
T-shirts - Cool, Funny, South African Originals by Tshirt Terrorist


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## Tabooza (Aug 12, 2013)

I have a couple of family members who use to work for companies that manufactured shirts (sewn the shirt pieces together). And when I first started I noticed some of the shirts, were not sewn properly like a sleeve was stitched closer to the neck seem or other oddities like this. So I asked them why was it that some were not done even like the others. The response I received was, some people are just so eager to be done with their batch of shirts that if their are misprint they can careless since thousands are made per day. You have to remember people are making these shirts and some of them don't like their jobs. So it might no be your printer who is printing them sideways or crooked it could be the garment itself. My 2 cents


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## djque (Feb 5, 2013)

true the sewers dont care if its a irregular as it will be sold as that. I know this first hand and when it gets close to there off time shirts are rushed.


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## rippetm1 (Jan 14, 2011)

This takes time to learn when a shirt is straight. Although my auto press has a series of laser lines that helps this drastically. Also we don't let those type of prints go out. We reprint if it's more than a few or ask customer if they have extra.

Sent from my SCH-I545 using T-Shirt Forums


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## lvprinting (Sep 23, 2014)

Some t-shirts will arrive from the wholesaler with a center fold line. Most of the time, that line is the actual center of the shirt and makes it very easy to center the shirt and then hold the sleeves out to verify that it's truly the center. Other times it's difficult to find the center of a t-shirt because there is no center fold line or the shirt is very large (2XL,3XL, etc).

Every order may have one, especially if you have 800 shirts. Your printer should give you them for free or print a couple extra for an order that large. I typically print 1 extra for every 50 to 75 shirts for this reason.


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## NoXid (Apr 4, 2011)

The shoulder seams are another visual cue, and help you know when you have the neck rotated correctly so then the neck becomes a useful reference as well.


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