# cutting out heat transfer shapes



## g9girl (Jun 28, 2005)

hi there,
i'm new to the t-shirt forum. i have a company called G9Girl - we're a 'girl-power' apparel company for tween girls (ages 8-14). you can see some of our t-shirt designs here:
http://www.g9girl.com/tops.html
we have a new set of designs (in the vintage section) that we've been printing out on professional transjet transfer paper and heat pressing ourselves on to our shirts. HOWEVER, because each design is a unique shape, it takes FOREVER to cut this shape out (and we don't want all that extra transfer paper gunk on the shirt). does anyone know how to deal with this problem?? we would really like to continue printing our designs ourselves, as this way we don't have to do high volume. 

the designs off the transjet are nice in that the color of the shirt shows through, giving it a "faded" or more vintage look. is there any process we can use where we can achieve this look but only the ink gets transferred, not the entire piece of paper? (aside from screenprinting, which we'd rather not do) or is there some machine that will cut out our shape for us? what is the process that places like ace transfer or first edition are using when they make their custom transfers such that only the ink is transferring, not the paper? is this something we could do ourselves?

thanks very much for ANY info.
tien-yi


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## photodiver (Apr 27, 2005)

Hello Tien-yi,

I have been imprinting for over 7 years now and unfortunately, manually cutting out transfers is the only way I know of. We do mostly custom work and try to get the images/graphics about the same shap and sizes. I find I can move quickly once I get going. If you find another way, let me know. But I bet you won't find anything as "cheap" as your own manual labour.

Good Luck


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## Adam (Mar 21, 2005)

I guillotine as far as I can and then start snipping, this speeds it up a little. It's definately the time consuming stage of the process. All the images I print are different and there's no ingto what shape or size they are going to be (user uploads them) so I'm in the same boat.


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## jdr8271 (Jun 16, 2005)

ace transfer & first edition screen print plasticol ink onto a piece of wax paper. Then you just transfer that onto the shirt using a heat press. The image is printed in revers, so that you can transfer it onto a t-shirt, just like you would with digital heat transfers.


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## Twinge (Apr 26, 2005)

Yeah, plastisol is my only other recommendation, but it'll have about the same look and feel of screen printing (which is generally a good thing, but may not be for you) -- and the cost-per-color that comes with it.


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## farrislegacy (Oct 5, 2008)

jdr8271 said:


> ace transfer & first edition screen print plasticol ink onto a piece of wax paper. Then you just transfer that onto the shirt using a heat press. The image is printed in revers, so that you can transfer it onto a t-shirt, just like you would with digital heat transfers.


Could you please explain in a little bit more detail about how you can do this. I do vinyl cut outs for iron on or purchased transfers and have been looking to start screen printing (but really dreading all the work) so this sounds pretty like a pretty interesting fix to my problem as well. but I am unfamilar with screen printing terminology..lol


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## Lnfortun (Feb 18, 2006)

Use a vinyl cutter with optical registration sensor such as Roland GX24 and Grapthec Craft Robo Pro. You can contour cut around the design close its edges.

It comes with a price whether contour cutting or using plastisol transfer especially when the design has multiple or full color.


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## farrislegacy (Oct 5, 2008)

Lnfortun said:


> Use a vinyl cutter with optical registration sensor such as Roland GX24 and Grapthec Craft Robo Pro. You can contour cut around the design close its edges.
> 
> It comes with a price whether contour cutting or using plastisol transfer especially when the design has multiple or full color.


Thanks, I have been really looking at the the optical cutters lately. Maybe it is time to bite the bullet and buy one...


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## Lnfortun (Feb 18, 2006)

Imageclip for inkjet is a self weeding transfer paper. Has same feel, durability and appearance as JPSS without polymer issue even on light pastel and slightly dark colored shirts. Good for photo, text, gradient and light color design.


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## farrislegacy (Oct 5, 2008)

Where can you find the imageclip transfer paper?


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## Lnfortun (Feb 18, 2006)

farrislegacy said:


> Where can you find the imageclip transfer paper?


The link below will give you some insight about the Imageclip for inkjet paper.

How Imageclip for inkjet test - T-Shirt Forums

It is available at Tshirtsupplies, Coast Business, Conde Systems and other vendors that sells Neenah products. The later two vendors are forums preferred vendors. Check the links under preferred vendors on the left column of the page.


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## ashamutt (Feb 22, 2008)

Lnfortun said:


> The link below will give you some insight about the Imageclip for inkjet paper.
> 
> How Imageclip for inkjet test - T-Shirt Forums
> 
> It is available at Tshirtsupplies, Coast Business, Conde Systems and other vendors that sells Neenah products. The later two vendors are forums preferred vendors. Check the links under preferred vendors on the left column of the page.


Tshirtsupplies is on the preferred vendors list too


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## vipgraphx (Apr 2, 2008)

depending on the design I would highly reccomend the Roland GX-24 you can do many many things with this machine. IT has a great feature called print and cut that will print out of Roland software and then cut the contours lines. I use Jet pro soft stretch for these type of prints. the feel is great color holds and is cutter friendly. I found that 90g/f works perfect to cut the contour lines...

If you can afford to buy the Roland GX-24 it will really help your business and will bring more income in..you will be able to now make decals, car graphics, vinyl transfers, names , numbers and more....look into it I got back my investment in just a few months.


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## Lnfortun (Feb 18, 2006)

Oops. What I meant was the first 2 is in preferred vendors list. Thanks Ashamutt.


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