Screen Printing vs Heat Transfers - Cost, Time, Profit

i'm josh ellsworth general manager of
stahls cadcut direct as a garment
decorator you have a ton of choices when
it comes to decorating t-shirts or any
type of job for that matter whether it's
screen printing embroidery custom printed t shirts no minimum
direct-to-garment printing heat applied
graphics sublimation the choices are
many in this tutorial we're going to
teach you how to decipher between screen
printing and heat applied film for a six
piece t-shirt order let's look at the
job now how do I choose between screen
printing and heat applied film if I want
to achieve maximum profit let's take a
look at screen printing first we've
broken down the major steps involved
with screen printing and completed a
time study for the six piece job keep in
mind all of these steps except for print
will remain the same times whether
you're doing one piece or 1000 pieces
you
here's your cost per design without
labor involved we've calculated based on
the number of pieces in the number of
colors meaning the number of screens
okay now that we know the cost and the
process involved with screen printing
let's look at heat applied film next
with heat applied film you have three
major steps involved in labor
cutting weeding and heat applying we've
broken down the time for each for this
particular six piece job now just in
case you're new to heat applied film I'd
like to coach you through the process
first send your job to your cutter it
cuts out the design out of the colors of
film each color needs to be loaded
separately then you weed away the excess
material to remove the unwanted material
exposing your design now load your
garment on the heat press preheat the
garment to remove the moisture and
wrinkles position the background of your
design with this particular film it heat
applies just for one second to get it to
temporarily tack down peel away the
backing now we'll line up our second
color
position
cover and apply for the recommended time
and temperature based on the film that
you're using remove the backing that's a
completed garment let's go through it
one more time load your garment
pretty
position your first layer film tack it
down
remove the backing
line up your second color
cover the entire design and he press it
one more time
for the recommended time temperature and
pressure that's it the same process for
each garment now here's the basic
breakdown for cost per design 45 square
inches and material used between the
black and the red material costs about a
penny per square inch so we have 45
cents in each design so now you
understand a little bit about the heat
applied film process as well let's take
a look at a side-by-side cost breakdown
for this particular job
so as you can see heat apply the film
makes perfect sense for this job at six
pieces now what if the customer came in
and they wanted a dozen pieces or two
dozen or 48 or a hundred pieces let's
look at that breakdown now you see
what's happening here on this simple
comparison we're breaking down the price
per piece only and not calculating in
the labor so it looks like the breaking
point is somewhere around eighty four
pieces we start to add in labor you have
the same amount of labor in every single
piece for heat applied film with screen
printing once you're set up the labor
rate goes down per piece as your
quantity goes up because it's amortized
over a higher volume of pieces so the
breaking points actually going to be
somewhere around 48 pieces for this
design so are you starting to get it
heat applied graphics and screen
printing they go hand in hand in order
to make maximum profit at your shop you
need to have access to bones i'm josh
ellsworth thanks for watching
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