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So on Saturday this screen printer wanted to get into a nightclub, but the bouncer said: “Sorry, bud, you need a tie for this place.” The bouncer didn’t want to hear that screen printers don’t wear ties and he couldn’t even be bribed with free t-shirts for life. So the screen printer went back to his car and . . . → Read More: What did you do this weekend? The January/February 2011 edition of Imprint Canada has a full-page article on a digital-only print shop in Vancouver. We know the two principals from their earlier days in screen printing. Both are nice guys and it is good to see them striking out in new directions. We wish them well of course, but we still have . . . → Read More: The Direct to Garment (DTG) printing business… look before you leap! If you are starting out there will be no shortage of people willing to give you “advice”. Be careful, especially if you are a bit green. What seems like a cheap way to get started might actually be a way to waste money. Do your homework. Read, talk to people other than commissioned salespeople, research the . . . → Read More: Starting out? Don’t take advice from this dude! The bleeding (dye migration) issue in polyester and poly/cotton blends has always been a problem and a long time ago ink manufacturers developed specially formulated white inks to deal with it. For instance, Wilflex’s PolyWhite has been respected for many years all over the globe as a reliable performer in “killing” dye migration problems very effectively. But . . . → Read More: The white ink on the dyed polyester is not staying white? From the perspective of some manufacturers the show was quite busy. However, as we anticipated, apparently very few Canadians attended and almost all of those that did were from Western Canada. Wilflex showed their Performance series for athletic polyester stretch garments first released at the SGIA show last year. There were also some new additions to their . . . → Read More: Feedback from the ISS Long Beach show. Over the years we have come across some weird and wonderful dryer problems. We were once called by a customer to deal with an “ink curing problem.” It was one of those miserable -30 Celcius days with a nasty wind blowing, but we made the trip anyway. One of the dryers was curing properly but the other was not. We were shown . . . → Read More: Canadian winters and dryer issues. Most standard plastisol inks require a cure temp of 320 degrees Fahrenheit. But that doesn’t mean that every print automatically cures if it has reached 320 degrees. Thicker and multiple-layer prints need to be exposed to 320 degrees a little longer to allow the entire ink deposit to reach that temperature. If the dwell time is . . . → Read More: Pizzas and prints. Last week we posted an article about phthalate-free ink on infant clothing being a requirement in the U.S. Well, coincidentally, today it was announced that it was becoming the law in Canada as well, effective June 2011. In the announcement, the Minister of Health said, “Today, we are again acting to make sure the toys and products . . . → Read More: Canadian government’s phthalate-free announcement… no problem.. It was announced today that Target is coming to Canada. They have entered into a deal to do it via acquisition of the Zellers chain. What we have heard so far is that they plan to do the conversion to the Target name in 2013 and by 2014 have between 100 and 150 Target big-box stores across . . . → Read More: Target is coming to Canada. Good or bad for our textile screen printers? The SGIA show, once the must-attend annual event for Canadian textile screen printers has morphed into a digital show thereby becoming almost entirely irrelevant to textile printers. This is so widely acknowledged by now that it needs no further discussion. That leaves the ISS shows as the only significant US-based alternatives for Canadian textile screen printers. Our . . . → Read More: Are U.S.-based shows still relevant to Canadian textile screen printers?
Are you being asked to print special effects (gels etc.) on infant garments with environmentally-friendly inks? We ask because many printers still think that environmentally friendly inks are only available in standard inks for cotton tees. Not so! All the special effects inks such as puff, suede, stretch, high density and the rest, are available in Wilflex’s phthalate-free and lead-free . . . → Read More: Safe special effects inks on infant garments
Today Kiwo announced a deal with Grunig-Interscreen of Switzerland to represent Grunig’s line of pre-press equipment in North America. The line includes a screen stretcher, a screen coating machine, an automatic screen frame cleaning machine and a vertical drying cabinet. As a Kiwo dealer, and although our focus is screen printing consumables, Screenflex can offer this line of equipment through . . . → Read More: Kiwo does a deal with Grunig We heard today that Lady GaGa has done a deal with Tommy Hilfiger to bring out a fashion line. No, seriously! Whatever you may or may not think about that, let’s hope that it includes screen printed garments with designs similar to her outfit in the picture. Then let’s hope that one or more of our Canadian screen printers . . . → Read More: Lady Gaga and Tommy Hilfiger As we are all painfully aware, Canadian textile screen printing has been hurt badly in recent years by cheap offshore producers in low-wage regimes with poor human rights records and little or no pollution control regulations. In fact, there is hardly a sector of our economy that has not been affected. That is why we wanted to share with . . . → Read More: Pushing back against cheap offshore manufacturing and screen printing…
Margaret Best knows her re-tensionable frames as well as anyone in the industry. Over 20 years of experience with them in both manual and automatic shops, large shops and small shops, textile shops and graphics shops, means that you can trust that she knows what she is talking about. We are offering copies of a detailed explanation that she recently prepared for . . . → Read More: Converting to re-tensionable frames – why and how…
Once in a while we come across t-shirts that are just too weird, bizarre or ridiculous to ignore. Okay, so perhaps they are not production-worthy, but at least they give us a laugh. They might even stimulate some creativity and lead to something unique that could turn out to be marketable. This one was designed by a software engineer for One Laptop Per Child, Chris Ball of . . . → Read More: Extreme t-shirts – an email nag… Is there a screen printer anywhere that hasn’t at some point had to deal with a difficult, complaining customer? Zig Ziglar claims that it actually represents an opportunity. We guess that he is saying that when you are handed a lemon it is an opportunty to make lemonade. Remember when Tylenol had that tampering incident that could have ruined . . . → Read More: Some business advice for 2011 from Zig Ziglar… “In the end, the customer doesn’t know, or care, if you are small or large as an organization.. she or he only focuses on the garment hanging on the rail in . . . → Read More: A thought for 2011 from Giorgio Armani on business size and product quality… |
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