Why do we need minimum quantity for screen printed heat transfers?

Screen printed heat transfers are a great solution to decorate your apparel. The quality of the print with its clear contour and the great color opacity on the dark garments are just a few of the advantages.

Yes, it all sounds great until you have a project of 10 t-shirts that you want to print. Then you find out that the classic plastisol transfers are not the best solution for this situation. You send your artwork to some transfer printer and he writes you back that this is below the minimum or if it’s not, the cost per sheet transfer is more then the price of the t-shirts.

Now I will try to explain to you why:

1. There is a lot of preparation before the actual printing. When your project is sent to the printer, it first starts with the color separation by the design team. Their job is to separate every single color to different objects(for spot colors). That means that your project might be there for hours or even days, according to your file quality and complexity.
2. The preparation takes time, but also costs. After the designers finish their job, the team makes the stencils and screens for every single color. There are chemicals, warming, and lighting screens, machine calibration.
3. Unlike the digital printer, every color is screen printed one over another. This makes it slow. You print the yellow, after that you take off and the other screen with the other color is set. After all, all colors have to be calibrated correctly one over another.