Which is more cost-effective, silk printing or thermal transfer?

Date:Nov.03,2020

Silk printing is a printing process that appeared earlier than heat transfer. Why is the newly popular heat transfer printing sought after by the majority of people? What kind of process is silk screen printing? What kind of process is heat transfer?

Silk screen: It is a kind of printing that uses a certain pressure to transfer the ink through the holes of the stencil to the substrate to form an image or text.

Heat transfer: The ink on the PET film is transferred to the product through high temperature and high pressure.

The advantages of silk screen printing:

The material cost of a single piece of printing is low, generally only 0.01USD for a color.

Disadvantages:

It is necessary to make a set of film and screen, a set of one color, even if only one product is printed, a set of screen and film must be made. For photographic pictures, the clarity of silk screen printing is very low, and clear pictures cannot be printed. In addition, a screen printing plate is necessary for printing a color. It must be registered every time, otherwise there will be misalignment. Simple manual machines produce simple patterns, and the effect is still possible. Pattern printing with more colors has a higher scrap rate, and the effect is not particularly good.

Advantages of heat transfer:

First use the computer to design the pictures, make a plate, use the gravure printing machine to print the pattern on the PET film, and then use the heat transfer machine to transfer the pattern on the product through high temperature and high pressure. The effect of printing is particularly good, the effect of 3D photos, and the clarity of the pictures are particularly high. Not limited by color, all colors can be printed at once. high productivity

Disadvantages: higher plate making cost, higher unit price