We often see schools use Roland printer-cutters to create custom designs for heat pressed T-shirts for school fundraising / school spirit, after school clubs’ and sports teams’ apparel, or as just another classroom project to give students the opportunity to flex their creative muscles.
A popular heat transfer media for making T-shirts is Roland’s HeatSoft SATIN, which is a semi-gloss finish that gives a screen print sheen yet still has a soft hand. It is also very durable, capable of withstanding up to 50 wash cycles. You can read more about that media here.
The most challenging part of heat pressing T-shirts is that not all schools can afford the most expensive heat presses with laser alignment systems, so many need to align their designs in the right place on a T-shirt manually. There are a few different methods to do so.
Full Front Designs
To center the image with full front designs, we recommend creating a line right down the middle of the T-shirt by folding the shirt in half and then hitting it with the heat press for a second or two. This will make it much easier to get as close to center as possible when registering the design manually. You can use the armpits of the shirt as a reference point when aligning the height.
Left Chest Designs
To position a design on the left chest area, the vertical center will be the seam where the neck and sleeve meet. The horizontal center will be the line from the bottom of one arm seam across to the bottom of the opposite arm seam. This one can be a bit trickier to master but practice makes perfect.
Read more tips on the Roland blog here.
