The Need-to-knows about vinyl cutting and heat transfers

Here at Rogue Star we have plenty of options in print methods. Heat transferring your artwork onto clothing is one of the most popular!

Now, we don’t use the little Cricut cutters you see behind a locked glass panel at Michael’s. We have a Roland BN-20, an industrial vinyl printer and cutter at our disposal which allows us to use a vast amount of materials to fit the needs of your artwork!

Though, here’s the thing… Some, if not most of our materials aren’t able to be printed on; other materials don’t cut too nicely when the print is small and detailed. So, this blog is going to help you design with the materials in mind that will do your artwork the justice it deserves!

Tattoo

In our shop we refer to this material as “Tattoo.” It is our most used material as we are able to print CMYK ink onto it and cut the excess vinyl away to give a bright, colorful and smooth print to press onto your garment of choice! As the Roland does print in CMYK ink, we are limited to color matching options in pantones but we will work diligently to ensure it is the closest match to your pantone color! This material, however, does not fair too well with fine details that need to be cut out and will unfortunately destroy the print if we tried to cut it out with the Roland. Therefore it is best to keep in mind that this material requires bolder or bigger text and outlines around artwork.

CAD and Vinyl

These two types of materials are looped in together because they are similar in the print type and application. CAD is a polyurethane material that is a more malleable material that we use for solid color prints. We mainly carry black and white CAD at any given time as they are the most requested colors for company heat transfers, but have plenty of other color options in CAD. Vinyl is fairly self explanatory, this is a less malleable but thicker and still high-quality material that provides a flat color heat transfer.

Both of these materials are flat color based and cannot be printed on, but with the color selection of the materials themselves you have plenty of opportunity to flex a creative design with a heat transfer. If your logo or artwork has multiple colors as well, we can combine different sections of print into one masterpiece! With these two materials, you can even create intricate crests and finer details that would’t be as exact on a garment than other materials.

Clearflex

This material is interesting. Though not well known or used by us at Rogue Star often, Clearflex is a clear transfer material that doesn’t transfer the material itself, but it uses the heat of the heat press to transfer the CMYK ink onto the garment of choice! We were quite excited to use this material the few times we have as it’s an interesting process! This allows for very small and minimal details to be transferred onto your garment without having the stress of possible wonky cuts from the Roland’s blade. The catch to this wonderous material is that our Roland at Rogue Star does not print white ink. So the limits are to lighter materials such as white or athletic grey to use this material.

What to take from this

There are a lot of things to consider when you are designing for a heat transfer, but have no fear! Though we appreciate forethought from our clients, the experts at Rogue Star will ensure that we help along with the process of material choice, color matching, and any other worries about creating the perfect heat transfer you may have! We are well versed in what materials we have at our disposal and will do our best to make your order a top priority.

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