To a Tee

From the Tech Vault Dept.: The evanescence of technology is such that nothing in the article below has any currency. The company that made those printers is gone, and you’re now able to design a T-shirt and upload the design to a company that will provide the finished product for far less than you’d invest for the products below. We’re going back twenty-five years, after all. (Photos by John Popplewell.)

                                                                                           

LIFE’S SIGNIFICANT ACHIEVEMENTS are often marked with trophies and plaques and, more whimsically, clothing. Whether it’s your baseball team’s recent victory, your church choir’s tour, or simply surviving another year at work, there are celebratory messages to be worn.

The T-shirt-inscription business has flourished accordingly. Needless to say, there are folks who do very good work in this field, but you still have to relinquish control when you hire somebody else to do it for you. Thanks to your skill at the computer, though, that’s no longer the case. Anything you can render onscreen can be turned into a professional-looking tee with the help of Fargo Electronics’ PrimeraPro Color Printer and its special T-Shirt Transfer Paper. Design it, print it, iron it on. It’s that simple.

Once you make the investment in the printer, your per-shirt cost is much less than a commercial outfit charges, especially for a limited run. And the possibilities open up from there. Printed garments (let’s not forget sweatshirts) have great fund-raising potential. It’s nice and sentimental for your group to promote itself by sporting appropriately legible clothing; it’s often nicer and more profitable for your group to sell those shirts to its fans.

Ultimately, you’ll be able to make a business out of it. With a good graphics program, a creative eye, and a collection of headline typefaces, you already have the design tools. Add an entrepreneurial spirit and the PrimeraPro printer, and you’re ready to go. It’s a trade you should get into – if you’ll pardon my saying so – while the iron is hot.

You can also create printed coffee mugs, although you’ll need a mug press in order to bond the transfer paper to them. In addition to selling a range of paper types and ribbons, Fargo’s toll-free line can get you up and running.

One of the popular methods of color printing fuses hot wax to smooth paper. It was only logical to take this process that extra step to a cotton shirt. As I discovered in my not-too-nimble experimentation, hot wax doesn’t come out of clothing very easily, but this T-shirt project lets you use that phenomenon to your advantage.

Whether you’re printing a T-shirt, a transparency, or just a colorful page, the process is the same: The area passes through the printer three times, each time to get another color of ink – or wax, in this case. Considering the time and resources needed to produce color, the PrimeraPro averages a highly affordable 40 cents per page.

Special paper is provided with the PrimeraPro because the right paper makes a big difference. Whatever surface you print on interacts with the wax or ink and affects the color, as I discovered in my first T-shirt run. The photo was very dark, and the pastels I chose for the lettering were all but washed out. I lightened the photo, gave it heavier contrast, and made the lettering colors bolder. The result was much more impressive.

But this is something you’re only going to discover when you actually get to the point of preparing a shirt. If you’re planning to print on colored fabric, try viewing your image against a similarly colored background as you design it. The wax is almost opaque enough to cover the fabric, but there still will be a change in the resulting color values.

It should also be mentioned that as printers go, the PrimeraPro is pretty amazing. It not only does thermal-wax color, which is what T-shirt printing requires, but it also performs true dye-sublimation printing when you swap out the printing cartridge (the printer comes with both). Dye-sublimation printer prices run in the $10,000 range, but by cleverly making use of your computer’s processing power, the PrimeraPro “borrows” your CPU for its calculations and functions simply as a “dumb” device.

But there’s nothing dumb about having a $10,000-level printer in your home for around $1,500. So if you want true photo-realistic color printing, thermal color for T-shirts, or just a way to get your drawings and designs onto the page in living color, this printer is ideal. The PrimeraPro is compatible with both the PC and Mac, although the PC version will only work with Windows-based programs (which shouldn’t be very limiting these days).

While T-shirts are the obvious targets for this kind of process, you can iron your designs onto anything that will absorb the wax. Sheets, tablecloths, even boring old neckties can be improved. And if you have a scanner or develop film onto Kodak Photo CDs, there’s no end to what you can do.

Do

• Stock up on new T-shirts and sweatshirts.
• Buy a spare thermal-wax ribbon. This gets addictive.
• Use bright colors for maximum effect.
• Use a professional heat press if you have access to one.
  

Don’t

• Put the dye-sublimation ribbon in the printer by mistake.
• Mistake the supplied plain paper for T-shirt transfer stock, which is sold separately.
• Over-iron the transfer patches.
• Use the steam setting on your iron.
  

Everything You Need for This Project
PrimeraPro Color Printer (works with PC or Mac), $1,895 (extra ribbon $45); from Fargo Electronics; (800) 327-xxxx, (612) 941-xxxx.
T-shirt Transfer Paper, $18.95 for 10 sheets, $180 for 100 sheets; also from Fargo Electronics.
Printer cable.
Windows or Mac painting or drawing program.
T-shirts.
Hand iron.
Scissors.

Steps

1. SET UP THE PRIMERAPRO.
Connect the power cord to the back of the printer and plug the other end into a wall outlet or surge protector. Use a standard printer cable (not included) to connect the PrimeraPro to your computer’s printer port. Hint: If you don’t mind disengaging the printer cable from time to time, you can swap your current printer cable between the PrimeraPro and the printer you usually use, or purchase an A/B switch box that lets you access two printers from one parallel port.

2. PREPARE THE COLOR RIBBON.
The PrimeraPro uses a ribbon that looks like colorful Saran Wrap stretched between two cardboard cylinders. Open the ribbon box with

care – I almost tore the ribbon in my haste to unpack it. Next, carefully place the ribbon inside the black plastic ribbon tray. The roll will tuck under a hinged hood. The colored cellophane will feed up from the bottom of the source reel and wind down over the top of the end reel. Take care not to touch the waxed surface. Hint: If the printer messes up before finishing a job properly, you should reset the ribbon by hand. Rewind it to its previous starting point if the color panels weren’t used at all; otherwise advance it to the next one. Because yellow is the first color printed, make sure a yellow panel is wound under the hood (you’ll see the tail end of a blue panel going to the end of the reel).

3. PULL DOWN THE FRONT PANEL OF THE PRINTER TO EXPOSE THE PAPER-FEED TRAY.
Attach the output tray directly above the feed tray, squeezing the plastic slightly to snap the connectors in place. Next, place a sheet of the glossy, thermal-sensitive paper in the feed tray, shiny side down. Run the printer’s test page by holding down the On-Line button while turning on th printer and then releasing it. A page goes through three passes (one for each color) before emerging into the output tray. Never disturb the three-pass process by pulling out the page before all three inking steps are completed.

4. ADD THE WINDOWS PRINTER DRIVER.
Turn on your PC and start Windows. From the Main menu group, select Control Panel, and then double-click on the Printer icon. Click on the Add button, highlight “Install Unlisted or Updated Printer,” and then click on Install. Place the PrimeraPro print drivers disk in drive A: and click on OK in the Install Driver window. Highlight Fargo PrimeraPro in the printer list, and click on the Setup button. Resolution should be set at 300 dots per inch (or 600 dpi, although this takes longer), Paper Size at regular Letter (8.5 by 11 inches), and Ribbon Type at 3 Color.

5. DRAW A PICTURE
I created a CorelDRAW file based on my own version of the Computer Life logo. It’s available on ZiffNet’s Computer Life forum as file CLIFE.ZIP, and you’re welcome to download it and edit it as you please. Otherwise, load your favorite image-editing or illustration program and start drawing, or try modifying existing clip art or scanning in a photograph (this is an excellent opportunity to mortify the kids by emblazoning their images across your chest). Keep in mind that your end product needs to fit comfortably across the front of the shirt, and there’s a nonprintable area of just more than an inch at the bottom of the page. A-size thermal transfer paper is 8.5 by 13 inches, giving you a standard 8.5-by-11-inch work space.

6. PROOF THE PICTURE FIRST, THEN FLIP.
Save your T-shirt supplies by running your first proofs in monochrome through your regular printer. You won't have color, but  you will be able to center, size, and touch up your picture for

a fraction of the cost of color output. When you’re satisfied, switch back to the PrimeraPro and run a color proof, taking care to place the paper in the input tray shiny-side down. If you like what you see, use your graphics software to flip the image.

IMPORTANT: T-shirt transfers require that you reverse the picture, otherwise the composition and lettering will stare out backwards from the finished shirt. Don’t forget to flip before you print.

7. CREATE A MASTER TRANSFER SHEET.
T-shirt transfer pages have two thin, vertical stripes across the nonprinting side. Place that side up in the
printer feed tray and print your reversed image. You only need to iron what’s actually been printed, so trim away the excess unprinted stock. A good pair of scissors will do the trick (transfer paper is thinner than cardboard).

8. IRON ON!
If you have access to professional laundry equipment, nothing beats a heat press. Otherwise, warm up that hand iron. Put it on the highest setting (cotton) and deactivate the steamer. Remove any excess padding from your ironing board or spread a towel over an empty table – you want a firm surface beneath the shirt. Each sheet of transfer paper comes sandwiched between two pieces of cardboard. Place one of the cardboard sheets inside the shirt under the image area. Line up your transfer, face down, and iron it with a little extra pressure. It only takes a few seconds – 20 at the most – for the transfer to occur. Keeping the transfer paper hot, put a fingernail under a corner of the page. It should lift up easily and peel back. Hint: If the transfer paper doesn’t disengage easily from your shirt, make another pass with the iron.

B. A. Nilsson is a regular contributor to Computer Life. His T-shirt design was so popular with the staff that it was used for the official 1994 holiday greeting card.

– Computer Life, March 1995