Spreading Ink

Spreading Ink offers all over printing which we do on a large rotary that was designed from the ground up to do this - it has 40x50 inch printing platens.

The shirts must set on top of the platen, not over it.  If more than a one color design is needed, then you should have a design with loose registration. These garments have to be hit with a shot of waterbased adhesive on the inside of the shirt so that the shirt does not shift around too much during printing.

All over prints are not perfect, you will see some areas that don't print perfectly due to folds in the shirt. There will be some inconsistencies where the print goes over seams, collars etc. If you look at most prints in mid tier department stores you will see a good sampling of what to expect. If you are expecting Affliction style quality be prepared to have a larger percentage of rejects and you might also consider printing the shirts as a blank before the side seams have been sewn.

We offer up to 3 colors on all over prints and we reserve the right to not print a design if we don't think it will print well. You can submit designs as a .jpg, but final art should be vector. Halftone gradients can be used, but should be limited on all over prints. We do offer one color prints with an over the top design in plastisol inks if the artwork can be accomplished this way. We reserve the right to determine how a design will print best though, and will make recommendations based on our experience in doing this work.

We can print up to a 2XL, although there are small areas on a 2XL right at the tip of the sleeves that will not print (approx 1 by 3 inch triangle), we can print all over on any sizes smaller including womens designs. The unprinted small triangle area on a 2XL is generally not noticed.

All over printing is such that if your artwork is not a repeating pattern it will not lay on all shirts the same and there needs to be a defined focal point. That focal point should hit in the same area of all shirts and shirt sizes. With this method some of the art will fall off of a small shirt, but will mostly cover the XL. We have an illustrator template that we use that includes a bleed area that is good for all sizes up to a 2xl.

Almost all of this printing is done with waterbase or discharge inks. If plastisol is used (where a specific color is requested and cannot be matched with a waterbase system) plastisol is used with a soft hand base added. There will be no underbase when this is done. It can still work on dark garments as long as muted colors are ok, final output depends on the look you are going for.

Please feel free to give me a call to discuss your needs, our customer service hours are 9-5 PST. We look forward to hearing from you!