What You’ll Need for No-RIP screen printing Film

You’re gonna need some supplies and equipment to do this. But it must meet the criteria of being cheap, effective, and simple. Continue reading →

The setup comes in two parts. Artwork, and the actual printing process. So we’ll start with the obvious first.

DO NOT SEPARATE YOUR ARTWORK INTO SPOT COLORS. USE A RICH BLACK PROCESS INSTEAD.

Whether printing on paper, or on a t-shirt, the success of your spot color work depends a lot on how you setup your black images. All film, regardless of the final, printed color, must first be put to film as a solid black image. When you send your spot colors through a RIP, which is controlled by a postscript driver, all color information except black is automatically removed.

We don’t want a SPOT COLOR. Instead, we want a RICH BLACK process color. If you have more than one color, and they touch, you may have to set your colors up up on different layers for ease of use. In Illustrator or Corel, open up the respective color control pallet, and slide all colors CYMK, to 100%. We want our Epson Inkjet printer to open up the floodgates of each cartridge and lay a good layer of ink. If you’re printing from Photoshop, just make sure your image is setup in RGB mode, and that you’re blacks are the deepest, richest black you can find on your color picker.

In Illustrator, your color will look like this:

This is how it will look in Photoshop:

Close-up of the Photoshop Color Picker:

When I first bought my R1800 printer with FastRIP I paid approximately $1200.00 for it, with financing interest more like $4,500.00. *Cough*. I was told by my vendor that you cannot achieve a good enough black image without a RIP, which lays down enough of a “special” ink to completely block the UV light during exposure. As it turns out, I was either mislead, i.e. sold, or I was dealing with someone who didn’t have all the information.

Not only can you get clean, crisp images with excellent UV blockage, but you can do it without using the overpriced “special” ink!

More on halftones and spots later. Let’s talk about RIP software. RIPs are the same in any printing industry. They typically serve their purpose very well, but are extra-ordinarily overpriced. Very basically, without a detailed explanation, they take your image and run it through a process of extremely high resolution, which is then typically burned to some type of film. There are also photo-rips which serve the same purpose, but he end result is that a full color image is printed.

The same holds true for the screen printing industry. We have our own RIPS, many of which work amiably, but are either overpriced, overfeatured, or ridiculously complex. As in a lot of other industries, many of them require dongles, which can fail (like mine eventually did), or are just so bloated that it takes as many process cycles to keep them open, as it does for them to process an image.

PowerRIP is probably the cheapest coming in at $399 just for the software. However, for me the interface is a more confusing than is necessary. So it may be cheaper than most, and produce fine quality - but it isn’t bonehead proof, and it doesn’t come right out of the box ready to go. It will take quite a bit of getting used to. Probably the greatest thing about PowerRIP is the enormous selection of printers to choose from. You can use nearly any Epson Printer from the C-120 on up. If you get an R1400, which is Epson’s replacement for the 1280 series, you’ll be coming in at around $700.00.

I purchased my RIP combo, an R1800 with FastRIP for $1200. Up to now it has been a nightmare, and probably the most inconsistent tool I purchased from Ryonet. As a matter of fact they’ve all but shifted the attention off of the FastRIP combo, directly onto another option which I will talk about in a later paragraph. The problems with my setup start with the R1800. For starters it’s an ink hog. Which, actually, is about the only bad thing I can say for it. The images are magnificent. It just isn’t a very economical printer as far ink goes.

Enter FastRIP with the proprietary FastINK, which is supposedly black enough to block out the UV light. I don’t have enough bad to say about FastRIP, and FastINK, so I’ll just narrow the list down to a few fundamental complaints. First off, the FastINK causes banding throughout the image. Which shows up on the burned screen. This problem would reoccur no matter how much tech support I received, which they were very helpful. I have nothing bad to say about the company. They always returned the calls, and stayed on the line until the problem was solved.

Sometimes FastRIP worked, and when it did the results were great. But it was never consistently dependable. Worse, if the printer sat untouched for a week or so, the FastINK would gum up the print head requiring two or three headcleanings to clear. Not good.

I eventually upgraded the FastRIP to AccuRIP, which is hands down, the simplest, best RIP software that I have used. Probably the most impressive thing about AccuRIP is that it has the ability to print FM dots, i.e. stachastic dots as well as halftones.

Stochastic dots print much, much clearer than halftones, and make for a much finer image without the worry of moire’ patterns. They take a little (or a lot) of getting used to if you’ve been printing halftones, but once you get the hang of it, the results are outstanding.

There’s only one other piece of T-shirt software which does FM dots, and it’s a photoshop plugin from Squaredot.com. My problem with them is that you can’t even download a trial version to check it out. They’re so tight about keeping the software unpirated that they won’t even let you see the user interface. Myself, if I’m paying $800.00 for something, ($2,400 after we apply my business skills to it), I want to see it in action.

So, for me, AccuRIP serves amiably, and makes beautiful image-setter quality film. It has no dongle. Has an extremely small hard drive footprint at 48 megs, and it does the raster process outside of the print driver, so it will work with ANY printer!

That said, AccuRIP, for the new, spot color screen printer, is the best value. The price is $499.00 for the software. Ryonet is offering a RIP combo package of the R1400 with a copy of AccuRIP for about $1050.

There is an alternative. If waiting for your vendor to show you a cheaper, more reasonable idea - you’ll be pissing and moaning about it on your death bed, when you’re old and gray because it ain’t gonna happen.

That’s coming up in Part 2.

I bought $5,000 worth of equipment. But it’s going to cost me $20,000 because I’m an idiot. I listened to the finance comany’s sales pitch. I looked at the dollar signs. I stretched my loan payment out over 6 years to keep the payment low, which is a mistake that lots of people make when buying cars and campers, even houses. At least houses tend to appreciate in value.

You see, I had this crazy notion that I was borrowing money; $5,000 to purchase equipment. Not so. They don’t care about the equipment or the $5,000. They want the payment. With a finance company, they purchase the equipment, on the agreement that you pay them for x amount of years, so they can profit an insane amount. Like an idiot, I signed up for a high interest rate, over a long term. It’s a fair deal if you like getting screwed. Yeah, yeah, I know, read the fine print.

Already tired of the payment, I called them to find out how much it would cost to buyout the remainder of the loan. In a cheerfully evil voice the nymph on the other side of the line told me that to buyout the loan would cost $11,500.

After the room stopped doing it’s vomit-spin, I said “What?”. I meant shout the word loudly, and angrily, but it came out more like the sound a mouse makes after its skull has been crushed by the high velocity snap of metal. Like the mouse, the lure of cheese lead me into a trap from which there is no real escape. I’ve heard of mice surviving the metal, but they live on for a short while without their noses. So that will be me. My escape will not be without its permanent scars.

It’s funny. It’s a mistake that I was aware of, as it pertains to other types of purchases. I always said that I would never be upside down in a car loan. For those of you unfamiliar with the term “upside down”, it’s when you owe more money on an item than what it’s actually worth. I’m upside down in my equipment by about $6,000, given the cost of a buyout. I’m upside down by about $15,000 if I go the life of the loan.

What I Should Have Done?

I should have started small like I’ve been encouraging new screeners to do. I didn’t need $5,000 worth of equipment. You can read this post for more on my ridiculous startup mistakes.

Go With A Credit Union Instead - Preferrably A Non-Profit Credit Union.

Credit unions are the anti-bank, anti-finance company. My initial plan of action, until I made the heartbreaking discovery above, was to refinance the loan through my mother’s credit union. That’s what I should have done in the first place. They offer a low interest rate, about 10.5% based on my mother’s credit. The payments would have been about $150 lower every month, and it would be paid off in half the time.

Credit Unions have of the benefits of banks, and all the borrowing power (for small startups) of a financing company, but without the heart-stopping, money-grubbing, fee scheduling that takes place within both.

This post, like most other posts on this site, is geared for a certain start type of startup: the low funds, low experience screen printer. My preference for you is that you don’t purchase equipment through any type of financing. Use my screen printing cheapo startup buying guide instead. You’ll save yourself a load of headaches, even if it does take a little more time to assemble what you need.

If you do finance don’t go through a bank. Don’t EVER, EVER, EVER, EVER, EVER, EVER, EVER, EVER, EVER, EVER, EVER, EVER, EVER, EVER, go through a financing company. Satan made them. He did. I’m convinced of it, and nothing will change my mind.

We’ve all been in a price bidding war with a local or even national competitor. You’ve crunched the costs of labor and materials, to eek out every penny. You’ve trimmed enough fat to see bones, and still make a profit. You’re bid is submitted. (For me it was 1,000 white one color shirts. My final bid was a blood-letting $3.75 per shirt - shirt included). The shirts had to be Jerzees 29M. My cost per case was $.85 per shirt. I was beaten by a friend who bid $1.05 per shirt. He made about $.20 per shirt, or $200 for a one man operation using a flash heater to cure the shirts. It took him about four days.

That’s just cutthroat business right? More power to him?

Normally, I would say yes, but then here’s where the line gets blurry. He’s a contract screen printer who is new to the business, and may not be aware of the damage he’s doing, not only to his competitors, but also to himself.

It was always my understanding that, with contract screen printing, you are essentially the printer for other companies and/or designers who want to sell t-shirts without the hassle of having a printer. (And we screen printers are a big hassle; a collage of mental disorder and deteriorated personal awareness on a frightening level.)

Why did he bid on the job in the first place? Furthermore, why on God’s green Earth did bid contract screen printing prices - And LOW contract prices at that??

I asked him.

“That’s my price for 1,000 shirts dude.”

I bit my tongue.

“Did any of the guys you print for bid on the job?”

“Not that I know of.”

“You aren’t sure?”

“I think *** Printing did. But I’m not sure.”

“What do you charge them, just out of curiosity.”

“$.60 per shirt at 1,000…” Then it donned on him. “Sh*t.”

Contract Screen Printing, or Retail Screen Printing? Choose one and stick with it. If you decide to do both, have two separate price lists for retail and contract printing. In my opinion it is unethical to offer contract prices to retail customers, if you also give those prices to other companies. My friend was low balling against his own clients who depend on him to help them get the job done. I don’t know if this is illegal, but it’s for sure unethical. Worse, you virtually guarantee that the market price in your area will drop to skeletal prices, especially if some other moron decides to start competing with you for pennies, and if you aren’t very careful about cost analysis, i.e. how much it costs you to stay in business every month, you may find yourself out of business, fast.

Contract Screen Printing Must Be A B2B (Business to Business) affair.

We’re all in this for the money, well OK, some of us are just stupid enough, and/or damaged enough to actually enjoy printing, but that’s not the case. None of us can do it without the money. You’re contract customers depend on you to give them the ability to sell excellent product at a reasonable cost. They also have a reasonable expectation that they do not have to compete with you. It’s a partnership, and if you sell to average customers at the contract price, in my opinion you ruin what should be a very lucrative market for everyone, including you. If you want to be an ultra low retailer that’s fine. At least then everyone understands what, and whom they are dealing with. At the same time, remember that charging too little is one of the biggest destroyers of new business.

Also, one of the benefits of being a contractor your prices are low, but you can count on sheer volume to keep the lights turned on. This also gives you the security of being able to print for several different vendors. So when times are slow, even if your respective clients are struggling a bit, you will still be doing pretty well.

In other words, if you’re a contractor protect your market. Deal with retail and contract opportunities differently. Remember, retail customers, even on the low end of the spectrum expect to pay, at least $4-15 (0r more) per shirt depending on volume, color, inks, shirt style etc., Wouldn’t you much rather make $6-7 per shirt on a hundred shirt order, as opposed to $.60?

If you said “no” then welcome to the club. Your brain is already damaged, as is the case with most screeners. Your only hope now is to take a drill and bore a small hole into the base of your skull to relieve the swelling.