Professional Badminton Shirt Heat Transfer Printing Guide & Services (with pictures)

[ERTHK]

Every so often when I was reading threads, I came across various shirt printing questions from fellow Bcers, but sadly I seldom find a comprehensive answer to those questions.

With more company holidays & free time towards the end of the year, I’m finally able to compile a guide on this relatively unique topic. Hopefully it can clear doubts & provide useful information for fellow Bcers.

I will try to keep this guide simple & straight to the point.


What we should consider from a Professional Shirt Printing Service?

Similar with stringing our rackets, we always go to professional stringers to ensure that we get a good high quality stringing job. When it comes to badminton shirt printing, a good professional printing job will have your game shirt lasting for years to come.

Unfortunately, very few local sport shops specialize in badminton shirt printing – not surprising, when we know that badminton is not as popular as football & etc.

This happened to me before, when I was in Glasgow, Scotland. I went to one of the largest print shop in the city to print my shirt. I gave them a sample of my existing shirt & asked them to print an exact same design on my new shirt.

Little did I know that I was in for a shocker when I collect my shirt a few days later. They got the design all wrong & it looked weird on my badminton shirt.

The girl at the counter who handed the shirt back to me told me that they used existing football fonts to do my badminton shirt. I was not happy at all when they also told me that they are not going to custom design for badminton shirt because they found out that it’s not time & cost effective for them.

Most local print shops will use any existing fonts to do our badminton shirt in order to save time & cost for them.


What kind of Shirt Printing is considered Good & Professional?


1) Material used – A Polyurethane(PU) Poly-flex material should be used in heat transfer name printing as it is a very high quality & durable material. What we should avoid is some cheap PVC look-alike material which is very thin & will show font cracking after a few wash.

Close-up photo of the high quality PU Polyflex material


2) All the font design should be done digitally using designer software in order to make sure that the font alignment & spacing of our name block is correct. What we should avoid is someone using some singularly cut out fonts & simply arranging them manually when they iron our shirt, the font might be slanting, the alignment might not straight & the spacing will rarely be correct if done manually.

Photo showing a professionally designed & arranged name block, before being ironed onto a badminton shirt


3) Make sure that the people who are doing our shirt printing know what kind of design to use & willing to take time to make the design right if needed. What we should avoid is someone who just taking an existing design even though they know that it’s not the right design, but they still use it anyway because they are not willing to spend the extra time & cost to get it right.

Close photo of how a professional badminton name block should looked like


When it comes to take care of our printed shirt, we should always make sure that we turn our shirt inside-out when machine wash. It will protect the shirt material & also the PU Poly-flex material of name print.

Some more photos of how a professional PU Poly-flex name block should looked like:










I have my other shirts done professionally using high quality PU Poly-flex material & they are really good looking & long lasting for many years.

If anyone has any further questions about personal badminton shirt printing & how to get it done professionally, you can email to pimp_my_jersey@yahoo.com

Sorry for such a long post & hopefully my guide can answer some questions & provide useful information when it comes to badminton shirt printing.

Thanks for reading & Happy New Year 2011 to all Bcers.

[Dokkie]

Great post, but I don't think (unfortunately) there's many shops that will do all this stuff, how did you get this done? Because I would like this on my shirts as well

[ERTHK]

Hi Dokkie, you can email to the mail address provided in my first post.

It's a professional name print company, they provide personal customization services for local teams & tournaments in Malaysia.

They should be able to provide name blocks for your personal use. You will have to iron the name blocks yourself using heat press machine when you receive them though.

[Dokkie]

Ok, that doesn't sound bad, I'll email them, thanks

[demolidor]

Join the line

[Dokkie]

Ur ordering there 2?

[extremenanopowe]

In Singapore, its available in QSC area.

[ERTHK]

Yup, local sport shops do name printing, but the material used & quality of name blocks can never be as good as being done by professional name printing company.

I have experienced that before & I'm a bit afraid to go back to local sport shops when it comes to name print.

[Yoppy]

ERTHK, you mentioned heat press machine, can you please explain more about that? I have no idea whatsoever.

[ERTHK]

Hi Yoppy, a heat press machine is used to iron poly-flex name blocks onto your game shirt - Not to be confused with a normal household iron.

The temperature of the machine can reach over 300 degree Celsius, with very high pressure setting.


picture of a heat press machine

It's widely used in shirt printing process - especially in sports jerseys, the picture shows a "clam shell" type heat press machine. When you close the "clam", the machine will transfer the heat required to stamp the name blocks onto your game shirt, this process usually takes around 15 secs.

After that, you lift the "clam" & let the game shirt to cool down (usually takes around 3 mins) before you carefully peel off the plastic cover.

The machine will provide a good & clean transfer of the name block onto your game shirt & that's how professional game shirts are done.

It's very popular in local sport shops, normally they have the heat press machine & they will provide heat press service for you with a small service charge.

Hope the info can be useful.

[Yoppy]

i see thanks for the info. I will email / pm you too

BTW, what happen if i use just the normal household iron?

[ERTHK]

Hi Yoppy, a professional heat press machine is required in order to get the job done, because it can apply an even heat pressure over the entire back surface of your game shirt.

A normal household iron cannot reach the high heat setting & pressure setting of a heat press machine.

It will be a disaster if u use normal household iron, because the name block will not stick onto the shirt & will start falling off.

Hope the info helps.

[demolidor]

"It's very popular in local sport shops, normally they have the heat press machine & they will provide heat press service for you with a small service charge." But not over here unfortunately (although perhaps at the one shop, a football specialist but don't see one in-store and they don't advertise with name printing)
These I have all done using a household iron and still holding up but not for use and therefore haven't gone through the washer (yet) so hard to tell whether household ironing will hold up longterm for the above ... (all official, player size N+N)
(The Schweinsteiger was a disaster though and really needs to be done with a press as the material is too thin/ wasn't releasing properly)

[ERTHK]

Demolidor, you are my hero man

I will never use a household iron to iron my shirts, because I don't want my name to start falling off after 3 wash...

Why don't u try larger sport shops (I'm sure there will be quite a few around in large cities) & heat press those shirts properly?

One heat press & the name sticks on permanently onto your shirt, peace of mind. Just my humble suggestion...

[Dokkie]

Yh unfortunateley, I really need to find a store in The Netherlands where they will/can do this.

[Dokkie]

Btw can you maybe show a picture of 1 of your shirts?

[demolidor]

Demolidor, you are my hero man

I will never use a household iron to iron my shirts, because I don't want my name to start falling off after 3 wash...

Why don't u try larger sport shops (I'm sure there will be quite a few around in large cities) & heat press those shirts properly?

One heat press & the name sticks on permanently onto your shirt, peace of mind. Just my humble suggestion...

Simple solution: don't wash . Actually most stores don't even offer customization as far as I know, only at the clubstores in/near the stadium. I guess because the clubs are in Europe asian stores have to offer it themselves(?). Although in Holland two chains are worth a try: InterSport and Sport2000 (although I haven't seen a heatpress out in front; maybe at the back or they have to send it away which I am particularry distrustfull off ).