Heat Transfer Vinyl (HTV) is a material in the world of personalized textiles and custom clothing. With three decades in the personalized gift industry, I’ve seen HTV evolve and expand its capabilities, making it an indispensable tool for both hobbyists and entrepreneurs. This guide aims to share that accumulated knowledge, offering a straightforward overview of HTV, its applications, necessary equipment, and software requirements.
What is HTV / T-shirt vinyl?
HTV (or T-shirt vinyl as it is often referred to) is an extremely thin material that is supplied usually on 50m rolls. The material is constructed of 3 parts:
- Transfer Film
- Glue
- Plastic Backing
When heat is applied to HTV, this activates the glue and once cooled, the plastic backing is removed leaving only the HTV in place.
Process of using HTV
The process of turning your design into a fully completed personalised gift is incredibly simple.
- Design the file in a Vector Format
- Cut the Design using a Plotter
- Weed away the pieces of the design you do not need
- Press the t-shirt vinyl using a heat press (or Iron)
- Remove Plastic Carrier
Applications of HTV
The beauty of HTV lies in its flexibility. It can be used for a wide range of projects, from custom t-shirts to tote bags and home décor. Its ability to adhere to different fabrics, including cotton, polyester, and blends, makes it a go-to solution for personalised gifts, promotional items, and even small-scale T-Shirt production.
HTV is incredibly versatile and we use it every single day. Whether you’re looking to add a simple name to a t-shirt or to make a silhouette image of a face, HTV offers the flexibility and low-cost option for most situations.
Using HTV you can personalise a huge range of products such as:
- T-Shirts, Hoodies, Aprons, Jumpers, Tote Bags etc
- Football / Sports Kits
- Paper Products (HTV can and will apply to cardboard and paper)
- Socks
The list is endless. The general rule of thumb is that the material which you are applying to can take a fairly high heat (to activate the glue) and is flat.
Single Colour Designs
The image to left shows a single white piece of T-Shirt vinyl in white which has been pressed onto a black T-Shirt creating a visual effect of a face.
Workwear / Branding
Using HTV to create workwear is a great example use case for T-Shirt Vinyl.
In the image, each section has been cut using a plotter and then placed onto the garment. Once the positioning is correct, a heat press (below) is used to attach the transfer film to the garment.
Football Kits
Using HTV you can create personalised football (or other sports) kits all personalised with the player names.
Football Kit numbers can either be purchased from companies like TeeTransfers, or made and cut directly from your own machinery.
What is ‘Weeding’?
When I first started as a Sign Maker, I was asked to “Weed” the vinyl. Weeding is essentially just picking away the bits of a design you do not want.
Weeding simple shapes such as squares, circles and block text is fairly fast, however on large intricate designs can take much longer.
For example, look at the image. Every single letter that has an inner area needs to have that section removed before application.
Using Tweezers (or a weeding hook) you pick or ‘weed’ away the sections you no longer require.
Required Machinery to use HTV
There are 2 pieces of machinery (equipment) you need in order to make your own HTV Designs / Lettering.
- Plotter / Cutter
- Heat Press
Plotter / Cutter
The Plotter is the machine that will take your design and cut it from rolls (or sheets) of HTV. They do vary in prices with more expensive plotters allowing for larger runs with rolls, whilst smaller machines only support A4 sheets.
The machine to the left (Roland GS-24) is one of the most popular plotters and is the model we use on a day-to-day basis.
Heat Press
The Heat Press is essentially a large iron. The top platen heats up and with a bit of elbow grease presses down compressing the HTV, activating the glue and attaching the to the garment.
We’ll cover heat presses in more detail soon, but you can also use home electric irons for small production runs.
Software Requirements
Plotter software is required to send the command to the plotter to cut. Back in our early days of production, we used a generic piece of HPGL (Hewlett-Packard Graphics Language) software to control our plotter.
The commands sent to the plotter were basically:
- Move Plotter blade to X,Y
- Put blade Down
- Move Plotter blade to X,Y
- Lift blade up
For simple squares, this is not a problem, however with more detailed designs, the full list of HPGL commands were in their thousands – hence the need for specific software.
Plotter Software
With most plotters nowadays, you will receive software that takes your vector file and converts it to a language that your plotter understands (HPGL). All pieces of software will work in a “Vector” format, not bitmap. Vector format is line format, rather than an image (bitmap).
For more serious Sign Markers they often turn to a more specific software such as:
- EasySIGN (as pictured above)
- SignLab
- CorelDraw (with plugins)
- Inkscape (with plugins)
There are literally hundreds of different options, however, the basics are the same:
- Create File
- Plot File
More expensive pieces of software offer more advanced features such as:
- Querying the plotter to obtain sheet dimensions
- Larger Production Runs
- Plotter Control (Speed / Knife Force)
- Full Design Features (Text Arc’s / Weed borders etc)
Benefits of HTV over Traditional Screen Printing?
We love HTV, we use it every day at our Shop and it can offer a level of personalisation without huge upfront costs often associated with more traditional methods of personalised garments.
Colours
HTV offers a way to produce very small runs of garments at the fraction of the price when compared to screen printing. With HTV, you can create a single name for a marathon vest for less than £1 and requires minimal set up and time.
The range of colours available in HTV is forever growing with even speciality films such as:
- Holographic
- Glitter
- Metallics
All of which can not be created using traditional screen printing.
Stock
When I first started in business I had this great idea to produce 10 of every design. This way I could react quicker when selling online to ensure my turnaround times were excellent. To this day, I still have a few t-shirts that I made from a bedroom with those same designs on which never sold.
It taught me that if I optimized my workflow, there was absolutely no need to for me to do that. Instead, I now keep stock of all the different colours of transfer film and make to order. This ensures that I am able to adapt my business as the drop of a hat without keeping money tied up in stock I cannot sell.
Drawbacks of HTV
For me, the main drawback is not being competitive when we receive enquiries for large runs of the same design. HTV can in no way match the low production costs of 500 t-shirts if compared to Screen Printing – and is something you should definitely consider before heading into this industry.
Lets do a quick example:
1 x T-Shirt
| HTV | Screen Printing | |
| T-Shirt Cost | £2.50 | £2.50 |
| Material Cost (HTV / Ink / Plates etc) | £0.50 | £30 (Ink + Plate) |
| Time to Create | 10 Minutes | 1 Hour |
500 x T-Shirts
| HTV | Screen Printing | |
| T-Shirt Cost | £1,250 | £1,250 |
| Material Cost (HTV / Ink / Plates etc) | £250 (Vinyl) | £100 (Ink + Plate) |
| Time to Create | 84 Hours | 5 Hours |
The example above shows that for small runs, HTV is a completely viable solution – However for large runs of the exact same design, screen printing is a much more cost effective approach.
Final Thoughts
HTV is a perfect way for your to bring your personalised gift company to live. You’re not limited to just T-Shirts, but anything that is made of a suitable material. The low cost set up when compared to Screen Printing can help maximize your profits whilst keeping your overheads nice and low.
If your business wants to focus on large runs of the exact same design, HTV really is not the best route.
If you’re not wanting to invest into the machinery to produce your iron on transfers, then using a company like TeeTransfers who will produce your HTV vinyl ready for application is a viable option.