Illustrator Minimum line thickness...

[MrToM]

Quick and simple...

Does anybody know if there is a 'rule of thumb' or 'recommended' minimum line thickness for T-Shirt printing?

Also, is there any specific pantone colour for 'white' or is it just known as white? (For non-white shirts)

Any info on file specs for T-shirt printing would be great but the above in particular have turned up blank in my searches.

Thank-you very much.

Regards.
MrToM.

 

[IamSam]

Question.........would there not be some correlation between the line width of the file and the minimal DPI printing capabilities of the printer/film positive?

 

[IamSam]

Have you come across this?

http://www.mintees.com/talk/99861-minimum-printable-stroke-weight/

 

[MrToM]

AH!

Stroke weight!

Good call!

I must have used every combination except the blindingly obvious!

Reading it now.....I'll be back.

Thanks IamSam

Regards.
MrToM.

 

[MrToM]

Some people.....Grrrrr!

Didn't find anything conclusive so got into one of those 'online chat' thingies with the printing company.

To cut a long story short, 'Laura', didn't have a scooby doo....

"Send the file to our 'design' team and they will inform you of any problems".

"Well, I don't have a file yet as I need to know the minimum stroke weight."

"Send the file to our 'design' team and they will inform you of any problems".

"Thanks for your assistance."...> click brrrrrrrr<

:banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead:

Regards.
MrToM.

 

[hawkeye]

I believe .25 is the minimum recommended stroke weight for most printing. But I don't recall ever seeing a recomendation for tee shirts...

 

[Tom Mann]

The effective final resolution of T-shirts printing is quite low -- Probably something like 100 ppi or even lower. Your stroke shouldn't be much smaller than about 1 pixel (at that ppi), or you risk it not showing up, or becoming discontinuous. The name of the game with T-shirts is big bold designs, not lots of fine detail.

So, if your workflow is to develop the image at normal ppi (eg, say, 300 ppi), then the finest features in your image would likely need to be more like 3px to come out well.

The other issue is whether the mfgr does direct inkjet printing or screen printing. If it's the latter, then that's more like a half-tone process, so your original artwork needs about twice the pixel dimensions you would need for direct inkjet printing.

Tom M

 

[MrToM]

Thanks everyone.

I think I'm just going to have to deliberately send them a wrong 'un, get them to send it back stating what's wrong with it and then do it again for real.

Nothing like doing things twice eh?

Regards.
MrToM.