Custom Screen Printing FAQ

Our most commonly received questions

You say satisfaction guaranteed. What do you mean? We guarantee you will be happy with our work. If we make any mistakes in the order or errors in printing, we will fix it by replacing the items or refunding your money. We want you to be happy because that makes us happy.

How do I get a quote? Use the quote request page to send us your information and we'll get back to you quickly with a price!

How do people pay? Once we come up with a price and you're ready to go, we will send you an invoice via email that you can pay securely online with a credit card. If you don't want to pay online, you can call in your credit card information (paying online is usually easiest for everyone.) We can also take PayPal, as well as check, although waiting for a check to come and clear will delay the order. Money order by mail would work too!

How do I submit artwork? Just email it to order@vacord.com and we'll check it out.

How quickly will you print my order? How soon we get the blanks depends from where they come. We usually can order the shirts the same day as you give your payment, if the payment is by 2pm EST or earlier. We use a few different distributors, three of which can usually get us items the next day. Those distributors have a lot of American Apparel items, but anything other than that by American Apparel takes a week to get here from California. Our normal turn around time is about two weeks, but this can be expedited if you are in a rush. Sometimes we get easy orders out the door in just a week.

How much is shipping? We now do free ground shipping for all orders in United States, and we often can do free ground shipping to Canada as well. We ship with UPS. Expedited or overseas shipping will incur a cost.

What are the set up fees? We do not charge any screen making fees or ink mixing fees, which saves our customers a lot of extra cost.

Are there any other fees? The only fee we currently charge is to change ink colors during the printing. For example, if you wanted 50 white shirts, and 25 have the design in red ink and 25 have it in blue ink, we have to stop the run and then start over. Ink changes are $20 per change.

Is my artwork good enough? What kind do you need? It needs to be crisp and clean, at actual print size at 300dpi resolution, if you're submitting a photoshop or PNG or JPG file. In other words, real big and not blurry or messy. Also great is the vector format, like Illustrator or EPS or PDF files. That's ideal for screen printing, because it's crisp edges, and we need a sharp edge when we make the screen.

Where can I see the shirts and hoodies that you can get? Check out 4logowearables.com and imprintablecatalog.com to see most of the styles that we can get. Find something you like? Awesome! Tell us the style code and color and we can check it out.

How much do t-shirts cost? It varies so much. It depends on how many you're ordering and what the printing is like (just one color on the front only, versus two color front and three color back, etc) and what kind of shirt it is. There is no standard price. Get in touch with us for a custom price!

What is discharge ink? Discharge is a type of waterbased ink that removes the shirt's color. It's sort of like bleaching, except it doesn't hurt the shirt. You can add pigments to it too, so that you can print colors with it. Discharge creates an awesome, super soft print with vibrant colors. Very cool stuff. And they tend to sell better than traditional ink, if you're interested in reselling the shirts we print for you.

What is waterbased ink? Waterbased is a type of ink that has pigment embedded into a water solution. Like discharge, it's nice because it gives a very soft prints. It's eco-friendly and a good solution when you need to print colors on very light or white shirts or hoodies.

What is traditional ink? Traditional ink would be plastisol ink, which is a plastic-based ink. It's what most printers use, and we still use it for some stuff, like athletic jerseys and hoodies. It can be printed very heavy, but you can also print it lighter and softer, which is what we do.

What shirts are best to print on? For discharge ink, it's necessary to use 100% cotton shirts. For traditional ink, we can print on 50/50 blends and 80/20 blend hoodies and whatnot. On light color shirts, we can use waterbased (very soft) ink on all blends.

Where are you located? We're in Camden, New Jersey now, across the bridge from Philadelphia.

Can I call you? Sure. 1-888-787-4587, preferably between 9am and 6pm Monday through Friday.

Do you do prototype prints? Yes, if you're thinking about a big order, and you want to get just one made to see what it will be like, we can do that. Email for pricing.

How long have you been doing this? Vacord started in a basement in 2006 and has grown from there! It's still fun.