The Art and Challenges of Dot Matrix T-Shirt Transfers

I've been tinkering with an old dot matrix printer to create some unique t-shirt transfers, and I'm excited to share my process with you. The printer is still functional, but it's clear that its age has taken its toll. The latest attempt at a full-color transfer on modern transfer paper ended in frustration, as the coating got stuck against the print head.

To overcome this issue, I decided to try a smaller-scale approach and focus on just one element of the design: a giant cool crab. I named him Cool Crab for obvious reasons, and he's going to be the star of our t-shirt transfer. The idea was to use Print Shop Deluxe, a program that allows me to create designs directly on the printer. The software is still capable of producing some amazing results, but it's not without its quirks.

I started by designing the scene with Cool Crab as the main attraction. I wanted him to be prominently featured on the t-shirt, so I made sure he was centered and had plenty of room around him. As I worked on the design, I realized that the printer's limitations would require some creative problem-solving. The ink head is too close to the paper, which makes it difficult to achieve smooth prints.

To get around this issue, I considered using dot matrix transfer ink, which is designed specifically for printers like mine. However, I'm not sure if it's worth the hassle of dealing with a special type of ink and potentially clogging the printer even more. On the other hand, I did manage to coax Cool Crab into existence on some paper using just the standard transfer paper.

The resulting image isn't perfect – it's a bit fuzzy and lacks the crispness that I would have liked. However, there's something charming about the imperfections, don't you think? The cool crab looks like he's been plucked straight from the beach, and I love the way he seems to be gazing directly at me.

I learned an important lesson during this process: sometimes, it's better to focus on a single element of your design rather than trying to tackle the entire project at once. By concentrating on Cool Crab, I was able to overcome some of the printer's limitations and create something truly unique. And who knows – maybe next time, I'll be able to coax a full-color transfer onto modern transfer paper.

The journey has been far from smooth, but it's been worth it. The printer's quirks have become familiar companions, and I've grown accustomed to troubleshooting its various issues. It's amazing how much character you can imbue into an old machine with the right amount of TLC. As I look at Cool Crab, proudly displayed on my work surface, I'm reminded that sometimes the best results come from embracing the unexpected.

The experience has also made me appreciate the value of community and feedback. My viewers have been instrumental in helping me troubleshoot issues and find creative solutions to the challenges I face. Their contributions are what make this project possible, and for that, I'm truly grateful.

As I reflect on the process, I realize that my dot matrix printer has become more than just a tool – it's a friend, a confidant, and a partner in creativity. It's taught me to be patient, resourceful, and open-minded, qualities that I'll carry with me for years to come. And as I look forward to the next project, I'm excited to see what other adventures this printer will bring my way.

The final result is a t-shirt transfer featuring Cool Crab in all his glory. It may not be perfect, but it's uniquely mine – a testament to the power of perseverance and creativity. As I hold the iron over the transfer, I can feel the heat emanating from the machine, and I know that this little crab has found a home on my chest.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: en- Greetings, and welcome toanother LGR dot matrix printer thing.And today, I've got notone, but two of theseStar Micronics NX2400compatible color ink ribbonsto go with my 2420 Rainbowthat I covered here inLGR a little while back.And, well, if you saw thatvideo, then you saw this happen.The color ink ribbons that I hadthat came with the printer just completelyfell apart on me pretty quickly.And that was due to justthe internal design of themand the age and everything.And the foam rollers that were in there,I guess it was like six oreight rollers, I don't know,they fell apart completely,ruined half of the ribbons,and it was just such a mess afterwardthat I just kind of gave up and didn't getvery much color stuff printedin the video like I'd hoped.You know, the black ribbonswere working perfectly fine,but those have a much morerobust mechanism, it turned out,gears and some springs andsome other things going on.It was much more robust and it worked outjust great for that video.But the color, well, thatwas a sad state of affairs.However, a bunch of you gotin touch after that video,not only to give your suggestionsfor trying to repair the ribbon,which, sorry, is just not viable,but also with a bunch of handy tipsfor possible places to buy some new ones,or at least new old stock or refurbished.And I've tried six differentvendors for these thingsand only one has worked outand that was this one right here.And this was kind of astrange listing on Amazonbecause, well, I mean, itdidn't list the 2420 exactlyand it was a new code version,it wasn't the original Star version,and then it was also justnot the right picture.And you never know withthose kind of listings,but I took a chance, didn'thear anything for weeks,so I tried another listing,and the seller got rightback to me and said,we don't have this anymore,we're gonna cancel your order.That was the most common responsethat I've gotten from all of the differentlike half-dozen attemptsat buying these ribbons.There's tons of thoseprinter warehouse websitesand places that say theysell refurbished ribbons,but they pretty much allhave just outdated listingsand they've been out of stock foreverand just never botheredto update their websites.But anyway, this camethrough, and like I said,it took a couple weeks, butthe seller was, I guess,kind of shocked thatsomebody had ordered theseand totally didn't noticefor a couple of weeksand they were like, ohcrap, sorry about that,let me send you a secondone just as an apology.And so here we go, I'vegot two new old stockStar Micronics 2420 colorink ribbons by Nu-kote.Apparently they were on sale for 50 cents,or on clearance, anyway, at some point.So yeah, who knows whatcondition they're actually in,although internally, orexternally, they seem to be okay.It's internally that I'mreally concerned about.But let's just go aheadand get it opened upand see how it goes.Oh, it's very easy to openpackaging, how refreshing.So yeah, look at thisthing, this looks nice.And look at those vibrantcolors, oh my goodness,those are insanely colorful,which is a good sign, at least.So yeah, at least that moves.So yeah, it was this whole dealthat was not working on the other ribbons.Well, that and the factthat the color ink hadgotten gross and everythingbecause of all the junk insideand it was just kinda getting dry.But they were 30-some years old,I mean, who knows how old these are.Just see if I can peek inside, though.I'm not gonna take the whole thing apart.Okay, ooo, you can kinda see there,those foam rollers arestill on this model.I was hoping that maybe Nu-kote went withthe more robust rollerslike the black ink ribbons.But I guess not.Well, I'll just installit and see what happens.So this part's fairly easy.You just kinda lift this guy out of hereand plop the color one in place.I guess there's like anindentation on the bottomthat lets the printerknow which is installed.Everything else iscontrolled through software.All right, let's get justa single sheet of paperin here for now.And we'll just open up anice little 256 color bitmap,since it's a little image.I tried to print it out in the last videoand that didn't work.So let's make sure we'reon, yeah, set to color.Oh, that's promising so far.Check this out!That, my friends, is a wonderful-lookingcolor dot matrix image.All right, let's flip thisover and see if we can dothe chess bitmap thatI really wanted to do.That would be this righthere, lovely image.And I'm gonna switch thequality option over to proofand let's do it.That genuinely looks amazing.Check it out side by sidewith the same image on the monitor.You can tell that it madesome fascinating choices,but honestly, I reallylike this aesthetic,in terms of, like, goingwith much more of a magenta,almost pink here instead of, well,I guess this is more magenta,this is a much more like neon pink.And this blue is just darker all around.The yellow is more intense.It's, what a fascinating look.Oh man, this is exciting, nowthat it's finally working.So let's just keep going.Here's something that I wantedto try in the last episode,but, well, didn't because I couldn'tget things working properly.In Sim City Classic, as wellas other versions later on,you could actually printout your cities here,just like the map itself, andthat results in a PCX filethat we can, where am Itrying to go, here we go,open in Paintbrush orwhatever, and look at that.Oh, this brings back some insane memories.And there we go.It looks, it looks so cool.Oh man, my dot matrix that I wasprinting out these kindof maps on back in the daywas just monochrome, and Idon't even think it was 24 pin.So yeah, this is definitely an improvementover what I was dealing with back then.You could, of course, printout the full size, kind of,like a screenshot of theentire city close up as well,but that took up a ton more ink and paper.But just look at this, look at this.Isn't that amazing?Oh man, it's amazing to me.I like this way too much.Okay, let's hook up the tractor feedand print ourselves a color banner.I'm not gonna show the whole setup processbecause I did that in the last video,but suffice to say, it is an event.Okay.Here we go.And we'll go to goodold Print Shop Deluxe.Stop, banner time.We're gonna go with a horizontal bannerand we're gonna do a stretch dog, no man,hotdog, yeah, that's a nice, colorful one.We've got red, yellow, green,and we can put things in the middle.We'll just do, eh, do we wannago for a full three pages?I mean, I'm feeling lucky.Let's see how that looks.Ridiculous, let's do it.Go into preferences, makesure everything's good.Yeah, we don't want to do cut sheetbecause we're not cutting any sheets,we have a continuous feed.All right, let's just print it out.Oh, dude.Oh, this looks so good.So, 40 minutes later, we have ourselvesa full-color dot matrix color banner.Oh man, this looks, honestly,pretty friggin great.The dithering is obvious up close,but I really, I like thataesthetic a whole lot.And it seems the more that it printed,the better it got interms of the streakiness.I mean, there's still little bits of it,but look at that, look atthis big old greetings hotdog.And now to tear off all of the edges.Oh yeah, that is a far cry fromwhat we used to do back in the day.Just printing it out as like monochromeor like a coloring book mode in Print Shopand then take a marker and just, you know,coloring it in after the fact.But no, look at this,it's got the color on it.It honestly is way more vibrantthan I thought it would be.This is the coolest.I'm gonna hang that up somewhere.One more thing that I wanna do, though,is see if we can get aT-shirt transfer done.Now, of course, this isnot T-shirt transfer ink,like I had in the previous video.And then had it crap out on me.But if I get actual, like,T-shirt transfer paper,instead of the ink, and thenjust print this onto that,we'll see if that works.And one reason I wanna do it is,this is all that's left after one wash.So I'm gonna print out likea full-color thing hereand then put that on actualmodern transfer paperand then put it on hereand see what we can get.But that'll have to wait for tomorrow.Well, not for you but forme, because it's friggin lateand I don't have anyT-shirt transfer paper here.See you in the morning.Yeah.So, once again, I do nothave transfer ink this time.We're just gonna use yourtypical transfer paper like this.And this should be interesting.Back to Print Shop Deluxe.And just gonna do a sign here.We'll do a classic coastal scenebecause I don't thinkI did that last time.And we can't do thescene without Cool Crab™Giant Cool Crab, just hanging outon the edge of the beach here.I'll give him some appropriately 'cool' text.I want this on a T-shirt.Okay, I'll make sure we're all good here.And here we go.Ah, what happened?Ooh, you know, I was wondering about that.The coating got stuckagainst the print head.I guess a little bit thicker paper,we'll need to change some settings.Well, the good news is,it doesn't seem to havetorn the ribbon yet.Gonna have to remove the print head.Ooo, yeah, that got nasty, oh no.So there's quite a buildup ofthe transfer paper material,along with the ink.It just, yeah, it wastoo close to the platon.So I'm gonna clean that off.Honestly, this needed to be cleaned anywaybecause I don't know if yousaw on those other prints,but we're getting theselittle excess ink bitswhere the head was going up and justgoing back and forth onthese things, so yeah.It needed some cleaning.It's a good idea to do that anyway.Paper and ink residue and crap justgets in these printers all the time.Got a self test going.Looks like it's good now.Okay, I'll try this one more time.Yeah, same problem.So that would be one reason you would havedot matrix transfer ink,instead of using transfer paper.The ink head and reallyall of this is justtoo close to the paper itself.I mean, this is made for like inkjetsand laser and all that.So it's totally a differentkind of process, and yeah,it just gets to a certainpoint and just freaks out.So, you know.However, though, I had an idea.What about just the crab?It does a little bit without going crazy.Yeah, there we go.So not the full-page T-shirttransfer that I was hoping for,but I was able to getit to work on this paperfor long enough to get onelittle two-inch cool crab.We'll just get him vaguely cut out here.So I forgot to flip him aroundhorizontally in Print Shop,but that's okay.So we'll just, gonna put him right hereabove the very faded previoustransfer and see how it goes.Oh no, looks like dirton the bottom of my iron.Oh well.All right, let's see what we have done.Give it a second to cool off.Oh, it looks so cool.Crab.Oh, look at that, ignoringmy obvious screw-upswith the dirty iron and theprevious crappy transfer,I think that looks fantastic.That right there, thatis a color dot matrixT-shirt transfer on modern transfer paper.Obviously not a very viable solution,considering it just slidesaround if it prints too much,and yeah, but anyway, thatis just awesome, regardless.Okay, well, despite thesomewhat unexpected hiccups,but yet still expected because dot matrix,I consider this an absolute win.I mean, just look at this banner.Is that not the best greetings hotdogyou've ever seen in your whole life?Yeah.Just the fact that we were able to sourcesome new old stock colorink ribbons for this thing,ah, that just makes me happy.So thank you so muchto everyone who sent inthe hints and tips andjust general, I don't know,feedback on the lastvideo about this thing.It's thanks to your help thatwe were finally able to findone ink ribbon source.And there's still another oneready to be used at some pointso hopefully that one's in good condition.Man, I'm really gladthat those rollers insideare much better off thanthe ones we had before.So anyway, I hope that you enjoyedtaking a look at this lovelyprinter doing its thingabout as good as you can hope for,being 30 years after its heyday.I hope you stick around.I've got a bunch more things comingand lots more that I've done in the past.Regardless, though, thank you very muchfor watching what you just did on LGR.\n"