So you know there are two main styles of heat press, right? Swing away, or “swinger”, or “swing head” – and clamshell, or “clam”.
There’s a third style, which isn’t quite as well known, which I’ll discuss shortly, but most of the presses you’ll be looking at will probably be swing away or clamshell.
I’m guessing you know the major difference?
Clamshell heat presses open like a clamshell. Swing away heat presses lift up, and then swing away.
This is all very well and good, and you’ve probably read this or been told this multiple times by potential suppliers, but unless you’ve actually experienced a full demonstration of clamshell heat presses vs swing away heat presses, you may be struggling to understand what the pros and cons are of clam heat presses versus swing heat presses, and as a result, you’re not sure which way to go?
This is very common, in fact I’d say nearly everyone who buys a heat press for the first time, struggles with this one initially, whether to buy a swing or a clam press, even once they theoretically understand the difference.
To demonstrate swing away Vs clamshell, put your hands together…
No, I don’t mean give me a round of applause for this amazing blog about heat presses and T shirt printing, although you can if you want, I won’t find it strange ;-).
I mean, put your hands together, and then open up your hands as if you’re imitating a crocodile’s snap.
What you’ll find, is four things actually.
First, you’ll find that it’s not comfortable to get your hands a great distance apart while your palms are touching, anywhere close to 90 degrees will start to feel uncomfortable, unless you’re some kind of flexible freak ;-).
Second, when you close your hands, you’ll find that your hands are almost touching at the point that they’re parallel, there’s not a big gap.
Third, you can clap your hands together pretty quickly from this position, it doesn’t take much effort to open and close your hands when your palms are touching like this, does it?
Fourth, the only space used in this operation of opening and closing your hands is the exact footprint of your hand, you’re only using vertical space, there’s no space required to either side of your hands.
Oh, another thing you’ll find, is that if you’re doing this in public, you’re getting some strange looks right now.
But, joking apart, in this little exercise you’ve demonstrated to yourself the main pros of clamshell heat presses.
The main pro being that there’s not much operator effort involved in opening and closing a clamshell press, so from a production consideration, this is good.
The other important pro for clamshells is they take up very little space. You only need to consider the footprint of the press. For instance if the press is 12″ wide by 16″ deep, this is all the space you need, except for the space in front of it where you’ll need to stand while operating it.
You can also experience the cons of clamshell presses with this exercise, too.
Not being able to open your hands past 90 degrees represents one issue with clamshell presses, which is that the heated top platen is always fairly close to the operator.
Depending on the clamshell press in question, the top platen will open somewhere between 40-50 degrees. This doesn’t give a great deal of clearance between the back of your hands and the heated platen, when you’re loading the bottom platen.
I have no problem at all working with clamshell heat presses, it’s something you have to get used to – and I can’t remember the last time I caught the back of my hand on the heat platen. It can be a pain, though, when you’re getting started, and it reduces the time you have to work on the bottom table before the edges of the transfer or vinyl starts to curl with the heat.
How close your fingers are to each other at the point that they become parallel, represents one of the other main cons with clamshell presses vs swing away presses, and that is the maximum substrate thickness.
With clamshells, you’re usually looking at around a third of an inch, to maybe an inch maximum in terms of max substrate thickness, depending on the clamshell heat press in question.
Not all clamshell presses are the same, though, when it comes to maximum thickness.
While many clamshell presses will have a maximum practical item thickness of around .25 – .75 inch, the Stahls Hotronix Auto Open presses will take items up to an inch in thickness.
Sticking with the hands, we can also demonstrate the pros and cons of swing away heat presses.
If you put your hands together, and then raise your top hand a couple of inches, and then pivot your top hand around to your other wrist, you’re imitating the way a swing away heat press works.
You’ll instantly recognize one of the main pros vs clamshell presses, that there’s a lot more space in between your fingers when you lift your top hand away from the bottom hand.
Swing away heat presses can generally take much thicker items than clamshell heat presses.
The Geo Digital Knight Swingers (DK20S, DK25S, DK20SP, DK25SP) are the swing away heat presses on the market with the biggest maximum thickness, at around 2-2.5 inches, which makes them popular for pressing thicker hard items including ceramic tiles & wooden blanks.
The Insta 256 isn’t too far behind, with a max thickness of approx 1.5 inches.
This exercise also points out one of the main cons of swing away vs clamshell heat presses.
If you do the same motion again, you’ll note that your fingertips on your top hand come out all the way around your bottom hand towards the back, meaning that you need the length of your hand free to the side and the back of your other hand.
What this represents is how much more space you need in order to operate a swing away heat press vs a clamshell heat press. With swing away heat presses you need enough space for the full length of the platen to swing out to the side and all the way around to the back of the press.
This means that while you can push a clamshell right up to a wall, or tuck it into a corner, you can’t do the same with a swinger press, it needs to be stood proud of any walls behind and on the swing side of the press.
If space isn’t an issue for you, then of course this isn’t a problem.
What if you don’t have the space for a swing away press, but you need the features of swing away?
Drawer operated presses.
I mentioned at the beginning of this post that there’s a third style, and this is drawer operated presses, also known as “slide out” presses.
With these kinds of presses, the lower table pulls out from under the top platen, to be loaded and then pushed back under the heat platen. This clever style of press combines some of the best features of both swing away and clamshell heat presses.
Heat press nation offer a range of drawer operated heat presses.
There’s an Italian brand called Transmatic which makes two drawer presses, the TS2M which is a 20×16″ press, and the TS74M, a 29×20″ press (74cm x 50cm hence the “74” in the model name).
One of my favourite heat presses, the Stahls Fusion, is a dual style heat press, it swings away, and it’s also a slide out drawer press, so you can use it however suits you best.
What about cost?
Cost is the only pro/con vs clamshell and swing away heat presses that can’t be demonstrated using hands, but it’s a very simple one. Swing away heat presses cost more to manufacture, and they’re usually quite a bit more expensive than clamshell heat presses.
This isn’t to say there aren’t lower cost swing away heat presses, there are of course, but leading brand swing away heat presses are higher cost than leading brand clamshells presses – except for the light use/hobby presses offered by some brands such as the Geo Knight Jet Press range, and Hix SwingMan Hobby Lite.
Clamshell Vs swing away, conclusion.
I hope this has helped you to get a better understanding of the main differences between swing away, camshell & drawer operated heat presses, so you can decide which is the best style of heat press for you. If you need more help, I’d recommend speaking to one of the friendly folk at Heat Press Nation.
