How to build a gang sheet without wasting film

A gang sheet is one roll of film with as many designs on it as you can fit. You pay for the length you use, so the whole skill is fitting more into fewer inches. Here is how the pricing works, how to lay one out, and the arithmetic that tells you whether a gang sheet or single transfers is cheaper for your job.

How the price works

The roll is 22 inches wide and that never changes. The only variable is how far it unrolls, and you are charged $0.40 per linear inch of length. So:

• 22 × 12 in — $4.80
• 22 × 60 in — $24.00
• 22 × 120 in — $48.00

The width is free, in the sense that you pay for it whether you use it or not. A single 4-inch logo on a 12-inch sheet costs the same as eleven of them, because the 22-inch width is already bought. Filling the width is where the money is.

One more thing worth knowing: we charge the same $0.40 whether you upload a finished layout or build one in our builder. Some suppliers add ten percent for builder sheets. We do not think arranging your own rectangles is a service you should pay for.

Laying one out

• Quarter inch between pieces, minimum. Tighter than that and cutting them apart risks nicking a neighbour.
• Half an inch from the edge of the sheet.
• No bleed, no crop marks, no registration marks. Each piece is cut around its own shape, not to a trim line. Marks just print.
• Rotate freely. Nothing on the sheet has a grain direction. Turning a tall design sideways to fill a gap costs nothing and often saves a row.
• Group by garment, not by design, if a real person has to sort the pile afterwards. Slightly worse packing, much faster production.

The sizes that fit across 22 inches

Piece width	Across the roll	Placement
3.5 in	5 per row	Left chest
4 in	5 per row	Left chest, larger
7 in	3 per row	Youth front, pocket print
10.5 in	2 per row	Adult full front
11 in	2 per row, tight	Adult full front, maximum
2.5 in	7–8 per row	Sleeves, neck tags, hats

Note the jump from 11 to 10.5 inches. Two 11-inch designs plus spacing is 22.25 inches and does not fit; at 10.5 they do, comfortably. Half an inch of design width, and the row either exists or it does not.

Worked example

A team order: 24 left chests at 3.5 inches wide and 4 inches tall, plus 12 full fronts at 10.5 by 12.

• Left chests: 5 across, so 24 pieces is 5 rows. Each row 4 inches tall plus a quarter inch of spacing — about 21 inches.
• Full fronts: 2 across, so 12 pieces is 6 rows at 12 inches plus spacing — about 74 inches.
• Total about 95 inches, so order the 120-inch sheet at $48 — and you have 25 inches spare, which is another 30 left chests for nothing extra.

That spare space is the single most common piece of money left on the table. If you are within a few inches of the next size up, filling it with your evergreen designs costs nothing per piece and gives you stock for the next order.

Gang sheet or single transfers?

Work out the sheet length your pieces need, multiply by the per-inch price, and divide by the number of pieces. Compare that to the by-size price for the same count.

Roughly: under about a dozen pieces, single transfers by size usually win, because you are not paying for empty width. Past a dozen, the gang sheet wins and keeps winning, and the gap widens fast. Twenty-four left chests on a sheet come out to well under a dollar each; the same 24 ordered individually do not.

Two exceptions worth knowing. A single sample before a run should always be by size — a sheet to test one design is a waste. And mixed jobs where every piece is a different design are still cheaper as a sheet, because the price is inches, not designs. Thirty different designs and thirty copies of one cost exactly the same.

If you would rather not do any of this

Use the builder, which packs the sheet and tells you the length before you pay. Or email the designs and the quantities to us and we will lay the sheet out at no charge, at the same price as if you had done it yourself. We would rather spend ten minutes packing a sheet properly than sell you twenty inches of empty film.