Printing tags and the tag pallet reviews?

[hoogie]

Looking at starting up printing tags for a customer, been told the way to go is the pallets verse the actual printers...any thoughts on this and if so, how many of you use the pallets? GPI just sent me info on the ones they have, And of course I've been checking out actions....I just bought a set of zippered pallets from action and I'm happy with the construction...but GPI's are quite abit less per pallet....any one use GPI's or any constructive thoughts? three grand is a chunk of $ thanks...

[ericheartsu]

we use our rapid tag, heat transfers, and print on sleeve pallets, and all three methods have it's benefit.

We haven't' bought any specific tag platens per se, but we've had no problem using sleeve pallets for it.

[Frog]

One thing that I think would help some shops make the decision between special pallets and a dedicated printer would be workload, and/or level of demand for tags.
Could that big ol' twelve color auto be churning out some higher profits while the little tag printer is chugging away (at least twice as fast) doing its own thing?

If the big press would be idle anyway, not as much of a concern.

[ericheartsu]

Frog that's a great point!

We have at least 4 clients that order tags once every two weeks. With 5 or 6 screen change outs and printing, we can do about 200 shirts in an hour on our rapid tag.

As mentioned in other posts it's great for small dark color prints. We use it alot for one color sleeves or neckline prints, which leave our autos free to do the multi colored difficult jobs.

[kingscreen]

We use our sleeve platen when running higher volume on the auto. We have a dual manual platen we bought from PWCNC (now defunct) which works great for smaller runs (<100pcs.)

ericheartsu - Do you ever use your RapidTag for on-pocket prints?

[ericheartsu]

We use our sleeve platen when running higher volume on the auto. We have a dual manual platen we bought from PWCNC (now defunct) which works great for smaller runs (<100pcs.)

ericheartsu - Do you ever use your RapidTag for on-pocket prints?

every once and a while, but we don't do that many of them. maybe one or two every two months. but it works fine!

[tonypep]

Or you could do 2,00 per hour using the.............well you know.

[hoogie]

One thing that I think would help some shops make the decision between special pallets and a dedicated printer would be workload, and/or level of demand for tags.
Could that big ol' twelve color auto be churning out some higher profits while the little tag printer is chugging away (at least twice as fast) doing its own thing?

If the big press would be idle anyway, not as much of a concern.

guess my thoughts were to buy 8 pallets for the javelin, and keep the 10 color running the other jobs...Large quanities for these couple of national accounts...I've heard/been told that tag pallets can be run faster than the little tag machines...hence going that route...plus you can print twice with good reg. to get a good white on black...

[balloonguy]

has anyone considered pad printing tags? I am kicking it around now.

[Inkworks]

No dryer, box to box. If you can live with the light print, it's the way to go imo.

[balloonguy]

do you print anything else with it? Do you offer contract tag printing?
Matt

[Inkworks]

The pad printer is what we built the business on, and it pretty much runs all day every day. I rarely do T-tags as we don't get much call for it, but it plows through them when we do them.