Printed Vinyl?

[mimosatexas]

So I have been cutting and pressing solid colored vinyl and doing a few two color jobs with something like an outline, but mostly simple one color stuff.  I got a request for more of a full color logo, on hats, and they would prefer to avoid the embroidery costs as these are sort of giveaway cheapo hats.  I know places like Stahl's do this, where they print on the vinyl, cut it, and ship it to you.  I was wondering who people prefer to use for this based on quality and price, if they have particular types of vinyl they use for hats (Stahl's has a bunch of options and I am waiting to get their recommendation), and if they have any tips related to it, specifically how it might vary from standard vinyl (colors act weird due to pressure or heat settings, adhesion issues due to a different type of vinyl being used for the printing, etc).  Thanks!

[Frog]

I prefer to post my needs in Member to Member and use folks from here whenever I can.

[ZooCity]

I'm not a huge fan of the print/cut stuff but it has it's applications for sure.  We use Wellington House, top notch all around from the art dept to production. 

Stahls only when absolutely necessary, their service is really inconsistent and sometimes an order goes real smooth other times it's a complete nightmare. 
We typically have to overnight anything ordered from Stahls as they will, ahem, stall out on the order, shipping days past the estimated ship date and often arriving incorrect and needing a re-order.  We recently received dye sub trans that looked like absolute garbage....told me it was the file...yeah, the vector file or the high res .psd is the problem....turns out they were running with a broken print head and just shipping product out anyway.   The re-ship was just as rough looking and they again told us a bunch of nonsense about the file, finally the third time they looked correct.  This is a black only print mind you, about as easy as it gets. 

So I don't mean to bitch you a river about it but just a head's up.  Most of our stuff ships from MI so perhaps the other location is more consistent.   But just use Wellington if it's not too far away.

[Frog]

I use Color Your World Diane (ironically chased off from here by the op, but that's another issue)
She's a great bud of mine and never steers me wrong on what material to use.
Homer, I believe also does this (but check that he does indeed, do it as "trade".)

[mimosatexas]

When did I chase someone off!? I think the only posts where I might have been outright rude were to goccopro spammers or people who were being rude already...I'm honestly sorry if I made someone leave the forum who was well intentioned.

I would love to use a member first of course, but I know not many people do this.  I don't mind at all if the thread is moved of course.  I'll PM Homer.

Thanks for the tips Zoo.  I prefer not to use Stahl's, but they were just the first one I thought of off the top of my head.  I'll look into Wellington House as well.

Any tips on application, color profile, etc?  The print is basically red and white, but with a fair amount of detail.  I'm a little worried about the brightness of the red honestly...

[Frog]

 August 27, 2014, but as I said, not something that needs any more space in this thread.

[ZooCity]

I use a Pantone+ Color Bridge Coated book for setting CMYK values.  Helps a ton to have a real life reference.  I sometimes google commonly used CMYK values as well for things like the U.S. flag, etc.  CMYK has some quirks that can get you, i.e., a dark, rich black should not be set to 100% K and many blues can swing hard to the purple side, etc.  A calibrated proofing inkjet would probably be a real boon for this as well.

[royster13]

FM Expressions....