My new pallets for polo left or right crest prints

[Doug S]

I took the old pallets I replaced and cut the top center out to about 5 inches down.  I wouldn't have thought a jigsaw would cut it but it worked wonders.  This cutout took me about 3 minutes.

By the way sorry for the huge pic off of the phone.

[Maxie]

I think she it's easier to use regular pallets and cut the squeegee.

[Stinkhorn Press]

how is it working?

i like the idea. we run most polo jobs on the manual at this point. sometimes put half squeegee blades in the squeegee holder on the auto, but that's still often courting trouble.

of course, it would be nice to have a set of full platens available to hack up too. maybe a real cheapskate wanting to do this should notch the bottom of the platen if they never run tall prints. just thinking.

[Doug S]

I think she it's easier to use regular pallets and cut the squeegee.

how is it working?

i like the idea. we run most polo jobs on the manual at this point. sometimes put half squeegee blades in the squeegee holder on the auto, but that's still often courting trouble.

of course, it would be nice to have a set of full platens available to hack up too. maybe a real cheapskate wanting to do this should notch the bottom of the platen if they never run tall prints. just thinking.

I've used the half cut squeegee but I've still popped a screen here and there.  I've also tried building up 1 side with 3/16 aluminum but that wasn't quite tall enough to escape a button edge.  This way the whole hem buttons and all just fall down in the hole keeping them out of the way.  Those pallets wouldn't be flat enough for full front or back prints but left or right crest prints they are perfect. 

[BP]

Action Engineering make a pallet to print goods with buttons or 1/4 zips.

http://www.actionengineering.com/cat-258-1-1406/placket-printing-pallet.htm

[3Deep]

We had a nice size polo job last year to do and I just didn't have time to print them on the manual, so what I did was cut a channel for the buttons of the shirt to fall in on some coroplast, then use pallet tape to attach then to the pallets and raised the off contact.  We even used the flash and it didn't do much harm to the coroplast, much cheaper than buying pallets for that one time use, printed great.

[aauusa]

we just did about 100 or so of them with 2 color left chest.  printed with regular pallet put some 3" split tape where the buttons hit the screen and went to town.  disclaimer we us v-squeegees.  not sure if matters.

[Rockers]

I think she it's easier to use regular pallets and cut the squeegee.

how is it working?

i like the idea. we run most polo jobs on the manual at this point. sometimes put half squeegee blades in the squeegee holder on the auto, but that's still often courting trouble.

of course, it would be nice to have a set of full platens available to hack up too. maybe a real cheapskate wanting to do this should notch the bottom of the platen if they never run tall prints. just thinking.

I've used the half cut squeegee but I've still popped a screen here and there.  I've also tried building up 1 side with 3/16 aluminum but that wasn't quite tall enough to escape a button edge.  This way the whole hem buttons and all just fall down in the hole keeping them out of the way.  Those pallets wouldn't be flat enough for full front or back prints but left or right crest prints they are perfect.

What do you mean by "a half cut squeegee"? Just a squeegee blade on left side of the squeegee holder? We do a squeegee on the left and right but leave the center of the squeegee holder empty. There is a gap of at least 2 inches between the squeegee blade on the left and right hand side. And flooding is done in table down position of course.

[Maxie]

We take a regular squeegee, the full length, and use a wheel grinder to remove about two inches wide and half an inch deep in the middle.      We have two of these, one for base.       We print a few thousand polos a month for one customer, white front and back.
If you put two pieces of squeegee in the holder with a gap you'll have a hard time cleaning the gap.
I'll try and post a photograph of ours.     This is so easy, we print on regular pallets on our automatic.
We are printing a pocket sized print, the shirt does not have a pocket.
If the shirt did have a pocket we'd have to get special pallets from Action.

[Rockers]

We take a regular squeegee, the full length, and use a wheel grinder to remove about two inches wide and half an inch deep in the middle.      We have two of these, one for base.       We print a few thousand polos a month for one customer, white front and back.
If you put two pieces of squeegee in the holder with a gap you'll have a hard time cleaning the gap.
I'll try and post a photograph of ours.     This is so easy, we print on regular pallets on our automatic.
We are printing a pocket sized print, the shirt does not have a pocket.
If the shirt did have a pocket we'd have to get special pallets from Action.

I`ve used both ways and could not find a significant difference in regard to cleaning them.

[Prince Art]

In the past, printing on a Gauntlet, we just built up the imprint side of the pallet with thick card stock, then covered the button area of the screen (substrate side, obviously) with several layers of masking tape. Used standard squeegees, never popped a screen. It probably wasn't great for screens, but it worked. Though if polos are done often or in high volume, I could see where dedicated pallets or squeegees would be the better way to go. And if you've got spare pallets to modify, all the better!

[Maxie]

Attached are two photographs of the squeegee we use for polo, we grind out the center.
Print with standard pallets on a automatic.

[1964GN]

We also print a lot of polos every month for one of our customers but having/swapping out to 5 notched squeegees isn't practical so we put a piece of duct tape down the center of the screen on the shirt side. It's worked well for us for over 6 years. We do have a couple notched out like Maxie's that we use for 1/2 color jobs.

[Maxie]

Are you printing on a automatic or manually?
If you are working manually on a few pallets it's ok but we have a 14 pallet automatic,so we'd have to stick something to 14 pallets.

[Prince Art]

When we did this on the Gauntlet auto, we had 12 pallets, and we built up with card stock on all of them. We marked off a line with a t-square, sprayed tack on the back of the cards (same cards we used for carding ink, so they were pre-cut), and stuck them to the pallet. It wasn't perfect; a long run with a lot of flashing could cause cards to start to curl, and occasionally a card would lift off with the shirt during unload. But for the most part, it was fine. Most of our polos went to embroidery, printing them was an occasional thing. As such, this approach was acceptable. Higher volume would probably justify dedicated equipment.