Neck Labels

[ericheartsu]

All of sudden, every order we have is getting neck tags/labels.

Average order is around 200pcs each.

I prefer to do them with heat press tags, as they look so much cleaner, but screen printed is SO MUCH FASTER.

How do you all do them? And which do you prefer?

Does anyone on here do them with waterbased ink?

[ZooCity]

Cold peel transfers.

We used to direct print orders over 1k ish but to really do this right you need a parallel press and consistent fabric with enough surface to it or you're going to end up driving ink through the shirt randomly.  That said it's a great use of an older press with sleeve platens if the quality is acceptable. 

For lower qty I like transfers.  You can gang all the size iterations up on the transfer sheets and they store for reorders.  If you have a dryer to dedicate to it all the better.  Can also rack them and run down a single dryer situation at high belt speed between jobs.

[Colin]

Cold peel transfers!

Just like Zoo said, same scenario.

[mimosatexas]

Why cold over hot peel?  Seems like an extra step to run back through every shirt pulling the paper vs just doing it while you remove the shirt from the heat press.

[Frog]

Why cold over hot peel?  Seems like an extra step to run back through every shirt pulling the paper vs just doing it while you remove the shirt from the heat press.

Easier to get opacity?

[ericheartsu]

yeah, that's what we do too. The cold peel will typically result in a higher opacity!

[DannyGruninger]

High solids waterbase ink printed for us it's so much faster then doing transfers and it looks super clean.

[tonypep]

We have a dedicated GT for neck/pkt/slvs

[kingscreen]

We have a RapdiTag, but use transfers we print in-house for short runs.

[Prince Art]

3-up custom pallets, direct manual print. Each "prong" on the pallet dedicated to a specific size. Artwork templated so that we could burn multiple rows of sizes, 3 sizes per row. (Generally XS/S/M on one row, L/XL/2XL on the next.) Pallet could slide into correct position for each row.

Did a lot of these for one customer, with many reorders. But in general, this isn't something we've done much of.

[sqslabs]

We use Matsui 301M for neck labels. Blends in with the fabric nicely and has no hand.

[Sbrem]

also transfers, so they don't bleed though...

Steve

[balloonguy]

I don't do as many as I used to but I still like pad printing. We print a stack and they go straight in the box. There is no dry time and we can easily do 300+ per hour.

[CBCB]

3-up custom pallets, direct manual print. Each "prong" on the pallet dedicated to a specific size. Artwork templated so that we could burn multiple rows of sizes, 3 sizes per row. (Generally XS/S/M on one row, L/XL/2XL on the next.) Pallet could slide into correct position for each row.

Did a lot of these for one customer, with many reorders. But in general, this isn't something we've done much of.

Why different sizes per row?

I've thought about getting a custom pallet made so we can print them 3up. Wouldn't it be a nightmare trying to load one of each size and defeat the purpose of the 3up pallet?

We do a good amount of these labels manually. Usually on a 225S and with minimal pressure to deter bleeding through.


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[Prince Art]

3-up custom pallets, direct manual print. Each "prong" on the pallet dedicated to a specific size. Artwork templated so that we could burn multiple rows of sizes, 3 sizes per row. (Generally XS/S/M on one row, L/XL/2XL on the next.) Pallet could slide into correct position for each row.

Did a lot of these for one customer, with many reorders. But in general, this isn't something we've done much of.

Why different sizes per row?

I've thought about getting a custom pallet made so we can print them 3up. Wouldn't it be a nightmare trying to load one of each size and defeat the purpose of the 3up pallet?

We didn't/don't load different sizes simultaneously. We keep sizes grouped together, and just do one shirt per pallet. We put one shirt on, print (small 3" squeegee just dabs the spot), spin the press, put next one on. When that size is done, we tape off the back of the screen, and move over to the next "prong" with the next size. No, it isn't as efficient as using a 3-up the standard way where you print 3 garments at once. But as small as the print is, hitting one color like that, with a printer & a puller, it goes pretty quickly. Also, with the size of orders we were doing this for, we'd usually have only a few dozen of each size. It just made setup & everything else go smoothly to have all sizes in one screen, with the transition between sizes adding very little time.