Hoodie/Sweatshirt printing

[3Deep]

So we've been printing now some 15 plus years, printed lots of sweat shirts and hoodies but mostly on our manual press, today I was having all kinds of problems printing an order of hoodies and sweats, until I did this, I flashed the hoodie first and printed it right after the flash perfect.  Now many of you might do this already so it might now be a tip to you LOL, but dam I should have been doing it this way long time ago, always something new to learn in this biz.  Yes I heated the pallets first but with thick hoodies and sweats it really didn't help much, so preheating the hoodies first then print Oh and slow your press down so you don't overheat the ink. By the way I printed these on our auto press what a mess those things make on the pallets AWFUL!!!!

[mooseman]

We been doing the same except we heat the hoodies on the pallet under the flash BEFORE sticking the hoodie down.
That way we believe the tac to the pallet will not restrict the shrinkage when the hoodie is warmed up. Once cool we stick them down to pallets that could trap rats they are so sticky.
We hate hoodies and soon will not be printing on them again.
mooseman

[Nation03]

Pre-flash and then hit it with a roller screen right after and you get a pretty nice and flat surface. It makes hoodie orders go slow but the results are worth it IMO.

[mooseman]

We don't have a roller screen we use a length of 1 1/2 in PVC pipe and drag (not roll) it over the hoodie .
mooseman

[jwcarder]

We flash and hit them with a roller screen before printing also. Works great!

We use water based pallet adhesive and make sure there is plenty on there before starting a run. Still have to wipe down the pallets every 2-3 revolutions during a run, but it has provided us the most consistency of anything we have tried.