Trucker Caps

[ericheartsu]

We have printing a ton of trucker caps lately. anyone else?

i have been stuck on printing white on Navy panels though. How do you guys do it?!

[Frog]

Not a lot of help forthcoming from me, but, how are you printing them? A cap attachment on a standard press? A convex platen?

I have a one color flat press, but still generally print transfers, either plastisol on screens as coarse as, gasp,  86, or with cad-cut.
Those suckers are poly aren't they? so you know what ink you need.

[ericheartsu]

i'm using the antec hat adapter for this, and i'm using the rutland super poly. I'm printing/flash printing, but the image is blocky but detailed, so i'm using a high mesh screen. 305 i believe. I'm afraid if i go lower i'm going to lose some detail.

[Shawn (EIP)]

I print onto tranfer paper and heat press with a cap heat press. I did some white on navy awhile back I used Excalubur 50/50 white and transfer powder. My hat customers always bitch that the bills are not flat brims though. 

[sweetts]

Just got a request for some first time ever

Sent  from samsung gem(the worst smart phone ever)

[mk162]

you can always flatten the bills....people complain about anything

[royster13]

Pad printer works great on caps.....

[Sbrem]

for six panel we use plastisol transfers, but for those, we have a Livingston Hat Champ. Try a 110S mesh. The thin threads let you hold pretty good detail and get good coverage in one stroke.

Steve

[Action1]

Sorry for the disputably  blatant sales post, but this is very relative. We developed a pallet system for use on all manual and automatics for doing trucker caps. The difference in tracker caps being that they are non-structured and have a flat panel on the face that makes them easy to do on a non-convex system.

The pallet is loaded with the bill facing inward and the head frames locks over it. For more information -
http://www.actionengineering.com/Cat-24-1-1141/Hat_Pallets.htm

Happy Hat Printing!

[rmonks]

tell me about it. I have had this four color, four station CAPS printer setting in the corner for the pest 5 years, and I get this order for 600 five panel caps. I had to take a grinder and notch the top of the platen because of the low crown I printed 600 and only screwed up 10. but yeah is the trucker cap back in style.

[Screened Gear]

I print onto tranfer paper and heat press with a cap heat press. I did some white on navy awhile back I used Excalubur 50/50 white and transfer powder. My hat customers always bitch that the bills are not flat brims though. 

How hard is it to print the transfers? I have never thought about doing it until now. What is the process?

[ZooCity]

Transfers are easy to print and our preferred method for foam front truckers, we've done a lot of 'em this way. 

You want Cold-Peel paper, go for the high quality stuff for multi color work.  You can print the sheets on a clean platen, lightly and evenly tacked with the rest masked out.  You'll need guides and should really have a vac table for long runs and/or multi-color.  You can flash the sheets on press if you like however, I've done this to build up a "HD" looking transfer. 

No modification is needed to any plastisol with a good about of body (think opaques here) for cold peel.  You will, however want to use adhesive powder to help the ink adhere to the polyester foam fronts of the caps.  You can mix this into your ink (not my suggestion for caps, not a bad method for private labels though) or sprinkle it onto the wet ink and then "thwack" off the excess by snapping the back with your fingers before running through the dryer.  You want to gel the ink enough that it will not offset and isn't going to leech out all it's plasticizer in storage.  A good test is to peel off some of the ink and gently ball it up.  If it unfurls itself you've gone too far.  If it stays balled up pretty well, all's good.  The better test is to run the transfers after cooling on the heat press but the peel test helps in getting initial temp adjusted.  In any case, determine the proper temp and hold it there.  Expect a 6-12 month shelf life for these.

Too many more details to go into right now...but union ink has an excellent white paper on transfer printing- both hot and cold peel.

Read it here:
http://www.unionink.com/articles/transfer.html

[ericheartsu]

Update:

we tried doing them as transfers. I did a 110 super poly ink white on to paper, and it looks amazing.

[Screened Gear]

Transfers are easy to print and our preferred method for foam front truckers, we've done a lot of 'em this way. 

You want Cold-Peel paper, go for the high quality stuff for multi color work.  You can print the sheets on a clean platen, lightly and evenly tacked with the rest masked out.  You'll need guides and should really have a vac table for long runs and/or multi-color.  You can flash the sheets on press if you like however, I've done this to build up a "HD" looking transfer. 

No modification is needed to any plastisol with a good about of body (think opaques here) for cold peel.  You will, however want to use adhesive powder to help the ink adhere to the polyester foam fronts of the caps.  You can mix this into your ink (not my suggestion for caps, not a bad method for private labels though) or sprinkle it onto the wet ink and then "thwack" off the excess by snapping the back with your fingers before running through the dryer.  You want to gel the ink enough that it will not offset and isn't going to leech out all it's plasticizer in storage.  A good test is to peel off some of the ink and gently ball it up.  If it unfurls itself you've gone too far.  If it stays balled up pretty well, all's good.  The better test is to run the transfers after cooling on the heat press but the peel test helps in getting initial temp adjusted.  In any case, determine the proper temp and hold it there.  Expect a 6-12 month shelf life for these.

Too many more details to go into right now...but union ink has an excellent white paper on transfer printing- both hot and cold peel.

Read it here:
http://www.unionink.com/articles/transfer.html

thanks I will have to try this and see how it works.

[Frog]

Just a note on the adhesive powder.
I often wait and apply it to the transfers after their partial cure. The ink is still plenty tacky for it to stick, and fewer mishaps than handling the wet ink.