Services that we provide include embroidery, embroidery digitizing, screen printing, sign making, heat press and twill.
EMBROIDERY
We offer a complete custom embroidery service. Developing an eye-catching design is one of our specialties. We provide digitizing, but for the budget conscious, we also offer stocks designs combined with embroidery lettering to produce a unique and spectacular logo or design. You can also choose embroidered lettering only.
Custom embroidery has been used for generations to produce unique and personalized clothing, promotional products, team wear and gifts. Unlike printed goods, embroidery lasts longer, can have a 3D appearance and in most cases, outlasts the life of the garment.
While digitizing is more expensive than having us develop something from our stock designs, if you have a specific logo or image you want reproduced, we recommend getting it digitized to produce a high quality design. An embroidery machine requires a special file format that tells the machine the type, length & direction of the stitches and where color changes are to be made.
What materials can be embroidered?
Most materials can be embroidered, as long as they can be put onto the machine and a needle can penetrate the surface. Common items to add custom embroidery to are: all types of clothing, caps and hats, nylon, cloth or leather bags, towels and cloth chair backs. When a design is digitized, the digitizer should take into account the type of material the design will be stitched on.
Embroidery Digitizing
Embroidery digitizing is the process used to take an image and convert it to a format understood by computerized embroidery equipment. An artform in itself and we do our own in-house digitizing to ensure the highest quality embroidery design possible.
The art of digitizing is important to the overall presentation and look of embroidery. Anything embroidered must be digitized at one stage or another, even lettering.
We call digitizing an art form because when a design is being digitized by someone who uses the old methods, they hand draw the image, then decide on the direction and type of stitches to be used to produce the 3D quality of an image. The digitizer creates a file that can be read and understood by the computerized embroidery machine.
Artwork for digitizing:
It is important to have a clear, crisp image for digitizing. Details are important to ensure the colors and appearances are consistent with the flat image. We can work with hand-drawn images but this can produce something not quite what you had in mind.
Preferred choices for the artwork to be used for digitizing are:
Artwork on disk or by email. Acceptable file formats are: jpg, bmp, cdr, gif
SCREEN PRINTING
Screen printing is the process of pulling ink through an image burnt screen onto t-shirts or other various garments and textiles.
It starts with an idea brought to us by the customer. The idea is taken to our in house artists who take the design and make a computer-generated version, using the t-shirt color the customer has chosen for his order.
Producing the Art
Once the screen printing design is approved it goes to our production artist, who takes the design apart by color. Each color of the design will have its own screen. Before the production artist can take the design to the screen department they must print each color on a film positive.
Preparing the screen
Screen printing cannot be completed successfully without well constructed screens. The film positives from the production artist go to the screen department, who prepares the screen by coating it with photosensitive emulsion. The positive is attached to the emulsion coated screens, and taken to be burnt for t-shirt printing.
The t-shirt printing screen is placed into a unit that exposes the screen to ultra-violet light. The ultra-violet light burns the design into the screen, removing the emulsion for ink to come through the screen.
Screen printing finishes by transferring the ink through the screen onto the shirt. To begin this process, the press is loaded with the t-shirt printing screens. Proper ink colors are poured into the top of the coordinating screens for screen printing.
The screen printer then loads the garment. Making sure that it is even and sitting straight on the screen printing plat. Once it is loaded properly the printer lowers the screens and pulls the ink across the screen with a rubber screen printing squeegee.
The t-shirt is then removed and placed on a belt that runs under a special dryer. This dryer will cure the ink at 320°F. At the end of the dryer, Quality Control inspects each garment to guarantee a successful screen printing.