Apparel label printing & Costs reduction

 

In recent years, so-called printed clothing with garment labels (T-shirts, jeans, underwear, and other garments without sewn care labels) has become the new standard in garment production. Not only is this trend popular with consumers - it avoids pesky labels and the need to remove them - but it also leads to huge cost savings for manufacturers.

Heat transfer (also known as thermal transfer) was the first technology used by some of the leading garment manufacturers. With this method, the production of label rolls is outsourced and the rolls are applied to the fabric internally using hot presses. Much has happened in the thermal transfer label industry after some difficulties in the garment label printing market.. Some companies have had to reformulate their plastisol inks. Newer types of labels tend to be less washable after a limited number of wash cycles and parts of the label began to peel off. When the label is pressed against the fabric, the minimum industrially acceptable lifespan is around 6 to 12 seconds for each label. The exposure time for heat transfers should not be shorter than that for sewn-in labels.

Small custom decorators who wanted short-term on-demand productions owned screen printing machines. These small stores then tried to screen print their clothing labels to save on the cost of purchasing labels (on average, minimum order costs start at $ 1000) or to add time to wait for labels to be saved. Screen printing can produce high-quality detailed labels that are durable and customizable if required. However, screen printing did not offer many advantages in terms of production speed, as the clothes had to be turned over to print on the left, then time was given for the paint to dry (in some cases drying ovens are required ) and then turned around. right outside to pack. Multi-color labels took longer to produce because each color had to dry before applying the other color. Screen printing is currently in use but does not appear to have a future in garment manufacturing high-volume clothing labels.

In contrast to screen printing, which has been used for centuries for textile illustration, pad printing of textiles was relatively secondary until recently. Pad printing was originally developed and used for the accurate representation of relatively rigid and uneven surfaces such as golf balls, dials, dolls, and other miscellaneous promotional items, etc.

The basic mechanism of pad printing is as follows: the ink fountain adds ink to the image (cliché) engraved on the printing plate; the silicone pressure pad picks up the paint and presses it onto the part; the part is removed and the next part is placed for printing by a conveyor belt or human operator.