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How Your Caps & Shirts Are Made
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Artwork
Before any shirts or hats come out of the box we do extensive
preparation of your artwork. For embroidery designs this means
that your logo must be digitized. Digitizing is the process by
which a design is converted into sewing instructions for a
computerized embroidery machine. Each color of your logo is
assigned to a different needle and thread. Special types of stitches are assigned to each area to create the desired effect.
Letters are converted in stitches and numerous characteristics
are assigned to your design. Digitizing is a time consuming and
expensive process. A normal left chest or hat logo would cost
between $75 and $200 dollars to digitize at many shops. At
Arizona Cap, digitizing is free. We know that you will be a
repeat
customer and the value of your business to us exceeds the losses
we may take in giving away this valuable service.
Embroidery
Once your design is digitized your goods are prepared for
embroidery. Hats are loaded into special cap frames that stretch
the sewing area tightly and hold the cap in  place
on the machine. Shirts are stretched across hoops for the same
purpose. In many cases we will place pellon (a thin white fabric
backing) behind the area of the shirt or hat to be sewn. This
helps keep the stitching tighter and more exact. Next,
thread colors are selected and loaded into the machines. Your
digitized logo is loaded into the computers memory and using the
same CAD/CAM style instructions used to cut auto parts from steel
the sewing begins. Experienced embroidery operators keep a close
eye on the stitching. Thread breaks often and the equipment
is halted while new thread is loaded. Speed and tension adjustments
are made throughout the process to insure that your
logo stitches correctly. When finished, your goods are removed
from the machine. Pellon is cutaway and loose or extraneous
threads are trimmed. Your shirts and hats are then ready to
packaged for delivery.
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Screenprinting
When we receive your art for screenprinting it must be
cleaned up so that the edges are sharp. Often times, this
means that we must recreate your logo from scratch.
When your logo is perfected we can then proceed to separate
the colors. Each color in your logo is then made into a
separate sheet of film. This film is then used to
"burn" the image into a fabric covered screen. To
do this, the color separated
film positives are placed on the screen and the screen
is placed into an exposure unit. The exposure unit
contains extremely bright ultra violet lights which burn
your logo into the light sensitive coating on the screen.
After exposure, your logo is washed out of the screen
allowing ink to pass through the area where your logo is
but not through the rest of the screen. Finished screens are
loaded into a rotary textile press. Shirts are fitted onto
the press and the screens are brought down on top of the
shirts. Using a squeegee, a screenprinter presses the
different colored inks through the screen and onto your
shirts, forming your logo. The shirts are then dried at
approximately 400 degrees. This cures the plastisol based
ink insuring
that it will not peel or wash off. .
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Digital Printing
Digital garment printing is a rapidly
growing and even more rapidly changing industry. Virtually
every machine and process we use for digital printing did not
exist a decade ago. At Arizona Cap we use Brother GT-541
garments printers to produce digital printed shirts. For caps
we use a carrier transfer process and pigment inks. Digital
printing allows your artwork to be printed directly from your
original (or edited as you request.) Unlike screenprinting,
where every color requires a different screen and adds to the
cost, digital garment printing is the same cost for a single
color logo or full color photographic logo. At this time we
only offer digital printing on white or natural colored
garments. This is because the inks used in digital printing
are not opaque and if printed on colored shirts, the color of
the shirt fabric would show through and change the color of the
print. Equipment and inks exist that allow digital printing on
darks but we do not currently use them. It is our opinion that
the quality and durability of the prints from these
dark garment printers is not up to our standards. We have tried
them all and found them all inferior to screenprinting on dark
colored shirts.
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