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MyFriendMoomba · October 19th, 2009

I'm kind of getting into this whole custom pallet making to fit my needs. It makes you feel 1,000 times more accomplished when you've developed a way to speed up production time & innovation with something totally custom!
I know there has been a lot of discussion on how to print inside neck labels & how people go about it so I wanted to share what I made to make this as easy as possible for myself.
I really hope this can help benefit some of my fellow printers on here with the growing trend for relabeling with the use of screen printing. Where you have all helped me so much.

This time I needed to make a pallet to be able to print my own labels on the interior neck location of my own brand (My Friend Moomba)'s shirts. I had some left over pieces of MDF from my last post about making Giant Pallets and this is exactly why I saved them.

I was about to make one that just does one shirt at a time but saw a huge waste of space on a pallet & thought if I could do two at once I would double my production time! So that's when I started taking measurements of screens, pallets, & laser printing out sample sizes to see how I would go about this:

After developing it I took it down to the garage, hauled some tools out & turned this baby into a reality with a:

Skill Saw
Jig Saw
Router (set 1/8" deep)
& a Multi Tool <--- These things are Awesome to have around!

Brought it back up to the shop Mounted my Bracket to the back of it (square & centered of course, This can be tricky).

* From thought to completion this whole deal only took me about an hour and a half.

Then I brought all my measurements needed for an accurate print into photoshop & created a custom Template to assure my artwork is in the correct spots for print. * I can also provide clients with this to put their artwork into the correct spots so I just click print when they send their labeling work to me.

After getting my 4 different sizes S-XL all in place & printed out I took them into the dark room & burned them on each end of the screen (mirrored) so when one double set was finished I turned the screen around re-registered & went to town.

Loaded shirts:
Left - LG, Right - XL

You'll notice a couple of things:
- My tags are still there, I can't figure out how to get the AA tags out clean, so I may have to hire someone to de-tag them until I can figure it out. * I sprayed a bit of tack there so I could stick the tags back.
- I taped two pennies stacked on each side of the pallet to assure off contact after running the squeegie. * This is why I kept the body of the pallet so wide.

Flood/Deep Breath & hope it works!

* I actually pushed my squeegie and got MUCH better results with the 8pt text on a 156 screen.

IT WORKED!!!

Notice on the screen I have the other end taped off.

Close Up:

Boom... I developed an idea, Made it reality, & killed these shirts in Half the time I would have with one at a time.

I recommend having someone handing you shirts and telling you what size is coming at you! I had the Mrs. help or else I would have ended up printing the wrong size on the wrong shirt sooner or later

Hope this Helps ease your label printing!

Gabe

LMB9888 · October 19th, 2009

This is frickin sweet man!!! Great idea.

MyFriendMoomba · October 19th, 2009

Quote:

Originally Posted by LMB9888


	This is frickin sweet man!!! Great idea.

Thanks Lance! I was actually going to make the other labels (Sm & Md) in the middle of the screen so all I would have to do is loosen the pallet & slide it down the arm a little. but in Reality it didn't quite work out how I hoped so I improvised by just putting them on the other end of the screen.

* Imagine how fast this would go with 4 of these pallets on my 4 station press! wow. Not sure if its needed at this point though because just one station running worked awesome!

DayByDayWSTCST · October 19th, 2009

thanks man ! Now i got to figure a way out on how to mount custom made pallets on VAXTEX v2000 brackets.

LMB9888 · October 19th, 2009

Yeah its definetly cool that you can put your logo or other specifics to you or your company on the inside and customize it. I always wonder how that was possible on some of the tagless shirts. Having a small tshirt business myself its always great to be able to create your own equipment instead of buying it with a very small budget.

midwaste · October 19th, 2009

Nice work!

Those can also be used for sleeves, kids clothing, possibly can coozies (maybe too wide) and gloves (weird request I had recently).

splathead · October 19th, 2009

Nice job Gabe.

Are you stapling the labels down?

About how long does it take you to place both shirts, tack down labels, print and remove? Versus printing one shirt at a time on a standard size pallet? Its hard for for me to visualize a time savings.

midwaste · October 19th, 2009

I'm picturing something like a small string/twine with small weights on both ends that you could slide up, grabbing the tags and folding them over and hang them in the slot that he routered. Pick it up and lay it on the platen while you load.

MyFriendMoomba · October 20th, 2009

Quote:

Originally Posted by midwaste


	Nice work! Those can also be used for sleeves, kids clothing, possibly can coozies (maybe too wide) and gloves (weird request I had recently).

Thanks! I made them, 5" wide so I'm not sure what they'll work for but... Now I know how to make another one if I need some smaller ones for coozies!
What the heck kind of glove material did you print on? I like those super simple black knitted ones that stretch fit right to your hand size but I couldn't imagine printing on them it would crack all to heck!

MyFriendMoomba · October 20th, 2009

Quote:

Originally Posted by splathead


	Nice job Gabe. Are you stapling the labels down? About how long does it take you to place both shirts, tack down labels, print and remove? Versus printing one shirt at a time on a standard size pallet? Its hard for for me to visualize a time savings.

Thanks Joe!

I spray a little bit of tack adhesive past the routed grove and simply just stick them to it. (you have to be a little gracious here not to stretch the shirt when you do this but its pretty easy).

As far as time wise: I think it's a huge saver.
(for ones that have a center line, it SUCKS when some shirts don't. because you can't go by the tag they're for sure not centered)

1. you're only loading 4-5" of material so its super fast. when I was loading I would say "little shirt"...Mrs. would hand me the next proper size.... "big shirt" as a reminder but by the time i finished saying each one they were loaded. I would say literally 3 or 4 seconds each. (1..load 2..smooth with palm 3..flip tag into tack)

2. quickly stuck the tag up.

3. drop the screen

4. pushed a 15" squeegie with all my might (for better results rather than pulling) getting two shirts of different sizes in one pass.

5. unload. I learned to do this in a special way picking up by the bottom of the neck hem & kind of folding the upper half back with my index fingers other wise the tag snaps back & slaps your print.

* All and all I would say it's a Huge time saver.
I did Sm & Md then Lg & XL so killing two sizes in one pass cut the job in half and on top of that I only had to re register once!

This is the whole reason I developed this idea is because I was trying to figure out how to print sizing labels without having to re-register for every single size.

midwaste · October 20th, 2009

Quote:

Originally Posted by MyFriendMoomba


	Thanks! I made them, 5" wide so I'm not sure what they'll work for but... Now I know how to make another one if I need some smaller ones for coozies! What the heck kind of glove material did you print on? I like those super simple black knitted ones that stretch fit right to your hand size but I couldn't imagine printing on them it would crack all to heck!

They are the cheapy jersey work gloves with the grippy palms. Promotional items for a tree service customer to give to their customers.

MyFriendMoomba · October 20th, 2009

Quote:

Originally Posted by midwaste


	They are the cheapy jersey work gloves with the grippy palms. Promotional items for a tree service customer to give to their customers.

wow, Creative/Thoughtful Tree Service!

DayByDayWSTCST · October 20th, 2009

What screen mesh did you use for your tags?

MyFriendMoomba · October 20th, 2009

Quote:

Originally Posted by DayByDayWSTCST


	What screen mesh did you use for your tags?

I used a 156 Mesh Screen & 8pt text came out great! Only when I pushed my squeegie though. When I pulled it was a little on the thick/blurry side. I wouldn't recommend going any smaller than 8pt with text.

If you're going to do size labeling I would also recommend choosing your color wisely. I wanted to use black but it would have shown through the shirt. so I opted to mix the two colors of my design (white & black) and it ended up a tad to light so its almost bright & hard to read on top of the gold shirts.

Gabe

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Made a Custom Pallet for Interior Neck Labeling