Also known as CAD Cut Vinyl Printing as it’s also known, is very similar to Digital Transfer Vinyl Printing, except it is only suitable for designs which consist of one or two colours, predominantly used in sportswear for lettering on products, such as initials, numbers, club names and single colour sponsor prints.

The machine used for CAD Cut Vinyl printing is called a plotter, which is loaded with rolls of vinyl print media in the required colour. The design file supplied must be supplied in vector format as the machine uses the vector lines to cut the material, jpeg files can be converted at a nominal charge. The vinyl material or flex is composed of two layers; the first is a polyester film and then the colour layer is made from polyurethane. The chosen colour of vinyl is loaded into the Plotter and the design is cut as a mirror of the final design; once the design has been cut by the plotter then the next stage is to manually weed the excess material away that isn’t needed which will leave the final design ready to be printed. The final step is to place the weeded design onto the garment in the position where it should be printed. Using an industrial heat-press, both heat and pressure are applied to the material for a determined time which then causes the vinyl material to adhere to the garment or fabric. The transparent polyester material is then removed and the colour design is left.

A major advantage of vinyl printing is that there aren’t any setup costs involved allowing for short print runs at a very reasonable price. It is also very versatile and can be used on virtually all types of products including T-Shirts, polo shirts, hoodies, bags, caps, coats, jackets and lots more. If you have any doubts then simply ask our staff and we’ll give you advice.

The different types of vinyl allow for different specialist effects that your designs can be made from or that could be added to certain elements of your design to make it stand out from the rest. New vinyl products (glitter, glow in the dark, textured) are constantly evolving and can be sourced as and when required. Printed garments are more sensitive and need extra attention when it comes to washing. Please refer to our Customised Garment Care Guidelines.