Vinyl Cut Printing for Individual Names and Numbers

Generally, we would recommend Screen Printing but there are times when vinyl is more suitable for certain products. Vinyl printing, or Cad Cut Vinyl printing, is similar to transfer printing, except it’s only suitable for two-colour designs. The design is cutting from a special vinyl material using an industrial cutting machine or plotter, and the design is then heat pressed onto the garment. It enables your designs to be printed very quickly and is a great option for names and numbers on promotional clothing, printed sports clothing, school and university leavers’ hoodies, tours for stag, hen, holidays.

Vinyl is also better for customising high-visibility workwear and other nylon fabrics.

When we would recommend Vinyl

Individual names and numbers. One-off samples such as for client meetings or press events.
Multi-coloured logos that need to look bright and bold on dark backgrounds or on fabrics that have dyes that could otherwise bleed into the print.
Nylon and technical fabrics such as hi-vis workwear, waterproofs, Gore-Tex® and similar, umbrellas and bags.

Fabrics that stretch such as Lycra® or Spandex® sports and leisurewear.

How we print Vinyl

Vinyl printing is generally limited to simple text and designs. A single or two-colour print is the norm but we can also overlay different colours of vinyl to produce some clever effects if necessary.

For vinyl printing, the artwork is required in a vector format that is produced in a software package such as Adobe Illustrator or Corel Draw; this artwork format produces the design in lines as opposed to pixels as in a jpeg image.

Once the artwork has been cut, we then remove the unwanted vinyl – this process is called weeding and can be very time-consuming and delicate if the design has fine detail.

For this reason, vinyl printing is used to its best effect for lettering and simple designs.

Once the weeding has been done we are left with the design on its backing film. We then transfer this onto the garment using an industrial heat press.

Allowing us to apply pressure and a temperature of 160-degrees centigrade. Once this has been applied the backing paper is removed.

Vinyl comes in many different formats, such as metallic, fluorescent, flock and reflective colours. It can be as durable as screen printing – it can be washed up to 60-degrees centigrade without any colour loss, so can be a good option for work clothing that needs hot washes. Some Vinyl is designed to stretch so it is also a great option for sports clothing including leggings. Vinyl gives a smooth even finish with crisp edges, but can look like it has been stuck on compared to screen printing which absorbs into the fabric.