A BRIEF HISTORY OF HEAT PRESSED VINYL

While Silkscreening, embroidery, and pressed vinyl have been industry standards for decades, the use of digital inkjet print and cut devices is a more recent technology that has gained popularity in the garment decoration industry. In the past, cad-cut one color vinyl was typically what you would see on sports jerseys, t-shirts with simple custom lettering, or print jobs that were too small to justify being silk screened. The vinyl material usually felt thick and would eventually crack or start to peel off the garment over time. A cad-cut device was used to cut the profile of lettering or simple designs from rolls of individually colored vinyl . After the design was cut, the waste material would be "weeded out" leaving the desired pattern, which would then be applied to a shirt using a heat press. A major limitation in this process was the fact that multi-colored designs could only be produced by layering different colors of vinyl. Each color had to be cut and pressed seperately, and once finished the design felt noticably thick when worn. This wasn't an issue in the 70's and 80's because it was the technological standard of the day.

With the onset of the digital age and all the advancement in computer technology, came the development of digital print and cut technology. Morrison's purchased a Roland VP-300 Versa Camm approximately  two and a half years ago and in that time, not one day has gone by that we haven't printed something with that device. Images are designed and developed using Adobe illustrator and Photoshop and once the file is sent to the Versa Camm, we can print that design on shirts, hats, jerseys, banners, decals, vehicle vinyl, tableclothes. window screen, posters,  laptop and phone cases, signs of all varieties, labels for just about anything, Photo reproductions, Memorial shirts, and this list go on ad finitum. The Versa Camm is equipped with a large four color ink jet print head, so the pint quality is only limited by the quality of the artical being used. Photo quality reproductions of any image is standard operating procedure for this device. Some items, such as banners and posters, can be printed directly and then trimmed or finished as needed. Clothing and other three-dimensional objects, such as a vehicle, require the design to be printed on a substrate, or base material, and then applied to the object in question. In the case of garments, coatings are printed on a vinyl substrate that has a facing surface designed to accept and hold ink and a backside surface that has a heat activated adhesive. Like the oldschool cad-cut machines, the Versa Camm is also equipped with a cutting blade which is used to create the profile shape of any printed design.  So once the design is printed, the shape of that design is cut into the substrate, the unwanted scrap material is then "weeded out", and the design is then heat pressed onto a garment.  Unlike the one color vinyl of the past,  The modern substrates we use today are very thin, and hold up well over time. The standard in this type of printing is for a digital heat pressed design to withstand 100 wash and dry cycles.  That means you should be able to expect to wear a shirt we made for you, once a week , every week, for almost two years!