Bad Info Shared Freely on the Internet

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News

GSG Acquires McBee Supply

GSG, a supplier for the screen, digital, and sign equipment and supply industry, announces its acquisition of the assets, business, and employees from McBee Supply in Houston, Texas. McBee Supply transitioned its inventory and employees to GSG as of July 6.

Mike McDonnell, president of McBee, has facilitated the acquisition and will retire once the transaction closes.

McDonnell said, “I know GSG well and respect them as a good, fair, and solid competitor. This was a good opportunity to transition McBee employees as we are not only familiar with each other, our lines overlap, and know this is a positive move for my employees.”

Dad Joke: Know why the Flat Earth people are wrong?

If the Earth was flat our cats would have pushed ALL our stuff over the edge by now.

Bad Info

Terry: Ever hear someone say if you repeat something enough times, people will start to believe it’s true? It’s the same with garment/product decorating and information on the internet. Jay, what we really find on the internet is, “I couldn’t get this to work, so here’s my Bandaid.”

Screen Printing

• All you need are 110 mesh screens

• Flash between colors for best results

• Pinholes? Just put more emulsion on it!

• There is a perfect white ink. You just have to find it!

DTG

• Save money, use Teflon sheets

• Our machine will fix your 72dpi files and print perfectly

• You can’t make money with DTG… ink is too high and production is too slow

Sublimation (per Aaron)

• Terry: Dipping mugs after pressing. Even in lukewarm water you are creating micro cracks in the ceramic. This was an old band aid for old coating that was not as good as the current dishwasher safe coatings where the ink is not going to ghost as readily. Just remove the transfer, put the mug on a cooling rack, cooling stone, or on concrete to remove the heat from it at a natural level and you will be fine. If anyone is suggesting it, I would be leery of their mugs and the quality of coating.
• Jay: 400 degrees for 60 seconds – This time and temperature has been used as the correct setting for all sorts of items. It is another bandaid for poor testing and was just a catch all to make sure that the full transfer happened. Most items have a much lower time and temperature. 400 for 60 seconds will cause blacks to look brown, and haloing around the edges of prints. It can even cause the orange peel look on thin aluminum and other hard surface coated items.

Embroidery (per Erich)

• Terry: Embroidery pricing begins and ends with $1 per thousand stitches. Every shop is unique, niches can be different, and both the value you are providing and the costs required to keep your business healthy and profitable vary widely with where you are located and who you are serving as well as the type and amount of equipment you run. Simple counts are easier for quoting, but often leave money on the table. Besides this ‘rule of thumb’ hasn’t seemed to change for decades, while prices around the world continue to climb- how can that be sustainable?
• Jay: Having registration problems with your embroidery? The answer isn’t always in the stabilizer, especially if you are adding several pieces to your garment. It’s important to have the correct stabilizer to arrest stretching and movement in the hoop, but other issues including the sequence of your design and the amount of compensation for natural forces you’ve applied to your shapes can be the cause of issues that you might alleviate with more stabilizer, but at the cost of a bulletproof, cardboard like design and a garment that feels awful to wear.
• Terry: The answer isn’t always adding more density. The right answer to seeing garment color through a filled area isn’t always to add more density to your top stitching. More stitches may indeed equal more coverage, but it also results in more distortion and stiffer embroidery as well as more time on the machines. Use structural underlay stitching that lifts up and supports your top stitching for increased coverage and it will take less stitching and pack less in a given area to get you the coverage you want.

Terry: Instead of 5 Things today, we’re going to check in with Aaron at the DAX Show

Terry: You’re first show since the pandemic started. What’s it been like for you personally?

Jay: So tell us how the show is going? Lots of people?

Terry: What are you hearing from vendors?

Jay: How about attendees, Aaron? What have they had to say?

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