Pallets and Attachments

HOW TO BUY
May 01, 2004

The monotony of printing T-shirt after T-shirt can put even the most creative printers and their sales in a rut. By adding a variety of new and different pallets and attachments, your press will become a versatile machine capable of printing a diverse array of substrates, helping you spice up your product offering and your profits.

There are two likely reasons why you would be in the market for new pallets and attachments. One, the factory pallets that came with your machine have been damaged and need to be replaced. The other is that, likely at a customer's behest, you need to expand your printing capabilities to include different-sized garments, specific garment pieces such as sleeves or pant legs or a different type of garment altogether like jackets or caps.

Specs

The two most common materials used in the construction of pallets are wood and aluminum.

Wood pallets. The majority of manual press manufacturers still outfit their presses with wood pallets, or more exactly, melamine-laminated MDH or particleboard. As you've probably noticed, these pallets bear a striking resemblance to the cabinets or shelves in your kitchen and actually have a similar composition.

Melamine is bonded to wood with adhesive, making the pallet more durable. While these pallets are by far the least expensive option (they are typically 10% of the cost of aluminum), they also are the least durable and warp when submitted to prolonged flashing.

Aluminum pallets. Aluminum pallets come in two types: solid aluminum and honeycomb. Solid aluminum is considerably more durable and holds up under flashing much better than wood. As a result, aluminum pallets are ideal for long runs of light-on-dark printing and multiple-process printing.

There are several different grades of aluminum, each with a different tolerance to maintain its flatness over time. The most durable is 60/61 aluminum, a high-density material that is difficult to warp and damage.

While aluminum pallets are almost infinitely more durable than wood, they are still susceptible to warping under flashing. However, this is rare and requires an extreme exposure to heat from a flash unit. And while there are no materials currently available that will hold up to flashing forever, solid aluminum is about as close as they come.

For printers who desire the durability of aluminum but not the expensive price tag, another option is aluminum-bonded wood pallets. Logically, these hybrid pallets are more heat-resistant than wood but not as durable as solid aluminum. At the same time, they are less expensive than aluminum yet cost more than wood.

Assess Your Need

Before you buy new pallets, there are couple things to consider. First, it's necessary to identify the type of printing that the pallets will be used for. The type and size of the substrates you print determines what style and size pallet you need. For instance, if you print adult and youth size T-shirts, you'll likely need to buy a pallet for each.

Second, it's important to know what type of printing you'll be doing because different pallet materials hold up differently under flashing. Do you print long runs using techniques that require frequent and often intense flashing such as light on dark garments or four-color process? If so, aluminum pallets are your best bet because they maintain their form and flatness under the heat of flashing far better than wood pallets, which may warp if flashed longer than 30 seconds.

It's also important to keep in mind the number of stations on your press. Pallets on four-station machines will find themselves under a flash-cure unit much more frequently than those on an eight-station machine. As a result, owners with fewer stations should lean toward buying more durable pallets.

Compatibility. While those concerns are important in the search for the proper pallet, your biggest concern likely will be compatibility — that is, finding a pallet or attachment bracket to fit the arm of your existing machine. In some cases, this is much harder than it sounds.

Unfortunately for printers, a standard bracket size was never developed, and as a result, there is an astonishing array of bracket sizes in use. Many manufacturers have several different sizes for their machines alone, and one custom pallet manufacturer keeps a book with more than 60 types of brackets to fit everything from brand new presses to long antiquated ones.

As a result, printers with old or discontinued presses likely will find the search for after-market pallets rough going, and in the end, may be forced to have one custom-fitted to fit their press. That said, there are two relatively standard bracket sizes. The first is a 1/" x 2/" bracket fitting that fits a range of presses, including those built by Workhorse and Riley Hopkins. The second is a bracket designed specifically for M&R machines. The easiest way to avoid a headache in the compatibility department is to buy your pallet or attachment from the manufacturer of your press.

Attachments. Attachments replace pallets on press to conform to various substrates. There are attachments for printing on everything from sleeves and pants to umbrellas and a variety of cut pieces.

By adding attachments, you can expand your machine's printing capabilities, which should translate to a larger customer base and increased sales. Popular attachments include devices for sleeves (Figure 1), caps (Figure 2) and jackets (Figure 3).

Care & Feeding

With all the talk of flash damage, it should come as no surprise that the biggest concern for maintaining your pallets is keeping track of the time and intensity that they are exposed to heat under a flash cure unit. Less pressing but still worth mentioning: pallets also should be cleaned between each job to avoid adhesive build up and to retain flatness. — LW