The world of weeding

No, not that type of weed.

Weeding is something that we at Rogue Star do on a daily basis! This is a process that involves stripping away excess material when we use our Roland BN-20 to cut and print heat transfer designs.

There are multiple factors that effect the weeding process, some making it extremely easy and quick, others…. well, less so.

Artwork

When it comes to artwork, we are not overly limited as to what we can do, but there are some limitations. Depending on how intricate your artwork is, we may need to outline it if it has details too fine, or we may need to make a 2 colour or print/cut parts of your artwork separate from different coloured materials! There are many artworks that are very easy to weed out of a sheet of material. However, the artwork factor is extremely variable and do not always yield easy results.

Now considering materials..

The safest bet for an artwork with very fine and intricate details would be CAD or Vinyl material. These materials are thicker and allow you to get more precise cuts without tearing them. This makes the weeding process more time consuming but it produces an exact, finely detailed piece to put on clothing.

If your artwork is heavily detailed and colourful, we are able to print it on a material we call ‘Tattoo” which is amazing to print on, however, does not fair very well being cut into fine details. The tattoo material is much thinner and has a tendency to tear or snag when cuts are too close together. If there are fine details you’d like floating away from the bulk of the artwork such as fine text, we can supplement that part of the artwork with Vinyl! Otherwise, artwork we need to print onto transfer material will need to have some sort of background or outline in and around any blank space.

As seen above is an example of one of our experts weeding Sleeve Transfers out of CAD. As you can tell it has precise cuts to make the letters crisp and clear, and the excess is peeling away quite nicely!

Order time

Since there are many variables in the world of weeding, it is always best to allow the production experts at Rogue Star extra time to complete all weeding necessary for your order. For instance, if you order 2000 custom face masks such as a U of A department did in 2021, with a fully-coloured logo. You would need to allow for print time, weeding time, and a slight margin for error in the case that there is a snag in production, literally! So it is always best to order as much in advanced as you can!

To get started on your custom heat transfer order, visit our Get in Touch page or email us directly!