Impressions - May 2017 - 22

POLI-TAPE Group/
POLI-TAPE USA
Orange Park, Florida
poli-tape.de

POLI-FLEX TURBO Heat-Transfer Film
For Meg Ortiz, sales manager for North
and South America for POLI-TAPE USA,
innovation and POLI-TAPE Group (PTG)
are like peas in a pod. According to her, the
company was founded in response to the
very need for an innovative, specialty adhesive product, and this mission is at the heart
everything it offers. "Each member of the
visible PTG team across four locations and
multiple countries is responsible for seeking
out the newest product developments and
discovering the most urgent needs of our
industry," she says.
PTG uses an in-house laboratory and research team, with the latter being charged
with improving existing products while also
evaluating and developing new and alternative raw materials. The company regularly
targets mechanical, technology and production resources across the board to ensure
top-of-the-line finished products.
"Innovation transcends product," Ortiz
says. "It is important to be innovative in all
your processes and to maintain a culture
which encourages innovation. Research is
what sets us apart."
An example of this can be found in the
company's POLI-FLEX TURBO polyurethane heat-transfer film. Because garment
manufacturers - due to demand from wearers - regularly offer apparel that is getting
increasingly difficult to embellish via multiple application methods (screen printing,
embroidery, heat printing), decorators are
demanding a material that works on such
fabrics. POLI-FLEX TURBO answers the
call, as it is suitable for heat transfer to textiles such as cotton, polyester, uncoated nylon,
and polyester/cotton and polyester/acrylic blends, and can be used for lettering on
T-shirts, sportswear, leisure garments, sports

P.22

bags and all types of promotional products.
It can be applied at 320˚F for three seconds or 265˚F for five seconds, using low
pressure, and the liner can be removed hot,
warm or cold. In comparison to traditional heat-transfer materials - which have
application times and temperatures in the
15-20 second range and temperatures in
the 315˚F-320˚F range, respectively, using
medium to high pressure - it's easy to see
what makes POLI-FLEX TURBO unique.
It also is soft; has excellent washability
and stretch properties; keeps its form and
color; and won't crack or peel, Ortiz says.
"A decorator working on a project with
multiple substrates can easily set the press to
the lowest temperature and apply to several
different types of garments at once," she says.
"This reduces the wait time between temperature changes on the heat press." - J.L

EMBROIDERY
GSG

Dallas
gogsg.com

Smake Jump EPS Hooping Placement System
If you told Liz Beavers that innovation
should start with a company's leadership
and trickle down, she'd probably agree. After
all, that's exactly how the process works at
GSG. "Our owner, Mark Granberry, always
encourages us to be on board when it comes
to finding new ideas and new innovation,"
says Beavers, GSG's embroidery territorial
manager. "That's what sets us apart from our
competitors. He is always pushing us to be
a leader and to find new innovations for the
company and for the customer."
For GSG, innovative discoveries often
are made in places as far away as Germany,
where annual trade shows are held that feature
screen-printing, embroidery, heat-transfer
and digital-printing developers showcasing
wares that may change the way European

i m p r e s s i o n s m a g . c o m MAY 2017

garment decorators operate. GSG considers
these "see-it-first" moments major advantages
in the race to introduce innovative products
to its customers stateside, Beavers says.
"We try to find [technology] that may
have not been introduced here, but [is] being implemented somewhere else," she says.
"So our main philosophy is we want our
customers to be the first ones to see the
game-changers and make sure that they
know how to use [them]."
In fact, GSG's new Smake Jump EPS
hooping placement system was developed in
Germany, with a major emphasis on embroidery positioning and alignment, and design
registration. The Easy Positioning System
consists of software and a framing device
that enables a quicker hooping process. Using a touchscreen interface and camera, a
design is projected onto the garment, along
with a laser grid system, allowing precise
positioning.
The entire system - which is on wheels for
easy mobility - also can be used for proper
shirt positioning on DTG printer platens.
"This is going to be a key component, especially for companies that are doing online
[orders] and a ton of one-offs," Beavers says.

"There is a
Japanese
saying that
I will paraphrase,
that says, 'You
have only
one mouth,
but two
ears for
a reason.'"
Mark Bagley,
Brother Intl. Corp.

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Impressions - May 2017

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