January Versacamm class

The January IW VersaCamm class was a great success! We started off the night before with a familiar face (Irv) showing up to help get things setup and look over some new projects. It was a huge help having him there and a great way for me to find out how he was able to apply lessons from the last class to his business. It sounds like you are on the fast track to success Irv!
The next morning brought new faces with one of our students traveling all the way from California. We jumped right in and made a wall graphic similar to the Fatheads. We used a new material from Imprintables that worked very well. Of course our resident shop dog Charlie was the inaugural test for display! We have taken the print and a piece of blank test material down and re-applied it over 15 times each with no left over residue on the wall and the application staying in place perfectly. It is an amazing material that I am looking forward to coming up with unique marketing ideas on how to increase sales.
On the next project we spent some time going over Versaworks and how to setup graphics prior to importing. I really think that there is not enough tutorials or even how to guides on what settings to use and how it affects the print. I hear people tell me that they were instructed to "just use generic vinyl profile for everything" when they first had their install. I am sure many of you will testify that it does not work when you do that! Every time we have the class I have many questions from students on how to tweak their settings to really get the great prints that this machine is capable of. We had several samples of high resolution prints on photo paper and artists canvas to really show what you can get from the VersaCAMM.
After going over all the settings and graphics import types we had a quick lunch and then went right into heat pressing. I had pre-printed samples of all the printable materials from Imprintables Warehouse and everyone got a chance to learn about their application. Each student had an opportunity to make a shirt with samples of each material that they can now take back and show to customers and educate them on the differences between each specialty material. My personal favorite is a tie between flock and reflective for the specialty stuff and opaque solutions for the everyday print and cut. I think that it makes a big difference going over all of the settings and using our "recipe book" to see how to properly apply all of the materials and we play around with each one to show how you can tweak your heat press to get the best results. I hope everyone likes the shirts they made!

This example on the left is from an idea that Josh came up with for making a reverse embossing type of shirt. In the design here we used the puff material cut in the shape of a skull and then a printed piece of reflect material with the skull and all of its shading. We heat pressed the skull onto the shirt and hit it a few times with the press to really make it puff up. Next we lined up the printed reflect using the bones as a reference point (it was a little off) and then applied the reflect. I think the end result was really a cool shirt and it is displayed in our shop for everyone to see what specialty types of shirts we can make. I have gotten many comments already from customers and have to figure out a few more designs using this method to find the right market for it.
The last project that we did was finishing up an outdoor sign that I had started. It allowed me to demonstrate how to use the clip and tile features in Versaworks. On the sign we made I had to use two prints with an overlap. The sign was 48 inches tall and 62 inches wide and with the 30 inch printer we just used the tile feature in Versaworks to setup the print to overlap and allow us to apply the bottom first and then the top print. I had the prints laminated and ready to apply and Irv helped me line and apply the bottom print the night before. The class had an opportunity to line up the top graphic and then apply the print to the alumacore substrate. Great job by everyone and the customer loved his new sign!
I believe it was a great class and was very happy with the many projects we accomplished. I hope everyone got as much out of it as I did. I am sure I will be hearing about the many successes of our students in the future. Thanks to everyone that came and helped out!!

-Steven