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When considering the size of artwork to suit caps, care must be taken to ensure that the cap is able to receive this artwork without production issues.
Items such as visors, military caps, "flexfit" caps and some brands and styles of caps have features that can limit the embroidery areas. These limitations do not always match a supplier's claimed maximum embroidery area.
The cap attachment on an embroidery machine allows it to sew onto a cylindrical surface by converting  the flat plane motion in the X direction to a rotational movement about the centre of the cylinder.
The cap front face is more or less a cylinder, conforming to a round face, however the further away from the peak you go, the cylinder becomes spherical, and reduces the relative width, causing distortion, and in worst cases, major puckering and interference with the machine arm.
Caps with a perpendicular peak also cause some size limitations as they restrict how close the machine can go to the peak of the cap.
Some wide brimmed hats also have limitations. These can be assessed from a pre-production sample.
 
 
Monday, 10 August 2009
How large can a cap be sewn? Sample showing cap striking machine with straight hooping. This gives full width embroidery but reduces vertical size capability. Sample showing cap hooped with distortion. This can allow for taller designs, but reduces the width before distortion is visible at the peak. Pushing the capabilities! Here the mostly spherical shape of the cap creates some puckering at the top. This is pushing the limits as far as you would want to, without causing a noticeable distortion on the finished product.