Laser Safe "Vinyl" for Heat Press Applications

[Bert Kemp]

I'm wondering if you can press this on with an Iron. Or if a heat press will only work

[Ross Moshinsky]

To clear some things up:

1. This is PVC free. I wouldn't have made this post if it wasn't. I'm specifically talking about the Thermoflex Plus. Other products I noticed do mention having vinyl. If you have a question, contact them. They were very straight forward when I contacted them and specifically told me they use their own laser with some of these products.

2. This is a material primarily designed to work with fabric. That's why all the pictures are of applications on fabric. This is not designed for putting on cars or exterior signs. Do I think you could potentially use it on a small interior sign? I think that's a possibility but you'd have to use the heat press to apply it. I plan on testing it this week to see if it has any other applications. I'll probably throw the sign outside to see if it will work but I'd only market it as a short install (1 month).

3. There are other laser safe "vinyls" on the market. Most are made of polyester. I believe they are more expensive than regular vinyl and also less durable/long lasting. Contact 3M or Avery for product recommendations.

I'm wondering if you can press this on with an Iron. Or if a heat press will only work

An iron will probably work but probably won't work as well as a heat press which is designed to give equal pressure and temperature over a set time. You'd experience failure after several wash cycles most likely, if it was applied incorrectly.

[Ruben Salcedo]

I find this thread interesting since I just ran some tests with vinyl (PU actually) last week.


I used a 30 watt Universal laser to cut it, Coreldraw to prepare the graphic, and it was done on Fashion film from Stahls, this film is safe for the laser since is Polyurethane base.

I prepared the image with outlines, in the outer part of the graphic I set it to just kiss cut and the inner parts to cut it off completely so no need to weed there, in the inner parts of the wheels I filled it with black and set it up to raster engraved (cutting it off via outlines don't worked do to the detail it has, it just melts away most of the detail there), this will just remove the material leaving the back liner with the wanted detail, again no weeding needed it there also... and , that's about it.

It took me less than 5 minutes to prepare the graphic, 3 minutes to cut it and about 20 seconds to weed it, the image is 4"x3".

[Ruben Salcedo]

Here is another example, this is my self rasterized on the same material as my previous example, the image is 3"x3".