Sporting goods are a great way to promote your brand name. These products have several advantages. First, sporting goods are a great way to keep your name in front of your customers. For this reason, imprinted sporting items are a powerful promotional and branding tool. Second, they are durable and your customers are likely to keep them for a long time. For these reasons and many others, sporting goods are perfect for branding. We will cover methods of printing on sporting goods on this article.

Screen Printing

Screen printing is a printing method for transferring ink onto a substrate, except in areas made impermeable to the ink by a blocking stencil. A squeegee moves across the screen to flood the open mesh with ink. Then a reverse stroke pushes the screen to touch the substrate momentarily along a line of contact. This causes the ink to wet the substrate and be pulled out of the mesh apertures as the screen springs back after the blade has passed. In screen printing, only one color is printed at a time. To print multi-colored image or design, use multiple screens.

Screen printing prints perfectly on flat areas or circles or ovals. As a result, screen printing is the method of choice for printing on team sports jerseys, bags, socks, etc. Depending on the ink used, the prints are durable, and have vibrant colors. Additionally, screen printing has perfect opaque images on darker substrates. To print on poly-blends, textile silicone inks come in handy. These inks are Eco-friendly, flexible, and last forever. Check out our silicone screen printing inks.

Inkjet Printing

UV printers offer the ability to print Photographic Image Quality at high speeds on sporting goods. Inkjet printing is popular for printing larger volumes of multi-color sporting goods such as basketballs, golf balls, and hockey pucks. Like all other printing methods, inkjet printing requires a fixture to hold printing parts. UV printers utilize use print heads to drop small ink droplets which form the image. Inkjet printing is ideal for printing on sporting goods products made of acrylic, glass, wood, and rubber. Some of the items will require inkjet primers to aid ink adhesion. For UV inkjets use UV inks. These UV inkjet inks are durable and will withstand against weather elements. The key benefit of inkjet printing is the ability full color prints at high speed. Learn more about our UV inkjet inks and UV Printers

Pad Printing

Pad printing equipment allows for transferring a 2-dimensional image onto a 3-dimensional piece. Click on the links to learn more about pad printing, pad printing machines, pad printing ink. Pad printing is a very special printing methods because of its ability to print on almost any type of surface from flat surfaces to cylinders to compound angles, textured surfaces, and convex surfaces. Pad printing is ideal for printing on sporting goods that are oddly shaped. Use this method of printing for single color prints.

Want to Learn More about pad printing? Check out our Guide to Pad Printing

Sporting Goods You Can Print On

UV printing, screen printing and pad printing, all these are great methods for printing on sporting goods. Review your application and pick the most appropriate printing method. Examples of the most popular branding methods are:

  • Golf balls
  • Baseball bats
  • Baseballs
  • Footballs
  • Soccer balls
  • Helmets
  • Frisbees and discs
  • Hockey pucks
  • Jerseys
  • Drink cups
  • Sport bottles
  • Water bottles
  • Cup holders
  • Bag tags
  • Mouth guards
  • Basketballs, etc.

To learn more on how you can print on sporting goods, please contact us at (781) 281-2558.