Selling Custom Hat Patches? Try This Tri Layer Acrylic Method

What is up welcome back we know you love to do building and make it and we're here to help you sell it this week we're taking things to a whole other level we're doing tri-layer acrylic hat patches in our last video we talked about engraving leather hat patches in this video we're showing you how to engrave and press tri-layer acrylic patches so if you haven't tried these they come up with some really cool visuals because you can get three colors out of one engrave step one we're going to gather all of our supplies we're making hats with hat patches if you have this month's laser loot box you already have all of your supplies we're going to be doing the tri-layer acrylic so we're going to be using the structured six panel richardson 112 trucker cap here with a snap back with a snap back we're also going to be using some tri-layer acrylic this is the romark tri-layer acrylic we got ours from lone star adhesive we've got two different color types in your loot box you've got a red white and blue or it's actually white blue and red those are the layers from top to bottom and then you've got a white blue and black layer and so we'll be able to do a test card on both of these and then a final engrave on your second patch step two time to engrave but before we engrave we have to remove the plastic coating on the top of the acrylic it does make a difference it does make a difference and before i do any engraving on here i like to do a little pre-treating so that my cleanup is easy i use a little dish soap i don't have dish soap hand soap can work too i'm just going to spread a thin coat of this soap that was way too much just a just a thin coat on a paper towel i put it on my pants it's fine they'll get washed there you go just a super thin coat just enough to make the surface slick so that the residue from the blues the blacks the reds don't accumulate and stay in the top of the white acrylic yes you really shouldn't see any soap this leaves like a little chunky layer we're going to make sure all that's off and it's just a smeared thin layer of soap on there just a super thin just enough to make it slick and before i start throwing my own engravings on here i'm going to run a test card so that i have the perfect settings so i hit my blues and my blacks and my reds and they all look crisp we're going to be using our x tool s1 diode laser for this particular project if you're part of the loot box then we have given you test files test engraves and photos from multiple laser types in this video we're going to be using the s1 so we'll meet you over in x tool studio inside x tool studio we're just going to run a test array i already have an outline of our hat patch so i'll know about how many stars i'm going to use a star for my test array how many stars we can actually fit on the hat i'm going to set this star to 0.2 inches tall we'll make sure it's on engrave yep i'll move it over to the patch then we'll go to applications material test array i'm going to go frame this out and run this test card back with the little test card i use stars to see what the corners would look like on this stuff and i don't know it came out great i have a variation all the way from a very light blue all the way down to a pretty deep red so from this test card i'm able to tell what both layers need to be i'm going to run the blue layer at 35 power and 300 millimeters per 350 millimeters per second and on the red i'm going to go a little slower and a little deeper i'm going 65 power and 250 millimeters per second both are going to use 240 lines per centimeter that gives a good engrave and it doesn't look grainy and it doesn't leave lines nice and sharp lines yeah back in x tool studio we're gonna move this out of the way we're done with our test card and i'm gonna grab one of these guys let's put this s1 to the test now i'm gonna keep this green outline around it this is for framing i want to be able to frame it out but right now i have it set at whatever millimeters per second and one percent power but i'm really just using this to frame out so let's go ahead and frame this out real quick see where we're at when engraving on this acrylic use little to no air assist you want about five to ten percent air coming out the nozzle that's just to keep that smoke from gathering on the lens you don't want any air blowing on the actual engrave it will heat up the acrylic and cause melting you'll see you'll get melted edges or you'll start to see inside like the reds and the blacks you'll start to see the lines because your air is too hot back that air way down it'll give you a nice crisp edge i think we're ready to do the final engrave all right now that we're all framed up and lined up i don't need this green outline anymore so we're gonna set the output to off now let's set our blue layer we'll set our red power now before i send anything over i want to change my processing i'm gonna go user defined i want to scan everything all together by layer so it'll do blue then red and then i want to go from bottom to top i want to engrave from the bottom to the top that way all that smoke and char and everything is going to go up over the area that i'm about to engrave hopefully this will clean it just a little bit more keep or keep it just a little bit cleaner because uh i'll be drawing that smoke up as the laser is coming up so let's hit process and just make sure it's going to do what i think it's going to do i'm going to preview process path i'm just going to drag this around yep it's going from the bottom to the top so we're coming in with blue and then we're coming in with red let's start now if you didn't do pre-prep or if your pre-prep didn't work and you get some staining on the white or there's a lot of dust on there a little la awesome and a little bit of finger or magic eraser will take that dust and stain right off step three time to press press we're going to take the insert out of the hat and we're using our lone star branding iron it's a dual platen so we have the bottom at 280 and we have the top at 360 now i know the instructions say 320 but josh from lonestar used this one and left it at 360 so i'm leaving it at 360 i'm going to take the headband fold it out there's a little ridge right here i'm going to place it right on that ridge with the band out i'll kind of lock in place now i have a little lever right here this lever is going to keep that back tight now i can let it go and it's kind of locked in place and place my acrylic right over top line it up now i have these two little um diamonds that i'm making sure are on the seam all right when it's there i know where it is i'm going to place this silicone sheet over top one finger on the patch don't let it move oh i don't know if i can put a finger on i'm just gonna okay i hope it didn't move all right let me check yeah i made it crooked yes that's how you do it okay all right now i'm going in 45 seconds and this is timed and automatic it's done with magnets it's kind of like magic so in about two seconds it's going to pop up on its own give it a check release at least the switch on the bottom and i probably should put it back in the corners didn't really catch you can see the middle is pretty good but this corner didn't catch so i'm going to put it in and just do it again i'll give it another 45 whatever it takes whatever it takes see if i can catch it all right that's looking good there we go all the corners are looking good now we'll just let it dry cool let it cool cool dry cool dry step four marketing and sales so all in on this hat we're at like seven dollars and 75 cents and you can sell them anywhere from 28 to 35 dollars especially if they have a custom logo if you're going b2b you can really add a company's logo on these these are a high-end acrylic tri-layer acrylic patch on these so you can get anywhere from 28 to 35 dollars for these easily a whole sheet of acrylic costs 35 we're able to get about 48 patches out of one so that makes each patch about 73 cents you can get the hats for about six dollars and 95 cents so like i said for 775 and then 35 for sales you're looking at a pretty good profit anywhere from 20 to 28 dollars in profit per hat yep you pick up some b2b sales where you're doing 50 at a time that's pretty good chunk of change now what i would do is i would go ahead and approach some businesses with their logo already done in the three different versions now i personally like the red blue and white it stands out a little bit better than the black blue and white but really it depends on the logo and and what we've done with so much detail on these the red really pops a little more than the black and the blue they don't contrast a lot against each other but i'll tell you that s1 did an amazing job do not sleep on the diode the diode does better at engraving every time and then these look great if you like this video go ahead and give us a thumbs up if you're not yet subscribed subscribe and tick that bell to be notified of our new videos each week if you like this project and you're not yet part of the laser loop box go ahead and check it out each month you're gonna get some unique materials to test out see what your niche might be who knows otherwise i am about out of time i gotta go make some more hats you need to go check out some more hats and a big thanks to the make it mafia that is our members area over there and that is the best mafia you'll ever meet you have a question a problem one of the mafia members has you and over on our new members area it's even easier to use easier access to the svgs extra content extra blog posts it's just a whole new environment you can find it all at kngmakeit.com or laserlootbox.com