What is 3D puff embroidery? Here is what you need to know

What is 3D Hat puff embroidery?
We’ll talk about 3D Puff hat embroidery in our blog post today. For those who may not be familiar with the topic, 3D Puff embroidery is just what it sounds like: the ability to give your design a sense of depth by adding an airy, balloon-like, or bubbly appearance.
2D embroidery or flat embroidery vs. 3D embroidery
We actually have two different hats with embroidery here to use as an example. One, it’s just a standard flat design, as you can see in fig. 1. On the contrary, the embroidery on the Fig-02 hat is 3D, or raised 3-dimensional. Now, there is little advantage for business owners as it effectively gives you an extra margin to charge your clients a little more for these designs with some basic techniques.

How much does 3D embroidery cost?
With manufacture perspective, it’s incredibly cost-effective because you’re just going to use one additional readily available, extremely affordable material. Now, it’s very, very simple to use the 3D Puff embroidery on the actual hat that you need to use. You’ll need the foam itself to start. Therefore, the foam is what will actually give your design a sense of depth. Basically, all you’ll be doing is covering the foam with stitches. On the other hand, customers will pay some extra $$ for this 3D look.
Where to get 3D foam for Hat embroidery?
You can get these foams in any arts and crafts store. You can purchase these for a very inexpensive price at Walmart or amazon so, yes, it is quite economical. They also come in a variety of colors. Speaking of colors, another important point to keep in mind is to ensure that the color you select matches the shade used for the 3D portion of the design.
By that what exactly does it mean in the case of above mention Hat design ( Fig-02), We know that the red & white portion of the logo will be the one that is puffed out in 3D. Therefore, our form should essentially be red for that reason.
Material needs for 3D/Puff hat embroidery
• Hat
• 3D foam (2mm -3mm)
• Scissor (To cut the foam)
• Tape (Use to stick foam on hat)

3D hat logo Digitizing
The first and foremost important thing is your design itself. Particularly for 3D Puff embroidery. The order in which the design is going to be embroidered will be crucial for 3D. The way it works is that the design’s underlay is really stitched first. It will then finish the border. The 3D portion of the design itself will actually be the last step. Since the 3D puff has many stages, the 3D part will be delayed till the very end because that is when you would actually place the foam itself for the initial steps before letting it sew onto the hat itself without the foam. The foam will then be added. It will be important that we actually switch the machine from completely automatic to fully manual for this reason. And the reason why is because it will carry out the many stitching procedures, as we mentioned.
Tip
(Recommended stitch length for 3D puff is 7mm)
After finishing the underlay, it will pause and wait for us to return and press the start button before moving on to the border. Once we start it again, it will stitch the border, and once it’s done, it’ll halt again before moving on. That’s where we are going to actually come in and put the foam, so that’s why we have to stop there. The final phase, the 3D puff area with the foam already in place, will then begin once we will press start. Just once the first part of the design has now been fully embroidered by the machine. The underlay and the design’s outline are finished. Because we had it set to manual mode, it really stopped before moving. And the reason we want it is because this is where we must put the foam itself since it will now actually stitch the 3D part. Therefore, all that needs to be done is to apply the foam to the actual head, which is where the strips of tape come in. In order to ensure that the foam stays in place, you will tape a piece of material on the edges of the foam we need to make sure to cut the foam bit extra than what is required So that the needle wouldn’t go into the holding tape itself, and in meantime, it will give us an upper hand during 3D puff stitching and once we are done. We could have cut the foam a little bit smaller, only the size of the design itself. But after that, you can probably guess that it will be quite difficult to keep it in position while really embroidering on the foam. Now that this is set up, we will really press the start button to begin stitching the 3D puff part.
Tack Down stitch / Holding stitch
So what is holding stitch or tack down stitch? Well, the important thing to keep in mind is about tack down stitch this is why the design itself needs to be digitized for 3D embroidery. Experts always make sure to run the tack down stitch which will actually be holding the foam in place well yes that pretty much it does, before doing 3D puff stitch it is an essential part of 3D embroidery. Now that you have your foam in place, tack down stitches are done let’s do the final part and there you will have your final product hat with a 3D embroidery logo.
Removing and cleaning
You can now remove the cap from the cap driver and the extra foam. If you recall, we placed larger foam than the actual design. Actually, you can just tear it away, and it will come off nicely. If by some chance you cannot get the same colors foam get the closest possible color but doing that you may actually run into small issue, sometimes tiny bits of foam does poke out and if the foam isn’t matching in color with 3D design that will look bit off but having a heat gun or lighter can be used to force the stuff to shrink in and effectively remove the material fragments that are poking out. As you’re doing that, make sure you’re just sort of letting the heat go on top of it. The flame shouldn’t be placed directly on the pattern since that will only leave burn marks. Another method that worked well was simply poking the edges with a pair of snips or another instrument with a fine point to keep the excess foam that is bursting out from the edges. However, there would be absolutely no issue if the foam had nearly the same color.

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