Printshops

A printshop is whoever makes the product. Being able to take an order is what makes something a printshop. A catalogue of products, stock levels and product photos are extras some printshops offer.

Under Printshop, the studio lists the printshops that make your prints, each under its own name. You may have several, including two accounts with the same partner.

Two kinds of printshop

A partner printshop is one Pixonaut already knows how to talk to, such as Printful or Printify. You connect Printful by allowing Pixonaut on its own page, one store at a time, and Printify with a token, one shop at a time. Pixonaut checks the connection with the printshop before saving it, so one that does not work is refused when you connect rather than at your first order. A partner reports an order’s progress back by itself, and may offer a catalogue you can import blanks from.

A custom printshop is one you describe yourself, for a shop with no connection of its own; the studio calls it Your own printshop and lists it below the partner integrations. You tell Pixonaut how to hand each order over, as an ordered list of delivery steps: send an email, send an HTTP request to the shop’s own address, or upload files to the shop’s server. The details of each order are filled into those steps when it is submitted, and the printshop can report back on each order’s own page, with no account. It can be created with only a name and its steps added later; until it has one, an order sent to it is refused.

Set up a printshop walks through both.

Address changes

A printshop takes address changes when an order’s address may be added or changed after the order was sent to it. Printful takes them until it confirms the order; when Printful does not answer a change, it is still being sent until Pixonaut reads the order back from Printful and sees whether the new address arrived; the order is not confirmed, and a later change is refused with a reason to send it again, until then. A custom printshop takes them when you say so, which needs its address change step: one email or HTTP request that tells the shop the order’s new recipient and address, and names the order, the address and the printshop’s contact, never one print. Or choose No message, when you print in-house or pass a change on yourself: the shop is told nothing, and a change is accepted at once, shown on the order, and carried by the steps not sent yet. When the address changes before any of the order’s steps was sent, the steps carry the new address and nothing extra is sent; otherwise the address change step tells the shop, and is retried as a delivery step is, and the steps not sent yet carry the new address once the shop accepts it. An HTTP answer other than success refuses the change, and its body is the shop’s words on the order.

What a printshop is sent for a variant

An order names a variant of its blank, and each printshop declares the fields it needs sent for it. Printful’s are fixed: each variant’s catalogue variant id, set when the blank is imported, and each placement’s name and technique from its catalogue. A custom printshop declares its own, named as the shop names them: variant fields hold a value per variant of each blank printed there, and placement fields a value per position, the same for every blank. An order sends each field’s own value, else its default, else nothing; a field required with no default refuses an order without one. See Set up a printshop.

Which printshop makes an order

The printshop is decided when an order is made, and the order keeps it. It is, in order:

1. for a design on a blank, the blank’s printshop;
2. else the printshop your server named when it committed the design, if any;
3. else the printshop the order request names (printshopId), if any;
4. else your Default printshop.

With none of them, the order is refused (print_needs_printshop). An order of a design on a blank cannot name a printshop: naming another is refused (printshop_differs_from_blank), and naming the blank’s own is refused as a field the request does not take. A retry names no printshop and goes back to the printshop the failed order went to. So changing your default moves the orders made after the change of designs on no blank that name none, including orders of designs committed before it.

A blank’s printshop is set when the blank is created — the one you choose, else its category’s, else your default — and never changes. A blank cannot be created without one: if you print by hand, add a custom printshop for it. To make the same product at another printshop, copy the blank to it. A design committed on a blank can only name the blank’s printshop, and keeps it even after the blank is deleted.

Disconnecting a printshop moves no blank: its blanks keep it, and their orders are refused until you reconnect it. If it was your default printshop, you have no default until you choose another. Only a printshop no blank prints at and no order names can be deleted; a deleted blank does not count. Deleting disconnects it and keeps it, with its positions and machines, to be restored later; a deleted blank that prints there is restored only once it is.

Each position also says where that printshop registers a print on the item: a reference such as the collar seam or the centre of the product, how the print aligns to it, and an offset in millimetres. It is the printshop’s, not the blank’s, because it is how that printshop’s jig is set up: another printshop may register the same tee’s front differently. An order’s job ticket carries the registration of the position each print is printed as, at the printshop the order goes to. A printshop with a catalogue registers every print centred inside its own placement.

A blank imported from a partner’s catalogue is bound to that partner’s product: its placements’ print areas, print method, resolution and printed as names are the partner’s and cannot be changed, and placements cannot be added or removed. Each placement’s own name can still be changed.

Machine profiles

A custom printshop keeps a machine profile for each of its machines: the cut name its cutter follows (CutContour, Thru-cut, Kiss-cut, Die, DieCut or Cut), or no cut for a machine that only prints, the Registration marks it reads off the printed sheet (Summa OPOS, Roland, or none), whether Crop marks are drawn around a rectangular cut, and the print methods it serves. One profile is the default. An order to a printshop with no profile is sent its print as stored, with no cut path and no marks.

Each machine also says whether it prints spot inks as their own plates, how much extra margin its marks need, whether the print is mirrored (sublimation, transfers), and whether its bleed is trimmed to less than the file was made with. A print file is made once, so a machine can narrow its bleed but never add to it. Every one of these starts where a file was before it existed.

An order’s print file goes out with the profile its blank names, else the one serving its print method, else the default, and the order keeps it. That machine decides whether its spots go as plates. The cut path, the marks, the mirror and the trim are applied after the artwork, which they never change, so the printshop can download an order’s file again for another of its machines, or with output settings adjusted for one download, and get the same artwork as that machine wants it. Every file of a print can be downloaded whatever machine it was sent for: the print alone, the cut path alone, and both together.

The marks follow Summa’s and Roland’s published descriptions and have not been checked on their machines yet.

In a sandbox

Your workspace’s sandbox gets the printshop connections of live when it syncs, without their credentials, and can connect and edit its own as live does. No order placed in the sandbox is sent through any of them: it stops at submitted and no printshop is reached. See Test with a sandbox.

When a printshop goes away

An order is never quietly sent to a different printshop. If the printshop it would go to has been disconnected, ordering fails and names the printshop; if your server named that printshop for this order, the order is refused instead, so it can name another. Reconnect it, copy its blanks to another printshop, or choose another default.

A printshop you have paused is still connected, but takes no new order: ordering for it, or retrying a failed order there, is refused with printshop_paused, naming the printshop, and nothing is written. Its open orders carry on. Turn Takes orders back on to order through it again.

A printshop says what it prints with: the print methods it makes. Your own printshop states them, and a partner’s come from its catalogue. Ordering a print made by a method it does not print with is refused with technique_not_offered, naming the placement, the method and what the printshop prints with, and nothing is written. A printshop that states none refuses nothing.

A printshop can also be Unavailable: Pixonaut can no longer reach it, so nothing can be ordered through it until it can again.

Related

• Orders — what is sent to a printshop.
• Blanks — imported blanks and printshop changes.