Frequently Asked Questions

Ink matching is done using standard Pantone PMS Coated colors found in the Pantone Plus Formula Guide. Coated (C) and Uncoated (U) inks with the same PMS number may appear different both onscreen and when printed. American Plastic only prints with coated inks. When creating your art, we strongly suggest referring to a PMS guide to specify colors.

PLEASE NOTE that printed colors may shift slightly from order to order, and within orders. While we strive for color consistency, exact color matches cannot be guaranteed. 

Art programs like Photoshop, Illustrator, Corel Draw, and others allow you to select colors from various palettes, and you should be able to select the Pantone Plus Coated palette to design your work. We will always provide a digital proof of your art in the colors specified, but keep in mind that colors may not look the same on screen, or printed on paper from desktop printers. 

Yes, if you prefer to provide your own printing plates, we can usually use them with no problem. However, we highly recommend having your plates made through us. This streamlines the production process and creates far fewer headaches for you and your customers. Using third party plate makers can result in delays, and cost savings are usually minimal. Especially if plates are made to incorrect specifications, contain errors, or become unusable due to cracking.   

Advantages to having us make your plates :

• TIME SAVINGS – Our local plate maker delivers daily, and turnaround is usually overnight. Customer provided plates can spend several days in shipping, and if plates arrive damaged, or incorrect, more delays can occur. 
• PLATE PREPARATION – Plates are attached to printing cylinders with double sided sticky-back tape. The cost for tape and labor is included in our plate cost. If plates arrive without sticky-back tape,  there will be an additional charge for adding it to the plates. 
• GUARANTEE – Plates made through us are guaranteed to match the art. Customer provided plates are used as-is, and while we will compare to your art, we are not responsible for plate quality or replacement if there are problems.
• DAMAGE REPLACEMENT – Over time, plates wear out and crack, requiring replacement for future orders. If made through us, there is no charge for replacement. For customer provided plates, the customer bears costs for plate replacement.
• QUALITY – Our art department makes sure that all art files sent to the plate maker are correctly formatted. Incorrect art files can result in text shifts, fonts changing, incorrect line screens, and trapping issues.

TO PROVIDE YOUR OWN PLATES

Plates must match the specifications listed below. If plates are made differently, we may still be able to use them, but cannot guarantee they will work on our presses.

• 3M Cyrel .107 plate media
• Backed with  3M 411DL sticky-back tape
• Between .050 and .060 relief
• 1" dead space around perimeter of image area
• Any raised crop marks (tick marks) must be removed
• Etched center scribe lines
• Beveled edges
• Halftones printed at 35 LPI
• Provide an art proof (PDF) showing proper art positioning on bag

PLATES WILL BE USED AS RECEIVED

Customer bears responsibility for making sure plates are made correctly. American Plastic assumes no responsibility for print quality due to plate abnormalities, damage, or errors. Additional charges will apply if plates require backing or other adjustments.

Digital proof showing art position on bag MUST be submitted.

COMMON PROBLEMS WITH PLATES 

Improperly made plates can result in poor print quality or incur extra charges. Here's some common issues to be aware of.

• Plates made from bitmapped images – may result in jagged edges on art.
• Plates made to incorrect specifications – may result in poor print quality, or may be unusable
• Plates made with inadequate trapping – may result in poor image quality 
• Crop marks not trimmed off of plates –  marks will print on bag. Additional charges will apply to remove crop marks.
• Double sided backing not attached – Backing has to be added. Additional charges will apply
• Registration marks not included – Multiple color jobs must have centerlines on plates to avoide additional setup charges. 

Halftone screens help to achieve the look of a lighter shade, or shades, of whatever color ink is being printed. However, there are some limitations of printing art like this. 

We print halftones at 35 LPI (lines per inch), which is the maximum LPI that prints well. This produces fairly large dots compared to offset printing. As an example, most newspapers print images at around 80 LPI, and most magazines at around 150 lpi or higher

See images below for samples of how screens look when printed. 

SCREEN AT DIFFERENT TINTS

Because of the large size of the dots used, we do not recommend printing small text or thin lines as screens. 

TEXT at 50% tint, 35 LPI

LINES - 1pt, 2pt, and 4pt - at 50% tint, 35 LPI

When using screens in your designs, it is best to use them for larger, solid areas. Screens also will look better on larger art. Just as the 4pt line above looks much cleaner than the 1pt line. 

While we try to keep overruns and underruns to a minimum, the production process has multiple steps, and the setup time and scrap produced for each step cannot be accurately predicted. This is due to the multiple steps process of extruding, printing, and converting bags, 

Steps to making bags

There are three basic steps to creating your bag, all of which require separate setup routines and create scrap material. All scrap is sent to a recycling center to be converted back into resin.  Here are the steps:

1. Extruding the film – bags start as small pellets of resin, which are melted in an extruder and blown into a tube that matches the specifications for each order. The film passes through several rollers as it cools and is then flattened and wound on a large roll, ready to print. Scrap is created as the adjustments are made to create the correct film specifications.
2. Printing – The roll of extruded film is then placed on a printing press. Press setup time and scrap created varies based on the number of colors being printed. Aligning printing plates to assure proper position can be very time consuming. 
3. Converting – Once printed, the roll of film is moved to a converting machine that seals, cuts, and adds handles onto individual bags, which are then boxed up and prepared for shipping. 

Bags measurements are expressed as the entire width x height (9x12, 15x18, etc) of the flattened bag. If bag has side gussets, the measurement is written as Width x Gusset x Height (12x7x22 is a standard T-shirt bag). If bag has a bottom gusset, the measurement is written as Width x Height + Gusset Width (15x18+4"BG for instance).

It's important to understand that bags with side gussets always have a bottom seal, and bags with bottom gussets will have a side seal. 

Bottom Seal bags are sealed between 1/4" and 1/2" from the very bottom of the bag, while side sealed bags are sealed at the very side edges. 

The height of the bag is measured from the very bottom of bag to the very top, except for Soft Loop Handle bags where the handle is attached and not included in the height measurement. 

ALL DIMENSIONS ARE APPROXIMATE.

If your bag needs to hold a specific sized item, please let us know so that we can make sure the bag is sized correctly

No. Plate charges are a one time charge. Additional charges would only apply if changes are being made to the art. We do not charge a setup fee on any orders.

Plate charges are not charged if you provide your own plates. see our FAQ page about providing your own plates. 

The short answer is no, we can't provide custom film color matches. We do offer nearly 30 different standard colors of film, in both HDPE and LDPE, so most customers can find a color that works for their bags.

We do not provide custom film matches due to the complexity of color matching. Colored films are made by adding color concentrate (in pellet form) to white or natural resins. All our color concentrates are supplied to us ready to add to the resin. Mixing these concentrates may seem like a simple solution for making custom colors, but formulating the right mix is very time consuming and involves a lot of trial and error - and waste. Custom colors also create issues with reorders, even when we know the formula. From time to time dye-lots change, and even a slight change when mixing colors based on a formula can throw off the color of the match. 

Visit our Film Colors page to see all the colors we offer, downlonad our line card (PDF), or contact us to request film color samples. 

The short answer is no. American Plastic, Mfg sells exclusively through a network of distributors. This allows us to keep our prices low by focusing on our production process. Our distributors are knowledgeable about our capabilities and product line, and can suggest products that would be well suited for your business. Please let us know if you would like more information or have questions, or if you are a bag distributor and are interested in setting up an account. 

Overruns and underruns are one of the most misunderstood part of the manufacturing process. It's tempting to look at it similarly to printing copies on your desktop printer. If you need 200 copies, you print 200 copies. Manufacturing isn't quite as simple, and adds some unknowns into the equation. 

In a manufacturing environment, overruns and underruns are quite common. There are three main steps in making bags - blowing the film, printing the film, and converting it into individual bags. All three of those steps require setup which creates waste. For instance, to produce 20,000 bags, we need to have enough printed film to cut those bags, plus some extra to set up the job, and in case of misprints that are discarded at this step. So we need to print quite a few more than 20,000 impressions. To print enough film for any given job, we need extra blank film in order to set up the printing press. So we need to blow enough extra film to account for printing setup, converting setup, and possible misprints. The raw material for the film is in pellets of plastic resin that are weighed out in an amount that is approximately enough to make enough bags, plus a little bit. Extruding the film can also result in small variances in bag width and thickness, which also affects overruns. 

So making an exact number of bags is nearly impossible, and the over/under run percentage is not predictable. 

Information about our overrun policy is on our terms and conditions page. https://www.apmbags.com/terms-and-conditions

Vector images are shapes and lines drawn in an illustration program (like Adobe Illustrator or CorelDraw) that have mathematical dimensions. This allows unlimited scalability without compromising the image quality. Images have smooth edges at all sizes, and file sizes much smaller than bitmap (raster) images. Common vector formats are PDF, Adobe Illustrator - AI, EPS, and Corel Draw (CDR).  

While vector files are always saved in these formats, they can contain bitmap images as well. Saving a JPG image as AI or EPS or PDF does not change the image to vector. 

Bitmap images are made up of a series of individually defined pixels and have a fixed resolution. A 1” x 1” bitmap, at 300dpi, is 300 pixels wide and 300 high. Bitmap images CAN'T be made larger without losing quality. For printing, the higher the resolution of bitmap files, the better the image quality. Common bitmap formats are TIFF, JPG, GIF, PNG, BMP.

Why Vector? 

• Vector art provides much smoother lines and edges to the art. Most bitmap images have smoothing (anti-aliasing) on the edges of the art (a slight gradient around curves to make them look smoother.)  
• All gradients are printed at 35 lpi, which when applied to shapes with smoothing, will result in blurred/jagged edges.  

A font is a collection of letter defined as a specific typeface. The font file contains mathematical descriptions of the shape of each letter. Fonts can only be edited on computers where the font file is installed. PDF files can have embedded fonts, which will display and print properly, but cannot be edited by computers that don't have the font file installed. When opening the document on a machine that doesn’t have the proper font installed, programs usually substitute another font. Obviously, this can cause problems. Converting fonts to outlines disconnects the font descriptions from the letters, and prevents the shape from changing. The downside of this is that once the type is converted to outlines, it can no longer be edited as text.

To convert text to outlines, an illustration program like Adobe Illustrator or CorelDraw is required. Adobe InDesign is also capable of converting type to outlines. In Illustrator or InDesign, chose “create outlines” from the Type menu. In CorelDraw, select “Convert to Curves” from the Arrange menu. 

After we receive your art, we inspect it to make sure it will print well. If we see any issues with the art, you will be contacted with information about the problem. Common issues involve embedded fonts, incorrect trapping, thin outlines, too much halftoning, and low resolution bitmaps. If you are unable to correct the issues, an art quote will be provided.

We provide a digital proof and mockup of the art in PDF format for all new orders. The PDF will show both a proof of the art at 100% size, as well as a mockup of the art on a template of the bag. Mockups and proofs are not provided for reorders except by request. 

Pre-production samples are not available. See this link for more information.