Sporting goods live and die on the brand mark. Logos, color, fit, finish — all on curved, spherical, and irregular surfaces that traditional decoration handles slowly and inconsistently. EPS engineers pad and single-pass cells around the part geometry: golf balls at 1,000+ pph with 360° wrap, helmets in five colors with servo precision, skateboards and bats at line speed. Built in Vermont, deployed worldwide.
The decoration on a golf ball, helmet, or football is the brand. The mark has to be perfect — clean color, sharp registration, no distortion across the curve — and it has to come off the line at production speed. Sporting goods manufacturers have historically traded one off for the other. EPS engineers cells that don’t.
EPS has shipped over 3,500 pad systems and 100+ single-pass DTO systems across sporting goods applications. Five-color servo pad printers with linear shuttle handle helmets and balls. The XD-360 cylindrical single-pass runs golf balls at 1,000+ pph with full 360° wrap and robot orienting. The chemistry team validates ink adhesion to ABS, EVA, urethane, and composite surfaces before the line ships.
A sample of EPS sporting goods decoration applications — selected for the highest-volume implementations.
XD-360 single-pass with robot cells, orienting, inspection, and order sorting. Full 360° wrap with no distortion from print gap. 1,000+ balls per hour on a single cell. Replaces pad and multi-pass inkjet.
See the Golf Balls application → →Five-color servo pad printers with linear shuttle for football, hockey, lacrosse helmets. Multi-pass UV inkjet for full-color graphics on compound-curve PPE. ABS and composite substrates with validated pre-treatment.
Baseballs, footballs, soccer balls, ping pong balls — full brand decoration on leather, composite, and synthetic surfaces. Pad printing for stable high-volume runs; multi-pass digital for custom and personalization.
See the Footballs & Athletic Balls application → →Linear shuttle pad cells for boards, bats, hockey sticks. Multi-color in single setup. Wood, composite, and aluminum substrates. Variable data for athlete personalization and limited editions.
Skateboard wheels, ski boots, snowboards — decoration on cylindrical and curved surfaces. Optical sensor and part-rotation systems handle irregular geometry.
XD-360 cylindrical single-pass inkjet system is engineered specifically for golf ball production. Robot loading, optical orienting, full 360° print without the gap distortion of pad or multi-pass systems, inline inspection with reject diversion, and order sorting downstream. Sporting goods manufacturers replace 3–5 pad cells with one XD-360 line.
Pick the platform that matches your part geometry and volume. EPS engineers the rest of the cell around it.
The golf ball platform. Single-pass cylindrical inkjet with full 360° print, robot orienting, and inline inspection. Also runs cans, drinkware, tubes, and small cylindrical sporting goods.
Explore XD-360 →
Five-color servo pad printer with linear shuttle capability. Pad wrapping up to 180°. The workhorse for helmets, balls, sticks, and high-volume curved-surface decoration.
Explore Pad Printing →
Full custom automation around a pad print engine. Robot loading and unloading, vision-based orienting, inline inspection, downstream sorting. The right answer for high-mix, high-volume sporting goods lines.
Explore Pad Printing →What separates EPS from a generic printer vendor: we engineer the full cell around the part — and we've done it 3,600+ times.
Every sporting good has different geometry, substrate, and throughput targets. EPS designs the loading, orienting, print engine, inspection, and unload as one cell — built around the part, not generic.
Brand colors on a curved surface require their own discipline. Color matching, registration tolerance, and print-pass uniformity are technical problems EPS's color team solves before the line ships.
EPS has shipped 3,500+ pad systems and 100+ single-pass DTO systems. We know when pad wins on cost, and when single-pass wins on throughput and SKU flexibility. We sell what fits your line, not what we want to sell.
These cells run inside continuous manufacturing environments. EPS engineering support — not a third-party service contract.
Tell us about your part, volume, and current decoration process. We'll show you the optimal EPS platform and the production economics behind it.