The Call from NameBadge.com
When the team at NameBadge.com told us they were moving into a new 20,000 sq ft headquarters right here in Greenville, SC, we knew this was going to be a fun one. They needed every square foot of that building dialed in for year-round comfort, clean air, and stable humidity. A print shop this advanced cannot run on whatever HVAC the previous tenant left behind.
If you have not heard their story, it is worth a read. They went from a single printer in a Florida garage in the early 2000s to over 100 production machines across two states. You can read their full origin story here. Now their flagship facility lives right in our backyard, and First Class Heating & Air got the call to climate-control the whole building.
Why Climate Control Matters Inside a Print Facility
This is not your average warehouse. The production floor at NameBadge.com runs Mimaki JFX200-2513 UV flatbeds, UJF-3042 and UJF-6042 MkII compact flatbeds, six Trotec laser engraver and cutter systems, an Epson SureColor S9170 eleven-color printer, a Kongsberg X24 CNC routing table, a Summa F1612 vinyl cutter, and XID 1200 DPI ID card printers. They build name badges, executive metal name tags, ADA office signs, desk plates, banners, pull-up displays, and through their sister brand they crank out custom stickers in any shape you can dream up.
All of that high end gear has one thing in common. It hates swings in temperature and humidity, and it absolutely hates dust. UV ink cures differently when the room temperature drifts five degrees. Vinyl curls when the relative humidity climbs. Laser optics get cloudy in dirty air. So before we ever picked equipment, we sat down with their operations team, walked the floor, and mapped out the heat loads from every machine, every operator station, and every roll-up door.
The Scope: Eight Systems, Three Zones, One Game Plan
After running a full Manual N commercial load calculation, we landed on eight separate split systems for the building. Splitting it up that way gave us redundancy, tight zone control, and the ability to size each unit to the actual load instead of overshooting with one giant rooftop unit.
- Eight high efficiency air conditioning condensers paired with matched gas furnaces for the office and finishing zones
- Heat pump systems on the production floor for shoulder-season efficiency when the printers are throwing off heat
- Independent zoning for production, office, shipping, and warehouse so the print floor never fights the front lobby
- Variable speed blowers across every air handler so we can run quiet at low load and ramp up when production goes hot
- Smart commercial thermostats networked to one dashboard so their facility lead can see every zone in one place
HEPA Filtration for a Cleaner Print Floor
Standard MERV 8 or MERV 11 filters are fine for a typical office. They are not fine for a building full of UV flatbeds and laser cutters. We engineered in-duct HEPA filtration on the production zones, with pre-filters in front to take the load off the HEPA media so it lasts.
The result is air on the print floor that runs cleaner than most medical offices. That means fewer reprints, longer life on Mimaki print heads, and less downtime cleaning Trotec optics. It also means the team breathes better air all day, which is something we take seriously on every commercial install.
ERVs and Positive Air Pressure
Here is the part most contractors skip. A print facility needs fresh outside air to keep CO2 and VOCs from inks and adhesives at safe levels. But you cannot just pull raw outside air into a conditioned space. In a Greenville summer, that is a humidity disaster. In a January cold snap, that is a heating bill nightmare.
We installed energy recovery ventilators on the building. ERVs pre-condition incoming fresh air using the energy in the outgoing stale air, so we get the ventilation without the energy penalty. Then we tuned the system to run slightly positive on the production floor. That means air leaves the building through cracks, doors, and dock seals instead of unfiltered outside air leaking in. Dust stays out. Humidity stays stable. The HEPA filters do their job because they are not constantly fighting infiltration.
Installation: Working Around a Live Production Schedule
NameBadge.com had orders to ship while we were on site. That meant our crew planned every cut-over so the print floor never went dark. We ran new line sets at night, dropped equipment on the roof on a Saturday, and commissioned each zone one at a time so production could keep moving.
The real work on a job like this is not turning wrenches. It is the coordination. Electrical with the panel upgrade, gas line sizing for eight furnaces, structural sign-off for the rooftop units, controls integration, and a full commissioning run on every zone before we handed it over. Our project lead was on site every day from demo through start-up.
Why First Class Took This Job
First Class Heating & Air is a family run Greenville company. We do residential service every day, but commercial work like this is where a lot of our crew came up. When NameBadge.com called, we jumped at it for two reasons. One, they are a Greenville business growing fast in our community, and we love supporting other Upstate companies. Two, this kind of project lets our team show what we can really do.
Eight systems, HEPA, ERVs, positive pressure, networked controls, all installed and commissioned without shutting their production floor down. That is the kind of job we want our name on.
What Is Next: Backup Power and Long Term Partnership
We are not done with NameBadge.com. The next phase is a whole-facility standby generator install so a thunderstorm or grid hiccup never costs them a shipment. After that, they are on our commercial maintenance plan with scheduled tune-ups on every system, filter changes on the HEPA units, ERV core cleanings, and priority dispatch if anything ever needs attention.
That is how we like to do it. Install it right the first time, then keep it running for the long haul.
Need Commercial HVAC in Greenville?
If you are building out a new facility, expanding into a bigger space, or just stuck with an HVAC system that cannot keep up with what your business actually does, give us a call. We design and install commercial systems for print shops, warehouses, offices, retail, and industrial buildings across the Upstate. Call First Class Heating & Air at (864) 362-6255 or request a quote online and let us walk your space.
