Where can I get Sublimation Printing done? Do I really need Sublimation Printing?
Here at Banners Printing we can print using sublimation. It is usually used for printing T-shirts, certain materials, ceramic, wood and metal.
There are some limitations with sublimation printing. It is not good for cotton printing as the print will not be permanent.
White creasing can also be a problem where parts of the material are not reached by the printing.
The printing of sublimation is becoming increasingly popular. It’s a digital printing form that uses specialized paper or material. There are many benefits and drawbacks of sublimation printing, but it is apparent that it has gained popularity. What, then, is printing sublimation?
The procedure is almost like a tattoo, but instead of for your skin, it’s for your chosen material. The heat which is applied opens up the pores of the material, then with the increased pressure, the ink cools and solidifies again.
Sublimation is a method of a chemical reaction. Simply put, a solid automatically transforms into a gas and doesn’t go to the liquid level. When performed, it helps to realize that it applies to the colouring itself. This colour sublimation happens because it is the colour that changes state. What, though, is the other way around? Well, deposition is called, while desublimation is also recognized. A deposition is when something is converted from gas to solid, not confused with condensation when it becomes liquid. Frost formation, air directly transfer to solid form and the water bypassing, will be the best example of deposition.
How to print sublimation?
So then, what is the process of sublimation printing? We are here to clarify the exact specifics of the nitty-gritty, the colourfulness of the operation.
First of all, the template is printed on specialist transfer paper. It is printed with advanced dye-sub inks as a mirror image. These are water-based inks that do not have a greater environmental impact. The transfer is then aligned with the fabric, and a heat and pressurization combination is used. This leads to a transition directly to gas from their established solid form.
The particles then penetrate the material fibres and are permanently attached to the fibres. The end result is an incredibly complicated high-definition print.
Sublimation vs screen printing.
Printing sublimation has high initial installation costs. Screen printing still has high installation costs. If the initial investment has been completed, dye-sub is cheaper for short periods. It also doesn’t work for larger print runs.
Screenprint creates high borders, but the degree of details is so complicated due to automated methods used for sublimation printing. In photographic quality, you can print not only, but the detail is so excellent that you can also display pins.
The colour sub can be printed in a single swoop, but the colours can be produced on the machine only. Luckily, it’s a lot of shades. Screen printing restricts you to one by one and can cause bleeding or alignment problems using several colours, but you can combine any colour you want.
Screen printing is placed on the surface of the printed material while the colouring is penetrated deep into the fibres. This means that the printing of sublimation is highly resistant to fade.
Directly to clothing (DTG) vs.
Print Runs DTG is equivalent to sublimation printing for smaller print runs. But the print area must be much smaller. Dye-sub can be used to cover a printing cloth completely, while DTG restricts you.
With DTG printing, particularly on coloured garments, colours fades, glows, and gradients cannot be reproduced. The use of bright green and pink palettes and the use of metallic colours can also pose a concern. Printing with sublimation leaves white surfaces unprinted, while DTG uses white inks, which are useful if you do not want to print on white material.
Long-life ñ DTG adds the ink to the garment literally, while the ink is permanently used in the sublimation printing. So you will find your template wear, crack, peel or rub off over time by printing DTG.
Print Runs ñ Both approaches are well designed for smaller print runs. If you only print a single shirt every couple of months because of the initial costs of dye-sub, it’s easier for you to see the transfer of the heat.
Printers are key here. Heat transfer uses a regular printer, while a specialized printer is used in sublimation printing that prints in high-quality form. Remember how much you tried to print images on a home printer.
You can print full colours in colours – Dye-sub, but you need to create them on your computer, but you can choose blue to green and yellow and print them in special colours. If you use a heat transfer, you will not always be able to produce the same palette as an inkjet or laser printer.
Long-life ñ transfers are essentially moving a layer on the surface of the fabric with your print. Nor do you weed yourself (which means that unless you cut it out, you will have the whole A3 or A4 layer of transfer, whether printed or not). Printing with sublimation will never move the inks, so the effects are not almost adherent, and the inks will not peel or scrape off as a permanent part of the material.
So, What is Printing Sublimation?
Well, allow us to summarize after this in-depth look. Sublimation printing is good for fine lines and details and is probably one of the best printing methods. It is perfect for small runs with low installation costs, and the prints are so similar to constant, they are very unsurpassed. However, it doesn’t need 80-85 per cent poly blends in big dor natural fabrics, and the white regions are left unprinted, which is difficult to print on darker fabrics.
How it performs
The substrate and one of the coloured panels are moved under a thermal print head during the printing cycle, which typically has the same width as the shorter size of the medium. Small heating components adjust the temperature quickly on the head, putting varying quantities of dye depending on the heat applied. Some of the colours diffuse into the medium of printing.
After printing the medium in a single colour, the printer flips the ribbon over to the next colour panel and partially throws the medium out of the printer to prepare the next cycle. The whole process is repeated four or five times: the first three of them are laid on the medium in order to form a complete image; a black heat transfer process can be carried out or not; the last one is positioned above the laminate. This layer protects the thinner against UV light and humidity.
Inkjet Sublimation vs.
Traditionally, a technology for continuous colouring where every point is any colour has the advantage of dye sublimation printing. The position and size of the inkjet printer can differ, but each ink drop is confined to the colours of the mounted inks. A dye-sublimation printer, therefore, creates continuous tones, similar to a chemical photograph. An inkjet print is made of ink-coated and dispersed droplets, but the different droplets can be seen under magnification. In the early days of ink screen printing, large droplets and low-resolution ink screens significantly lower than colour sublimation but, with microscopic droplets and additional colours, some modern ink screen prints produce high-quality prints which produce superior colour fidelity to colour sublimation.
Dye sublimation provides some benefits compared with inkjet printing. Firstly, the prints are dry and ready to treat when the printer leaves. Since the thermal head does not have to sweep through the print media, less moving parts will break up. The entire cycle of printing is very clean, as liquid inks are not needed to clean. These factors usually make dye-sublimation, a technology of inkjet printing, more effective.