They’re special types of printers that can usually hold rolls of paper weighing up to 45 kg, which is great for mass production. But inkjet printers can do that too. So what’s the difference?
They’re different from inkjet printers because instead of spraying the ink droplets onto the paper, they heat the solid sublimation ink and sublimate it onto the paper. The great thing about sublimation inks is that they’re water-based and therefore 100% eco-friendly.
A special type of ink needs a special type of paper to make things work. Dye-sub paper is special because its coating prevents the ink from becoming liquid and allows for the sublimation process to happen. This ensures the final result is a crisp image on the garment with no colour smudges.
If you were to try doing this with regular paper, you wouldn’t be able to achieve a direct switch between solid and gas state. And with that, you’d risk bleeding the image and messing up your design in general.
You need high heat in order to transfer the ink from paper to textile, right? Well, to make it happen, you need a machine that will roll both the paper and the material as well as expose them to temperatures between 175 and 230°C.
Calender heat press is a machine that does all that. This means you will end up with rolls of fabric with design already applied to them. All that’s left in that case is to cut and sew it.The image below shows the more typical case of dye sublimation – sublimating the pre-cut fabrics.
The process alone is 100% eco-friendly. It can even replace traditional dyeing methods that consume too much water. And that means you can save hundreds of litres of water and just use 5ml of sublimation ink to achieve the same result.
Second, the ink is water-based and contains no harmful substances. The one we use even comes with an OEKO-TEX certificate which guarantees that the product is safe for human consumption since it has no harmful substances.
The only waste that this process generates is 100% recyclable sublimation paper.
As we said before, dye sublimation uses the CMYK inks, which means all colours are available, Pantone included. From early 2020, even fluorescent colours are available.
It is possible that you won’t have your own patterns. In that case, you can take a look at our catalogue , we can make a pattern just like that one and make a sample piece accordingly.
