Sublimation

[mimosatexas]

i love the $1.99 transfers from S&K mfg personally.  Very rich colors and fast turn times.

As far as troubleshooting, buy some heat transfer tape and work slow.  If the transfer sheet moves as you open the press you will ghost the image and it will ruin the garment.  Biggest issue I have seen by far. 

[XG Print]

i love the $1.99 transfers from S&K mfg personally.  Very rich colors and fast turn times.

As far as troubleshooting, buy some heat transfer tape and work slow.  If the transfer sheet moves as you open the press you will ghost the image and it will ruin the garment.  Biggest issue I have seen by far.

I have been impressed with their pricing and quality on the sublimated transfers.

[GraphicDisorder]

i love the $1.99 transfers from S&K mfg personally.  Very rich colors and fast turn times.

As far as troubleshooting, buy some heat transfer tape and work slow.  If the transfer sheet moves as you open the press you will ghost the image and it will ruin the garment.  Biggest issue I have seen by far.

Minimums on that?

[GraphicDisorder]

Brandt-

There are at least a couple of places you can order sublimation transfers online. Since you've already got a heat press, I suggest ordering some sample transfers & various poly & poly/cotton blends, and doing some tests that way. You can get a feel for the process with very little investment. (One we've used: http://mytransfersource.com/)

We've done this, and tried selling some, too, to see if we want to get all the way into this. We have yet to generate enough interest to justify getting all the way into it. So we just order in transfers for the random odd job where it's a good fit. We're pretty much in the same spot as mimosa^^^. (In fact, the main people we do this for is personal friends who want 1 or 2 shirts - people I hate to say "no" to. I rarely make money on it.)

And since you asked for noob advice, I'll say this: dealing with sublimation ain't like printing - or even pressing normal transfers. It requires learning another skill set entirely. I found the fabrics to be way more finicky - trying to avoid press lines is really aggravating. And transfers like to curl, which makes it hard to keep them in position. You can spray them with tack, but if it doesn't mist perfectly, and "spits" instead, you'll get little dots in your print. And the list of little things to overcome goes on.

I found that unless someone needs a tiny quantity of shirts, I'd rather print 4c process, and can make more money doing it. It seems to me that with dye sub, it's best to either go small, or go really big: either do kiosk-style one-offs that have a huge markup; or get all the way into it &  be able to do full garments, and establish yourself with clients who want that & are willing to pay for it.

That said, I'd love to hear from people who've succesfully integrated this into their shops, & how they've done it.

 

Great info.

[aauusa]

the issue you guys are having is with the sheet moving is paper the transfer is printed on.   We use a paper which has a little bit of tack in it when it is heated.  this allows for the paper to stay where you want it rather than having to use spray tack and it will not move when you raise your heat press.   not sure what paper you get with your transfers but it should not have any curling either.  better paper and paper with a tack is the best option.   for the crease lines you can get a rubber pad from stahls which for us goes under the teflon protection cover on the platten.  this allows you to minimize the crease as the edge of the paper is absorbed by the rubber pad.

hope this helps and does not confuse

[XG Print]

i love the $1.99 transfers from S&K mfg personally.  Very rich colors and fast turn times.

As far as troubleshooting, buy some heat transfer tape and work slow.  If the transfer sheet moves as you open the press you will ghost the image and it will ruin the garment.  Biggest issue I have seen by far.

Minimums on that?

I would have to get on there and look but I think you can order 1 sheet at that price

[Prince Art]

the issue you guys are having is with the sheet moving is paper the transfer is printed on.   We use a paper which has a little bit of tack in it when it is heated.  this allows for the paper to stay where you want it rather than having to use spray tack and it will not move when you raise your heat press.   not sure what paper you get with your transfers but it should not have any curling either.  better paper and paper with a tack is the best option.   for the crease lines you can get a rubber pad from stahls which for us goes under the teflon protection cover on the platten.  this allows you to minimize the crease as the edge of the paper is absorbed by the rubber pad.

hope this helps and does not confuse

I've heard of the sticky paper, but haven't found a source for transfers that uses is, so I haven't tried it. But I've thought if we were to do this often, it would be a must.

Have not tried the pad from Stahl's, & don't quite understand how you've described using it.But if it's easy enough to use, awesome. We use the Vapor foam on apparel, which goes under the garment, and is supposed to be trimmed so that your transfer sheet hangs over it. It's supposed to let the paper edges fall down & not get pressed. It more or less works - but it means either trimming new foam for every new transfer size, or only using a few standardized sheets sizes with foam to match. The latter means fewer images ganged per sheet. Either way, I've thus far found it a labor-intensive process.

[Prosperi-Tees]

i love the $1.99 transfers from S&K mfg personally.  Very rich colors and fast turn times.

As far as troubleshooting, buy some heat transfer tape and work slow.  If the transfer sheet moves as you open the press you will ghost the image and it will ruin the garment.  Biggest issue I have seen by far.

Minimums on that?

No minimums

[GraphicDisorder]

i love the $1.99 transfers from S&K mfg personally.  Very rich colors and fast turn times.

As far as troubleshooting, buy some heat transfer tape and work slow.  If the transfer sheet moves as you open the press you will ghost the image and it will ruin the garment.  Biggest issue I have seen by far.

Minimums on that?

No minimums

Nice that might be a good idea to try before we get nuts with it.

[Nation03]

I just got a small sublimation setup to take care of the "I need 1 shirt of this photograph" clients. At first I didn't want any part of it, but after getting 3 emails or calls in a row about it, I figured there has to be some money to be made here.

Basically all I ordered was an Epson 1430 with sublimation ink cartridges. Ordered some sublimation paper on Amazon and I believe I'm good to go. I have some stuff planned for it next week so I haven't even gotten a chance to try it yet, not sure what I got myself into, but I'm hoping it's pretty straight forward.

Whole setup with the paper cost me around $800.

Having read this thread, I may have wanted to check out these transfer places first, but I do all my marketing online, and I'm pretty confident the printer will pay for itself shortly. If not, I guess I just have a backup 1430 so it isn't a total loss.

[Prosperi-Tees]

Be sure to run it at least every other day.  You get a sub ink clog and usually you are done especially on Epsons small format