Fabric: Direct Printing Vs Dye Sublimation

[Barbara Eden]

Hi Jason
The difference is in printing and dyeing as I understand it. Downside for sublimating onto fabric is that the fabric needs to be 100% Polyester.
As far as large format goes, you can get flat bed ones or drum type. Flat bed preferred as they’re more versatile.
I’m sure someone else will have a more comprehensive answer for you 🙂

Barbara

[John Thomson]

I thought that you could dye sub print onto part cotton/polyester? Or onto coated material?

John

[Steve Underhill]

you can dye sub onto 65% + polyester, but wont have the quality of 100% polyster stud like subli soft, or xpres etc.

Direct printing is basically that…….. a printer you print directly onto the garment with, looks good at first but 10 washes later looks very bad, the guy at the sign uk stand that does this showed us and was very un impressed, he maybe should have shown us the 1st wash one LOL

[Jason Xuereb]

Thanks for the replies guys.

Steve was the unit you saw one that directly heated/steamed/cured the inks after its been printed? Or was it just directly printed onto the material and left?

[Steve Underhill]

it was pre treated, printed with white underbase, then printed with colour then either heat pressed or heat cured I think he said, it was a fast t jet machine if you want to look it up, but according to a few resources the Kornit machines are the best, but by far the most costly.

[Chris Wool]

i was hoping in this thread for a answer to how they transfer a large dye sub graphic say 3×2 ft.

so how is it done please (6ft sq heat press) ?

chris

[Peter Munday]

Chris it’s all here, http://www.i-sub.co.uk/

Peter

[Chris Wool]

thanks peter very handy. i am toying with the idea as i have a large format epson spare at the moment.

chris

[Steve Underhill]

quote Chris Wool:

i was hoping in this thread for a answer to how they transfer a large dye sub graphic say 3×2 ft.

so how is it done please (6ft sq heat press) ?

chris

large format heat presses Chris.
Not cheap.

[Jason Xuereb]

With a flat bed heat press can you panel up your pressing? So you could use printed tiles do heat press a larger piece of material? Or will you see the overlaps clearly?

[Barbara Eden]

Chris
I had a flat bed press made last year it’s approx 45"x 15" , and takes an hour to get to temp 😕 😕
One of the down sides to sublimation for me, is not being able to join larger pieces-at least I’ve never found a way!

As Steve says, they can be quite costly, and heavy!
There’s quite a good thread on the T Shirt forum about them from a guy whose got a large George Knight Flat Bed. If I can find it I’ll put the link up.

Barbara

[Steve Underhill]

you cant tile dye sub very well as you always see the overlap, if you have a design with large areas of background colour you could do though.

[Jason Xuereb]

So I’d need one of those roll to roll heat transfers to do banners etc.

[Steve Underhill]

basically yes, for any decent length.

[Jason Xuereb]

Who would of thought I would I would start to do the ironing. 😀

[Barbara Eden]

Here’s the post I thought might help.
I haven’t put the link as it did go on a bit, and a lot of it was irrelevant:

Quote:-
First off, you need access to a large format scanner (at least 36 inches in width) Our facility has a 50 inch color Contex. If you can’t afford to justify the cost (18K used, 35k to 50k new); some copy centers have large format scanning services.

I think Fed-Ex / Kinko charges like $15 – $20 per scan.

Once you have located a large format scanner, then you get to the business of making a garment pattern from either an existing shirt or an existing over-the-counter pattern (fabric store).

Most people I have assisted either do custom patterns (paintball jerseys, bikinis, etc) or they cut an existing shirt into pieces.

Purchase you a roll of white drawing paper at least 30 inches in width, layout each pattern piece on it’s own individual piece of paper, draw an outline around the pattern(s) (doesn’t need to be perfect but it shouldn’t look like a 3 year old either), scan in the outline and WHAALA….you have a digital pattern to use for creating a shirt, pants, bikini, jersey or whatever you want to make.

Once you make your digital pattern, bring it into Photoshop, magic wand the outside of the pattern and erase it, now magic wand the shirt pattern and cut to a new layer to get just the shirt pattern by itself, then stroke the shirt with a line of color, at this point I reduce the fill properties to 0 and then you are left with just a pattern outline. (disclaimer: i am a photoshop novice so there may be a better way to do this.)

Of course there are a few tweaks here and there, but for the most part that is all that is needed.

The biggest mistake I have seen people make is using the actual scanned in pattern(s) to try and produce a shirt. (filling the outline with the actual artwork)

The digital pattern is used as a guide for mocking up / justifying the design, letters, numbers, etc…….in photoshop, the design pattern outline is the very top layer. You turn it off and on as needed to assure you have all pertinent graphics in the correct position. Once your pattern is printed and imaged to fabric, then you return to your pattern and cut it out. If you produce your artwork in the actual shape of the pattern, you are left with no wiggle room for sewing. You always need a little bleed fabric for hemming, surging and the like.

However, once you’re confident, you can also increase the size of your digital pattern by a few percents to compensate for cut and sew bleed, then you can actually design your digital patterns. Once printed and pressed, you can go straight to the scissors and cut around each piece without the need for pattern layout I have clients that do it both ways, so i can’t say which is better. One is surely faster, but you need to know what your doing to enlarge all patterns equally or you will ruin a ton of fabric and waste a lot of money as well.

That is basically it. Unfortunately I have only witnessed a shirt manufactured from A – Z on a few occasions. We either provide the transfers only or we pre-fab by printing and pressing the fabric and shipping it to be finished elsewhere.

Many times, confidentiality agreements keep me from going into detail about companies we help…but here is a company that produces paintball shirts (nuff said ) Animal Paintball | Welcome. They are one of the premiere businesses in the paintball market.

The key is very dynamic graphics; apparel is apparel but in the case of custom imaged apparel, the graphics make all the difference.

Sorry this was so long but I hope it helps,
End of quote.

Barbara