sublimation... any pointers?

[blue moon]

might have to start doing sublimation on mugs, mouse pads and so on. Any good pointers?

Thinking about getting the EPSON sublimation specific printer and using their inks. We have heat presses, am hoping that regular stahls stuff would work.
Debating larger format than letter, but not sure if it's worth it? from what I am seeing, posters, some pictures and puzzles are the only things that need larger than letter?

any other thoughts?

TIA!

pierre

[balloonguy]

We do not do a ton... I bought a smaller epson et2270 (tank printer). I filled it with printers jack ink and and their paper. I found a color profile on a blog that works pretty well. I am pretty sure you can use the larger et7750 (11" x 17") with similar results. The stuff I have done looks good to me.
If you want a sample I can send something. Just send me the ai file.
Matt

[Homer]

 ....shipping mugs is brutal.

[Sbrem]

It's been a few years since I did mugs, but they came out great. I believe Artanium was the ink brand, and they supplied the profiles. They came out great, really, but they are tedious. I have a Knight mug press, and immediately after taking it out of the press, immersed it in a bucket of lukewarm water to cool it down to prevent off gassing before you can peel the paper. It took quite a while to do a dozen mugs, couldn't possibly charge enough, but people do it, probably on a much larger scale, possibly with oven wraps and a lab oven to increase the production. As I said, they do come out great. Mousepads are also pretty easy, especially bleed offs. Like Homer shipping mugs can be a bear.

Steve

[Doug S]

We bought the Epson 570 sublimation printer a couple of years back and it has caused little to no trouble.  It produces great prints.  We have sublimated the mugs but like sbrem said, you couldn't charge enough because of the time it takes.  I don't think the sublimation in our case earns enough mainly because of the homebodies doing it.  It seems that as soon as we bought it, that's all you ran across on facebook.  Especially the bleached shirts because people get tired of the polyester only shirts..  I do think that fad is falling off though.  Now it's DTF everywhere you look.