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September 2000
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Since we wrote this article, full color laser printer sublimation has started to become a force on the market. We suggest you read the below article first, and then to learn more about this method, go to colourmagic.info.
Dye Sublimation Systems
Which type should you buy?
The two most common types of sublimation systems currently in use are single-color laser desktop printers, full-color desktop inkjet printers.
In deciding which type of system to buy (or buy first), you should almost ignore what the system can do and make sure it does what you need it to do. In the excitement of deciding to start, or add to a business, many forget this crucial consideration.
Screwdrivers don't make good hammers, and hammers won't saw wood. To make money (and eliminate a lot of aggravation), make sure your tools will do the job, before you buy.
Each dye sublimation system has different abilities and is best suited for specific types of sublimation and production needs. No one system gives you the best of everything, for every type of product or production need. There are many tradeoffs in this business and you need to decide what are the most important benefits to you.
These are some of the main questions you need to answer before buying anything. What are the main products I will be sublimating? Will I probably be sublimating those products every day, several times a week, or only occasionally. When I do sublimate products, what will be my likely volume: low, medium or high? What type of images will I usually be sublimating: text, logos, photographs, line drawings, original color artwork, etc.? How does what I think I want to do, fit in with what I am already doing? If I am eventually going to have more than one system, which one will be profitable the soonest? Do I really need to make my own transfers or would an excellent supplier be a better bet? Am I sure that I understand what I will need to do, to start offering the process I select? What is my primary business reasons for my decision?
As you consider the above questions, here is an overview of the two systems, to help you with your answers.
Monochrome Laser Printer Dye Sublimation
A monochrome laser printer is an ordinary desktop printer that holds one cartridge and therefore only prints one sublimation color at a time. Two different colors can be printed on the same transfer but it requires printing one color, switching cartridges, and then running the paper back through, to print the second color.
The most common sublimation colors are black, blue, red and green. The shade of color cannot be changed. If you have a bright red toner cartridge, for example, you cannot print pink.
Dye sublimation cartridges are loaded with a special toner powder that produces heat transfers for sublimation. The printer itself prints in the same way as it does with a regular cartridge. The only difference in print method is that a medium print density is used for printing most documents, with a regular cartridge. A low print density is used for most sublimation prints, and the print is reversed, to make a transfer.
It does not require a separate laser printer for regular and sublimation printing. The cartridge unit is completely self-contained and when you switch cartridges there is no "residue" left behind. Just like regular documents, laser printer transfers are made on ordinary cheap copier paper.
Dye sublimation cartridges are produced for hundreds of different older and new laser printers. This can be an attractive benefit. You may already own a printer that will work very nicely. Even if you don't own a printer, a solid old workhorse, like a HP III, can be bought completely refurbished for about $250. If you need to buy a printer, check with a sublimation cartridge supplier first. Some desktop laser printers (older and new) print great documents, but not good sublimation transfers.
A typical 120 gram dye sublimation toner cartridge runs about $240 with a yield of 1,500 to 2,000 prints and an average transfer cost of 10-15 cents a page.
Considering price and appearance, laser printer transfers are the best for colored metals, especially since 90% of it is done in black. As another expert recently wrote, "If the need is to cheaply letter lots and lots of good looking metal plates there is no choice. There is no (better) option." We agree. An entire laser printer transfer costs less than what a sheet of inkjet paper costs. On colored metal, black laser printed transfers can look close to screen-printing. Inkjet prints do not.
The most common sublimatable metals are gold, silver, bronze and copper colored. Laser printed transfers go down heavy enough that the color of the metal won't bleed through and "gray-out" the transfer color. Inkjet transfers cannot print as heavy (even in black), so the metal color does bleed through and dulls the entire print.
The exception to this is on white metals. On white sublimatable metals (or white anything else for that matter) the inkjet transfer is far superior in appearance to a single color laser printer.
Depending upon your needs and circumstances, laser printer sublimation offers a few other benefits. The learning curve is very short and simple. If you are already using a graphics or desktop publishing program, you can be up and running in about 30 minutes. If you don't already have one, a good, simple program can be bought for $49.95 to $69.95 and working basics for layouts and production learned in a few hours.
Last, but not least, is the fact that because of low startup and operating costs, together with low material (the metal) costs and very high productivity, you can enjoy a very quick, and high, return on investment.
The high return on investment comes not so much from the plate itself, but from how it is used.
If you are an awards company, you can crank out hundreds of trophy plates an hour. One awards company did 528, 7x10 plaque plates, in one day (whew). A vinyl sign company can produce small interior signs very quickly and cheaply. Because there is no weeding, a sign company can also offer small desk signs, ID plates and other items that are too small for vinyl cutters.
An ad specialty company can have a very nice competitive advantage. Almost everything you do is imprinted, but oftentimes your customer doesn't give you enough time, to get it done. Being able to quickly print and attach plates to blank products can make the difference in getting the order. Many badge companies hot stamp logos and then engrave variable text, one at a time, on each badge. By ganging the badges together, eight to ten could be sublimated with logo and text, in less than a minute.
Single color sublimation may not sound as "exciting" to you as full color sublimation (following and the top of the page). However, considering the profits and ease of start-up, anyone just starting in sublimation should definitely keep it in mind. In business, the bottom line is: The Bottom Line.
While laser printer dye sublimation can be very profitable, the above are only examples. As with everything else in business, your skill, creativity and drive are the most important factors.
Inkjet Printer Dye Sublimation
From a price viewpoint, only three are practical for most users who want to reproduce full color transfers. They are the Epson 3000, the Epson 980, and the Epson 900 (when you can find them).
There are other systems, but they are in the $5,000 to $15,000 entry level range and will not be discussed here.
Regardless of the type of printer, sublimation inkjet printers need the same type of micro Piezo print head technology. This type of technology forces the ink through the tiny jets. This is important because it is the toner in the inks that does the sublimation, not the liquid itself. "Gravity" type printers would quickly clog, if they would work at all.
You will need to dedicate your inkjet printer to printing just sublimation transfers. There is not any sublimation ink supplier that suggests using your printer to also print regular documents.
Another important point to consider is that a desktop inkjet printer does not produce full color, it reproduces it, with limitations. A desktop inkjet is not an awesome "zillion" dollar Heidelburg printing press and cannot produce that type of transfer print clarity.
If you are printing original prints, or a pretty butterfly on a coffee cup, or a club logo that has three or four basic colors you will usually come out like a champ. It is much tougher, if you are producing 500 T-shirts with a multi-color corporate logo and the purchasing agent is demanding a plus or minus 5% PMS color match. In fact, I would do one first, and get them to sign off on it.
The above statement is not meant to discourage you, but rather to help you understand a very important fact. Accurate (as possible) full color reproduction, on a sublimatable product, is not going to be a simple one-day "plug-it-in, print-it-out, pop-it-on" proposition.
Yes, full color sublimation is being done (and quite profitably) by many. The learning curve, however, is much longer and more difficult for full color than the simple, single color laser sublimation, used for printing on metals.
The reason for this is quite simple. Many more variables affect color shade, when printing full color. Great color reproduction requires learning about inks+ transfer paper+resolution+printer+ substrate (type of coating/material) and how they relate. Learning about these factors is not that difficult, just expect to spend some time to learn the tools of the trade.
Within the proper boundaries of what should be expected from an inkjet desktop system, professional sublimation printers, who understand the process, are getting very good full color results on whites and very light colored products.
These products include all types of polyester blends (at least 65/35) of wearables, mousepads and other "soft" goods. Also, "hard" goods that have a polymer coating (transferring takes place in the coating, not the product) such as white aluminum, mugs, tiles, plates, melamine plaques, etc., are being sublimated.
On "whites" ("soft and hard") the inkjet produces superior images (even one color) than does a single color laser printer. Inkjet sublimation should be your first consideration if your products are going to be primarily white.
The Epson 3000, 980 and 900 can produce very nice looking prints. The Epson 3000 costs between $1,000 - $1,200, the 980 around $250 - $300 and we have seen a few 900's advertised at $99 (the 900 has been officially discontinued but there are some still around). The 3000 can produce 13x19 full bleed prints, while the 980 and 900 is limited to about an 8x10 size.
3000 printers have a separate cartridge for each color (black, cyan, magenta and yellow). The 980's and 900's have two cartridges: one for black, and one that holds the other three colors.
Perhaps the three most important considerations in deciding which Epson is best for you are- cost of running the system, size of prints needed and print quality.
Inkjet cartridges cannot be refilled. When it is empty, it must be replaced with a new cartridge. In the case of the 980 and 900, however, if one of the three primary colors runs out, you must replace the entire cartridge, even if there is a lot of the other two colors remaining.
Depending upon your circumstances, this is not necessarily a disadvantage. For example, if you will be producing a lot of general full color transfers, all three colors should get low at about the same time. Even if you are occasionally producing transfers with one dominant color, the lower price of the 980 or 900 printer may make it more desirable. Also, if you know that it is very unlikely that you will need bigger than 8x10 prints, the 980 and 900 may make more "cents."
Special Note-
It should be noted that there are several ink delivery methods currently on the market that have the label of "bulk ink" delivery.
In your mind, picture an "I.V. inkjet bag" connected to each color. As one color runs out, you just connect a new "transfusion."
While this method has great promise, the technology is far from perfect. Some users report no problems, while some report constant problems. Another point is the fact that the method has not been in use long enough for anyone to know for sure how many times the cartridge can be refilled.
However, this is an important method to help hold costs down. Because of this, we feel there will be a serious effort by suppliers to improve this technology and it will one day become standard.
For right now, if you know you are going to produce regular high volume (and especially if you need bigger than 8x10 prints), you can safely consider the Epson 3000. Even moderate sublimation volume that you know will require a majority of one color (corporate and school logos, for example) may justify the higher costs of the 3000.
The savings from using the 3000 come from lower operating costs and reduced waste. Inkjet cartridge suppliers estimate the average savings at 18% to 28%, over the 980 and 900 two-cartridge system.
Transfer (ink only) costs are reported at a low of $0.77 to a high of $1.50 per 8x10 transfer and we are sure this is an accurate average. For "real world" production costing, however, the reader should know that the figures came from comparing equally printed squares of 100% CMYK.
Since "real world" colors are most often blends that equal more than 100% total, sublimators should develop their own cost estimates based on the type of work they actually do.
The last factor to consider is print quality. The 3000's are older type printers and, while they deliver nice prints, they do not print with the clarity of the newer 900 and 980. You may want to request samples from a supplier, if this is an issue.
A word of caution is offered about the Epson 850. Epson has discontinued this printer. There are still a lot of new and refurbished ones available, and the prices are usually attractive, but don't get them for sublimation. The printer had so many problems that many early users wanted to throw it out the window, without opening it first.
In Conclusion
As you have learned, each sublimation system has specific abilities, best suited for particular sublimatable products, markets, production and budget needs.
Actually, since the best abilities of the two systems are so different, the most successful sublimation printers usually wind up doing both types of sublimation.
For most, the purpose of buying equipment is to make a profit. Spending what is needed to get the job done is very cheap. Spending anything (regardless of price), on something that won’t get the job done is very costly.
The above article is: Copyright 2001, Alpha Supply Company all rights reserved and may not be copied or reproduced without the written permission of the author.