Wide range of applications wins fans for sublimation
If you think D ye Sub is a Welsh submariner then you could be missing out on a low-cost technology with the potential to grab a bigger share of your existing customers’ print spend and open up a range of profitable new markets. It’s not Dai; it’s dye – as in a colouring. And the sub bit is short for sublimation, the process in which a material goes directly from a solid to a gas. Special dye-sub inks can be printed using a standard inkjet printer, the clever bit comes in the next stage. Using a press to apply heat and pressure the ink then sublimates and penetrates the substrate. As it cools it solidifies and is tightly bound under the surface resulting in a smooth and robust image. The crucial thing for making dye-sub work is polyester, due to its ability to absorb dye. For textile applications there are a huge range of polyester-based fabrics and for product decoration there are ‘blanks’ with a polyester coating to accept the ink. “The message I try to propagate is that wha