Does anyone use a color laser printer for sublimation? I am going out of my mind trying to get my ink jet working consitantly. So I am thinking of switching to laser seems like it would be more reliable. Your thoughts?
I have the okidata laser with dye sub toners.. I got them from Al at
AT Transfers.. Ill find the web site and post it in a few. The draw back to my system is that i can only do up to legal sized paper so im limited to no bigger than 8.5 x 14. the good thing about my system is i can dye sub onto 50/50 blend shirts and have them come out great.
What dye sub system do you have? What problems are you having? Maybe someone on this board can help you work through them. As for another dye sub laser company...I believe there was one in CA that was named ColorStar or something similar. There is some info on the laser sublimation at the Dye Sub.Org website I believe. You here mixed results about this process as well.
I will say that too many people buy into the smoke / mirror show of how great sublimation is and how much money you are going to make. Don't get me wrong, you can make great money at it. But, just like a DTG machine - you need to do certain steps to have it work properly and not clog up on you. I know too many decorators decide to go with a smaller, less expensive Epson printer with a bulk system. These are usually the ones that experience the most problems. I can assure you that the more professional series of Epson printers do a much better job on printing sublimation than the smaller ones with a lot less head aches.
What dye sub system do you have? What problems are you having? Maybe someone on this board can help you work through them. As for another dye sub laser company...I believe there was one in CA that was named ColorStar or something similar. There is some info on the laser sublimation at the Dye Sub.Org website I believe. You here mixed results about this process as well.
I will say that too many people buy into the smoke / mirror show of how great sublimation is and how much money you are going to make. Don't get me wrong, you can make great money at it. But, just like a DTG machine - you need to do certain steps to have it work properly and not clog up on you. I know too many decorators decide to go with a smaller, less expensive Epson printer with a bulk system. These are usually the ones that experience the most problems. I can assure you that the more professional series of Epson printers do a much better job on printing sublimation than the smaller ones with a lot less head aches.
Hope this helps.
Mark
Mark,
I am using an epson C88 with Artanium inks. I am using now the same printer with same inks with refillable carts. The issue that I have is always the same, the print heads are clogged up or my ink seems to drain from my carts. My main issue is that I dont use the printer everyday and from what i read if you dont use it every day the heads will dry and clog. It never seems to fail that when I need to fill an order, my printer doesnt work. So I am looking to get out of the ink jet side all together and either go with a laser Dye Sub system or something like Duracotton. I just waste more time and money using the ink jet system. I honestly have nothing but problems with ink jet. I started out using a 1280 which I still have on a sawgrass bulk system, that was even more of a nightmare than the C88...
Susan (Mystysue)
We have the Oki C5500. We have been looking for sub toner. I hvae emailed the people from your lnk to see if they work with ours.
Did you do Inkjet before ? If so is the laser better output ? Can you tell a difference ? And can you switch back and forth between normal cartridges and the sub ones ?
freebird.. I dont know if they have them for that printer or not..
as to switching back and forth.. Its not really feasible as each toner cartridge has its own drum so you would be having to clean out the drum and it would waste toner and jsut make a big mess..
unless you bought 4 new drums so you had seperate drums for dye sub and oem toner.. .. Which isnt really to cost effective in the long run.. .. Ive never used inkjet dye sub, I got the laser system becuse i dont like 100% poly shirts.. and with the soft coat pre treatment i can get great results on the 50/50 shirts. I didnt want to get the inkjet because,, In my shop (which is a sign shop) we dont make shirts daily and i didnt want to deal with the clogging of the heads etc.. The draw back to the dye sub printer is the size.. It can only print pages that are 8.5 inches wide.. by however long.
Thanks for the info.
They got back to me right away on a saturday ! Impressive. Sadly tho my Oki is not one of the ones that their sub toners work with. Par for the course for me :-(
Laser Sublimation 
