Discuss the various aspects of heat press technology. Transfer paper, inks, plastisol transfers, vinyl cutters, printers, commercial usage, durability, suppliers, etc.
Hi everyone, I am a greener than green grasshopper to all of this. I have been following and reading posts here for the past several days and this is my first post.
My partner and I have been creating designs and screenprinting apparel for the equestrian lover for about a year now. We are about to venture beyond apparel and start to offer items like mugs, ceramic tiles, and the like. I have been reading about how to produce our images on these types of items. However, it seems that the more I read, the more confused I get. We offer simple one color simple line designs and we want to do this ourselves.
My questions are:
Is sublimation the way to go?
What equipment would I need? a kiln?
Is a water type of decal feasible?
Is pad printing an economical alternative?
I'm looking to use a better quality substrate and want a long lasting image that can withstand many washings. Thanks much and I want to let you all know that I have learned more in a few days from reading your posts and answers than I have in a couple weeks of web articles.
Thanks, if I do go the sublimation route, is it that I only need to add a printer to my hardware set up and a mug press for my equipment set up? Any good printer recommendations? The Epson CX-88? Is is really that good for the price?
For your tiles, you need to consider the end use of the tile, complexity of graphic and volume.
Dye sublimation works great for interior applications which do not come in contact with abrasive elements or exposed to UV light. Dye sublimation is acceptable for walls, showers and floors (glass tiles only). You would only need a sublimation printer and heat press. It is inexpensive to print one-up tiles.
Tiles imaged with fired on decals can be used anywhere. They are much more durable, but the cost is high for small quantities. Decals can be printed by screen printing or laser printer. You will need a kiln.
We do a lot of dye-sub work. I can tell you the following about it.
Blanks: Ceramic is heavy and is costly to ship. When you order you need to consider shipping costs. Coastal has free shipping over $199 but they charge more per case than other suppliers. So you will need to consider the number of cases you need when you order. Coastal becomes cost effective over larger orders. Also, this stuff is fragile. I have had a lot of damage, up to 35% per case from UPS. Inspect everything when you get it and call the vendor when you have a problem.
Sub standard blanks: They are out there. If your surface to sublimate is irregular you will get crappy results. Again, inspecting the blanks when you get them is important. Most vendors get the blanks from the same place so for example, if you want the 22oz gold rimmed beer steins, you will find the mold used was bad and the surface is very irregular. Most vendors have stopped shipping them but a few still are. Keep this in mind if you can't find a particular product.
What are the good points? The printed results are stunning. You will get vibrant colors and great results with dyesub. What we do is make a few samples and take them to an event. From that we get orders. Here are some examples. We make a custom named coffee mug and took it to a coffee club, a group of guys that gets together every Monday morning to chat, eat donuts and drink coffee. We have had a number of orders for mugs and we are now doing sets of mugs with particular designs that have customizable elements. We just did a sample 20oz beer stein and will be taking it to a beer drinking club and see how it does.
Disappointments The fabrics (shirts) have been a big disappointment. We have had nothing but problems with dye-sub shirts and other fabrics. They are much more expensive for the blanks and getting good results are very difficult. We are still working on fixing this problem and we had a long talk with the Vapor Apparel boys at the ISS show.
Ink and Paper Sawgrass is about your only choice and they don't recommend high release paper like TexPrint. I have had nothing but trouble with high release papers and Sawgrass printer drivers so we use the Epson driver for high release papers.
Presses We have the Geo Knight presses, DK3 and DK20S. They are good presses but they run hot. The mug press runs a little hot but the flat press runs about 45F hotter than the press indicator. Get an instant read thermometer to check your temps.
Bulk Ink System Get this if you can afford it. Actually, you can't afford not to do it. It only hurts once.
Other methods to print
Screen printing and pad printing are an option but the results are not as nice. With pad printing you are limited to one color unless you can figure out registration for multiple colors. For screen printing you will have the traditional screen printing problems of setup, cleanup, chemicals, etc.
Let me know if you have any specific questions and I can help you out. You can reply here or PM me.
Question about printing on ceramic 
