Anyone know about dye sublimation printers? (spec me)

NickK

NickK

NickK

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The Mrs is into Cricut and has used that for producing t-shirts (she cuts/makes/prints the bits then uses the press to transfer). However she's interested in dye sublimation printers.

Anyone have experience of such printers for making t-shirts etc?

Budget wise - it's not going to be thousands or high hundreds so perhaps £300 or their abouts? It only needs to be the printer (bonus points for Mac OS/iOS)
 
katie279 said:
Oooh, I'd be interested in this too! I saw one yesterday - they seem cool, but I'd like to know if they're anything like inkjet printers (ie the worst hardware on earth for cynical pricing, market abuse and designed unreliability!!)
Click to expand...

If I find out any decent info/get one I'll update this thread :)
 
Haven't got the info to hand but we have a laser cutter for my partner's business - we did a lot of reading about sublimation as it can be transferred onto sheet acrylic before laser cutting.

It turns out there is a series of, I want to say Epson but might be Canon, inkjet printers. Which can be easily converted to sublimation. I think it's as simple as swapping the ink tanks. It's actually possible to do it with lots of different models but this particular series is popular for reliability and ease of conversion. I'll have a poke later - knowing the way the world works in 2023, several YouTubers will have mentioned it and those models will be unreasonably expensive now :P
 
Ah that's really interesting - although one of the things I was wanting to check was whether they were godawfully unreliable like the mess that is the world of Inkjet printers... Absolutely fed up with them having bought three expensive ones over the last five years and they struggle to even print anything reliably....!

Was hoping sublimation ones would be more reliable style (like laserjets)
 
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katie279 said:
Ah that's really interesting - although one of the things I was wanting to check was whether they were godawfully unreliable like the mess that is the world of Inkjet printers... Absolutely fed up with them having bought three expensive ones over the last five years and they struggle to even print anything reliably....!

Was hoping sublimation ones would be more reliable style (like laserjets)
Click to expand...
1. Printers are the devil. Literally the worst sector of electronics and consumer goods. I have been doing repair cafés and tracking e-waste etc for over 10 years and printer manufacturers are just criminal.

2. Inkjet are the worst! I have refused to own an Inkjet printer for my entire adult life. I took a used laser printer from my mum's in about 2009. It's still going - she's had close to 10 inket printers since.

3. I think the recommended model (partner recalls it was an EcoTank) is favoured for reliability/not drying up :) Edit: A quick Google found at least one person with the typical inkjet clogging issues from infrequent use...
 
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You and me are in the same camp - I'm amazed that their abusive practices haven't been tackled by regulators, it's ludicrous how their reliability has plummeted in the last 20 years... all corporate greed.

I've been thinking colour laser, any recommendations?? Ideally I'd like an A3 colour one - I quite rarely need photographic quality, but colour would be useful
 
Honestly we just have an old colour laser I took from work when we were shutting our office in 2020! Not very up to speed on tech as it just works ;) Think we've only bought one toner each for the B+W and colour printers we have, ever.
 
So the Epson ET-2850 arrived and it’a going back as it’s a massive security risk.
To install using a smart phone/tablet you need to use their smart virtual assistant to program the WiFi into the printer. However before that it requests your physical location and then requests your WiFi password. Err no. What happened to press the WPS button on the printer and router??

So basically Epson get your physical location, your wifi and password..
 
So the fun..
Epson ET-2850 or 15 .. didn't have a screen, couldn't get it to even recognise the wifi (with Epson's help)
Epson ET-2820 .. with a screen, wouldn't recognise the wifi (using the screen based WiFi SSID+password input) until I changed the name of my router 2.4GHz connection (it was the same as my 5GHz from the same router). It appears Epson's WiFi can only work with 2.4GHz and to make it worse gets confused by the two being the same.. to the point it simply gives up. Speaking of giving up.. the screen went white and then nothing .. either off or white.. but the printer worked enough to update the firmware.. nope - still white screen of death. Back that one went.
Epson ET-2820 number 2.. is waiting in it's box until the weekend.

What I have also found out:
HP - aren't suitable as the printer cooks the ink causing sublimation and then gumming up etc.
Cannon - aren't suitable but some reports of a replacement head (a bit drastic) can convert it permanently to sublimation.

So someone will be testing out the ET-2820 this weekend fingers crossed.

This is for the mrs' indirect transfer via special paper to t-shirts etc.
 
Ok so first tests :D

First important point - ICC colour profile.
This is the mapping between the image colour and the ink being used in the printer.
A little bit of a pain but A-Sub (people that make the ink and paper) have an ICM profile that's basically the ICC profile for Microsoft. It's possible to convert that to an apple ICC profile by:
* change the filename from a .icm to a .icc suffix
* Install the profile in /Library/ColorSync/Profiles
* change the permissions (chmod or file properties) so it can be RW
* repair the profile because the MD5 hash in it is bad (Microsoft but not apple). Todo that use ColourSync profile repair after verifying all the profiles.
* In colour sync go into the devices tab and find the Epson LT-2820, then select the custom profile you have just repaired (use the down arrow and not the 'open' button). This sets the standard->Epson with A-Sub ink.
Then just print out as normal - the printer is now "hard coded" to use that colour mapping with that ink. You can change it back at any time but the default/standard colour profile comes out very red. The new ICC profile comes out perfectly. Just don't attempt to print with yet another colour profile from the app (such as assigning a colour profile in Preview for example) or you will get a the wrong profile and thus the wrong colours out of the printer.

Second - set the printer to Quiet Print (ie slow speed printing) in the printer LCD settings. It will now stay like this.

Thirdly - select the right print paper type
The prints came out good but sub-ink on standard paper comes out faint/pale but the right colours - even with "Best". Once you change the paper to "Matte" in the printer LCD print settings and then use "Photopaper Matte" then the image that results if both more vivid and better definition. Set the quality to "Best".
You can even see this printing difference (selecting the right paper type) with the standard paper.

So outcome - this is using a photo test image - and I'll explain the differences as she's explained to me.

RvaYTv5.jpg


This is her test cotton t-shirt.. testing (a) heat levels, (b) heat duration, and (c) backing/non-backing etc. She used the little Cricut iron thing with the thermal ironing pad rather than using the big Cricut press thing.

Top left - with the backing support sheet material from A-sub, the lines through it are the edge of the support and not the ink jet clogging. So the woman is part on the backing sheet and part not .. so easily broken by stretch of the cotton. The backing material sticks to the back of the t-shirt but not like a patch more like it melts into the material. It makes it a little stiffer than the cotton without.

Top right without the backing support - not a good transfer.

Bottom left - again with the support material.

The colours that come out are vibrant too if the back sheet is used - we were worried about that but it seems to come out great.

Next up is the washing machine test.
 
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