What Is A Sublimation Blow-Out Sheet?

A teflon sheet is a great way to protect your heat press AND your garment!

What the heck is a sublimation blowout sheet?  It’s that sheet of teflon that came with your heat press and it has two purposes in the sublimation process.  The first is to protect the surface of the substrate from any dirt, grease, stray ink, or whatever on the heat press during pressing.  The second is to prevent any stray ink on the transfer paper or substrate from migrating onto the pressing surfaces of the heat press.

While most people use the teflon sheet supplied with the press, eventually it can become soiled in which case it loses its effectiveness.  A great alternative is to use blank newsprint, butcher paper, or silicone sheets.  It’s cheap and quite absorbent, but also a one-time-use product, so discard after every pressing. Continue reading “What Is A Sublimation Blow-Out Sheet?”

Choosing The Right Sublimation Printer

Much like everything else, printers are not all created equally, thus you should do some research using a scientific approach rather than just pouncing on the cheapest unit you can find.  Your first step is to identify which printers are capable of processing sublimation dye, so that you aren’t considering any non-supported printers.  Sawgrass produces three sublimation solutions and lists the supported printers for each one online: SubliJet IQ, SubliJet-R and ArTainium. Continue reading “Choosing The Right Sublimation Printer”

Sublimation Basics – Image Mirroring

There is nothing more exasperating than to have a picture perfect press job, only to discover that the lettering on the final product is backwards.  With sublimation you must always mirror the design when printing.  It may seem like a backwards approach at first, but when you think through the production process it really does make sense.  Continue reading “Sublimation Basics – Image Mirroring”