Our great friends at Unisub, who manufacturer many of our sublimation and heat transfer blanks, always have great ideas and suggestions when it comes to how to best sublimate. Here are a few of our favorites!
Don’t Give in to Pressure!
A common error when creating sublimation items is the application of too much pressure when pressing them. People often mash down the platen much harder than it needs to go.
It’s actually very simple to tell when you have proper pressure. When you get just a small amount of resistance from the handle (where your arm tenses up a little bit), that’s when you’re there.
However, the opposite can be just as bad. Make sure the plate isn’t just dropping down onto the bottom. Balance is the key.
Keep It In Line!
One key component to a quality print job is proper print head alignment. As the printer goes on with more and more jobs, the head can gradually shake out of line and cause fuzziness and even ink blotches.
However, every printer has a simple solution to this. Under the printer’s controls, you should find a Head Alignment option. It’s a simple process that takes just a few minutes and doesn’t use much ink.
We recommend doing this about once every two weeks or so to ensure that your printer is putting out the best quality it possibly can.
Samples for Testing
Keep blank samples of the various substrates you use near your heat press. When it’s time to switch to a different material, stick the sample under the press and use it to get your pressure where it needs to be.
Doing so helps take the guess work out of setup and keeps you from having to risk good pieces to get your pressure right. Be sure to write what each sample piece is on the surface with a permanent marker. Better safe than sorry, right?
Don’t Get Burned
A helpful tool when working with sublimation is a good oven mitt. However, not all mitts are made equal.
A cheap mitt can often start to unravel and leave fibers and strings floating about the area and even
onto your press. As a result, these fibers may come off onto your items when heating, producing bad finished products.
However, finer quality mitts are available in many places. These are made of tighter woven fabric and better material. There are even some that have rubber and/or teflon padding on them (like the one seen here). These types of oven mitts will help protect both your products and your fingers.
Design Tip: Fonts
A common “rule” among graphic designers is to not use more than two to three fonts in a single piece of artwork. This is a useful guideline to go by as it keeps your work clean,
flowing and void of distraction. If the viewer has too many fonts shoved in their face, they get distracted by them and lose their focus on the piece at hand.
Still using Arial and Times New Roman? There are thousands of fonts out there besides the default ones on your system. You can find lots of them at websites such as Font Freak and 1001 Fonts. These sites feature unlicensed fonts at no charge, but there are also sites where you can purchase fully licensed ones.
Gang Printing
Gang printing is a simple but effective method of printing sublimation transfers. When printing transfers for your products, squeeze as many as you can onto a page, just leaving enough room for tape.
Whether there are multiple copies of one piece, or an array of many, the process is all the same. If you
are using various substrates, simply cut them apart. However, if all of the pieces are on the same material and same thickness, you can can skip the cutting and press the whole page at once. Or, use jigs for easy gang printing as well!
Fast, easy, and efficient; what better way to print?
Tools of the Trade
As you probably know, Unisub has many products featuring put-together wooden components. When screwing a lot of these together, it can really tire out your arms. However, you can pick up a very useful tool from your local hardware store: a ratchet screwdriver.
Ratchet screwdrivers, as their name suggests, are screwdrivers with a locking ratchet motion built in. Rather than pushing hard and twisting your arm, you simply flick your wrist. This is extremely helpful during the busy seasons as it is much quicker and easier than your typical Phillips head.
Production Tips
Use RGB color mode for printing. RGB provides a much smoother and richer output than CMYK does.
A clean, organized, and well ventilated work area will help to limit your production costs by increasing quality and cutting time. You should also do your best to keep the area clear of dust and dirt, limiting the amount that may interfere with your finished sublimated products.