If you’ve ever been to a town market day and seen personalised shirts, mugs, hats, and phone cases, there’s a good chance a dye sublimation printer made them.
It’s not a new technology, but dye sublimation printers have become compact and affordable enough for solo operators to run in a spare room to support a small business, school club, or community group.
How dye sublimation printers work
Where conventional printers and iron-on transfers lay colours on the surface of a material, dye sublimation uses heat to turn dye into a gas that penetrates into material and bonds to it permanently.
First, a dye sublimation printer puts your design onto coated transfer paper. Then, a heat press pushes the paper onto the material at around 190°C. At this temperature, the dye becomes a gas, penetrates the surface material, and then re-solidifies as it cools, becoming part of the material.
The result is a professional-looking finish that’s resistant to washing and friction, unlike pigment ink prints and transfers that sit on the surface.
The printer’s quality determines how fine the print will come out once transferred. The heat press is also key to the process. Flat presses work well for shirts and phone cases, but a curved press is necessary for mugs and hats.
Dye sublimation requires polyester fabric or polyester-coated hard goods, and the technique works better on light coloured backgrounds. Blanks used for this technique are often pre-coated, so you don’t have to manually apply a coating.
Where it’s used
Dye sublimation is common in sportswear and teamwear, as well as personalised merchandise, soft signage, and even home decorations. Home-based businesses are a fast growing segment that’s being driven by cheaper printers and side hustles.
Printers like the Epson SureColor F160 are small enough to fit in a spare office, and paired up with a heat press a starter setup only takes a small amount of desktop space while enabling you to create custom merchandise for your business.
The Epson SureColor F160 runs on refillable ink tanks rather than cartridges, keeping ongoing costs down. As an outlay, the printer runs about $799 at RRP, and a heat press comes in between $100 and $200.
The benefit of having a printer setup at home is you don’t have to worry about minimum orders that can choke up a spare room with unsold merchandise. Custom orders and made-to-order runs become viable where they wouldn’t be when using a commercial printing business.
Whether you’re looking to create a limited run of goods to sell at a convention stall, creating a set of printed tees for your club, or adding custom merch to your Etsy store, a dye sublimation printer is a solid investment with a lower barrier to entry than ever.
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