Looks like we will be giving up press on heat transfers altogether

[pisquee]

I'm not interested in making more than $1,000 a week from a retirement hobby. :-)

If you're ever succesful in this endevour, you could sell the process/formula and make that in royalties without lifting a finger - now that's a retirement! ;-)

I read one of pisquee's comments and they so often sound completely negative. Then I realise he and a couple of others are playing devil's advocate and that makes me look seriously at it all again.

Exactly! Basically, if you say something, where I think you've got it wrong, then I am going to want to correct you - not to make you out to be a fool, but to try and educate you (and anyone in the future that is reading this thread.) Especially with regards to things like ICC profiles, where you have no experience or knowledge, and I think due to this you may have a better understand of your whole process, even if you can't/won't use ICCs, if you at least know and understand the concepts behind colour management and ICC profiles.
I have seen a lot of posts in the past on this forum and others, from people proclaiming they had found the holy grail formula to achieve cotton sublimation, including posting photos of their work/products. In the end though they all disappeared and went quiet. There are some products on the market claiming to do what you're saying, we even tried one, and it washed out in the first wash. We then called the supplier to ask about why this happened, who said they'd call us back, and never did.
What seems different with you is your perseverance, you aren't giving up, and your posting results of your work as you go. You may get there, or you may always be chasing after the impossible, but no one could say you haven't tried, and I do admire that - so many people just stick to printing on what their supplier can sell them, without ever experimenting on anything, which seems sad, for a process which although grounded in physics and chemistry, but appears to be magic in the results achievable. Why lose the excitement of printing your first mug, and not try and discover other exciting things no one else has yet?

We are never fully Sublimating anything, as far as I can tell we are only ever sublimating a 'Coating'

We can only ever sublimate to a polymer based product - whether this makes up the whole product or a thin layer which has been applied is the difference. Polyester fabrics and polymer based plastics are what can be actually sublimated, along with various polymer based coatings (including liquids and power coatings)

The orange sunset shirt that pops up in my posts, has been washed over 100 times now, and after the first wash there was no feel of anything in the shirt. But I cannot remember exactly what I used.

Obviously, I don't know what your supply chain is like, or where you are sourcing your shirts from, or even how you store your stock. But, is there a remote possibility that the shirt in question isn't actually 100% cotton, and is either 100% polyester or a poly/cotton mix. Ignore any labelling on the shirt, as these can easily be wrong, either by factory mistake or lies. Only you can tell, but from an outsider's perspective, it would seem to be a possibility that need ruling out, as a mistake like that would explain why 1 of the shirts is seeming to be fully sublimated and wash proof, whilst whatever else you do to try and recreate it is failing.

[rossdv8]

Thanks pisquee,

I am in the rather fortunate situation of not actually 'wanting' to print or sell shirts. I got into this by accident with a mug press, and was already making canvas prints. I just decided that since I had a heap of suitable A3 printers printers lying around, and a friend gave me a spare Insta swing press (took 2 of us to carry it to the car) I decided to play with heat pressing a few cotton shirts. Compared with dye sub process I hated it.

Then I wondered what would happen if I sprayed one of my pre-stretched canvasses with a clear spray I was using to coat my pigment printed canvasses, then sublimated that. The can said acrylic, crystal clear, non-yellowing, which I took as a good sign. Acrylic is usually a polymer after all. It just isn;t always an ester.

It worked on the canvas, as you've seen, but what you couldn;t see in the pictures was that I took it outside and hosed it then washed it with a sponge - and the image stayed. The rest is becoming a quest, partly because it is fun to experiment and partly because it is a challenge.

The successful '100 wash shirt' is definitely 100% cotton, and I'm now playing with a couple of brands that are also very definitely 100% cotton. The chemical process I am back to using at the moment is working, but absolutely must be washed out with hot water and detergent before a shirt is worn because it is a hydrocarbon base. The shirts I am making for acquaintances uses this process, but they pay extra for the pre sales wash. However I have had an accidental success with a water based product. Normally most of the colour washes out of this after about 20 hot washes. At some time I accidentally catalysed this product and this is the what I am trying to rediscover now. In the mean time I can still print with the quick dry spray.

In the mean time I found a second spray product that is not as good as the main one, but seems to be lasting reasonably. I'll add a post here as things develop, and maybe, someone else with time on their hands and an interest in the hobby side of sublimation will take this further.

I don't expect success. I don't expect to make heaps of money from this. I do think that somewhere, some time soon, someone will find the right formula that makes this a simple process and remunerative, and we can sublimate an image to a 100% cotton shirt and say "Look Mum, No Hand!"

Perhaps next week when I have done a few more washes I'll post copies of the poster shirt for comparison. I printed one image upside down by accident, so I did the first wash, then kept it for comparisons. As two of the other processes are being washed and also as the cotton fibres brush up, it is possible to see the difference.

What I am curious about is, how many washes would you normally expect a JetPro shirt to be perfect for? I'm finding the same brushed fibres showing through my JetPro shirts after as few as 30 washes, and the IronAll after as few as 20 washes. These are all machine washes, and mostly hot with detergent. Never washed inside out, and mostly tumble dried, although we're having an unusual spell of dry weather, so lately I am using a clothes line because I am often changing shirts two or three times a day when they are soaked with sweat.

So how many washes is reasonable for a quality transfer?

[rossdv8]

a- as pressed.JPGb- after 5 hot washes.JPGc- left as pressed right after 10 hot washes.JPG

Ok, for the couple of people I know are messing around in this experimental stuff, or at least following it. Here is one of the shirts from a month or so ago.
The first pic is as it was first sublimated.
The second (me wearing it) was after some washes. There's one of it wet a few pages back in this post.
The third pic shows one on the left that I accidentally printed upside down and kept as a comparison shirt (never washed), and right of it, the shirt in the previous photos after 10 hot washes and mostly hot tumble dries.

In the first 2 washes any colour that was going to come out, seems to have done so. Since then I am getting the usual brushed cotton 'down' across the print that is normal for cotton that is not dyed in the factory. So this gives a distressed look.

When it is wet, this shirt looks like it was just printed. As it dries the white fibres across the surface show. Not everybody's cup of tea I'm afraid, but it works for what we want until we can improve it.

Someone was curious about why I go to all this trouble. It is partly because the supply of cheap priced white polyester shirts has dried up here, and I don't like heat press transfers like JetPro or IronAll. This printing on cotton thing I do simply as a hobby. My main interest in sublimation is in other articles, like mugs and photographs on canvas.

My closest suppler of wholesale stuff like Vaporware is 1000 kilometres away. If I want a shirt for someone I want it today, not next week. And I don't 'want' to print shirts, so I don't want a hundred blanks in assorted sizes lying around.

[rossdv8]

Latest update. Two of the light blue prints (worst for cotton because there is little contrast once the fibres brush up) after 10 washes, with a polyester shirt between.
They have stopped losing image some time ago, and hot washing and tumble drying makes no apparent difference. This is the point I got to last year, but with better quality cotton I had less white fluff brushing up.

The experiment with this method ends here because we can now do shirts for our own use. With just deeper coloured text, it is much clearer, but we use photographs on our personal shirts. These look better being worn than lying flat with indirect light.

Next will be with a tougher water based polymer, once we can catalyze it and if it still washes soft. This stuff I'm using is a single pack process and doesn't 'set'.