Sounds great - what do you mean by carrier, are you using a different type of sub paper?
Sounds great - what do you mean by carrier, are you using a different type of sub paper?
No, I'm using a quality sub paper and chinese bulk ink. Carrier is not technically correct, because I am using a formula that does not work, modified so it does work, to treat the cotton to take the sublimation dye. Think of it like coating a thin ceramic mug, then imagine if the ceramic mug was not glazed, and you got the coating to link permanently into the porous ceramic - almost all the way through.
Where others seem to have failed, is that they only coat the cotton with some sort of polymer but it doesn;t go all the way in. That's where I started. It washes out eventually after as little as half a dozen hand washes. In fact I have before and after pictures of exactly that which I can post to show the difference when I was working on this. The other thing was once it penetrates, it has to be made permanent - and that is still a work in progress.
I've only had a year to work on this, but 2014 will be a lot of fun as we sell some to people that are not actually friends. :-)
Here is due subbed cotton (on left - bright blue) after 7 hot soaks and hot washes and dye subbed polyester (on right - sunrise, dark clouds) number of washes is irrelevant side by side.
And responding to the 'why would you bother?' thing. I bother because I prefer working with dye sub. I bother because some day soon it will be a normal every day product. I bother because in the tropics people still have this thing about cotton being nicer to wear, even though you and I know the advantages of polyester. I bother because it can be done.
web_SAM_1348.JPG
One from this afternoon. The original is from a photograph of the pic in the middle of a poster made in the 1970's, scanned and enlarged to A3. Some people think I do mostly sunsets because subbing into cotton won;t do bright colours.
web_SAM_1357.JPG
I find this fascinating, I don't use napisan to wash me clothes as I tend to get my food in my mouth not down the front of mebut the wife does use oxyclean in some washes which is the same basic ingrediants.
I can see the need to add some sort of mild "bleach" as part of a wash test as not all customers turn shirts inside out etc etc when they wash.
regards, tony
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Thanks. I am not trying to revolutionise this industry overnight. I try to open people's eyes to other opportunities, and get some interest going. It is a very small step from what I, and some others are achieving now, to a commercially viable product. And while the bulk of people on the forum are only in it for the money, some of us do the normal basic stuff as a 'job' and the fun stuff like this as a 'hobby'.
So, it works. And it will get better. Maybe some forum members with a bit of curiosity, especially the ones who 'almost' got it working, will have another go at making it faster and easier.
I worried about washing the shirt after pressing it, then discovered that some screen printing and some DTG uses a pre-treatment. So I have started wearing shirts straight off the press. And it works. A bit of feel against the skin on the inside of the shirt for about half an hour, then it just isn't noticeable.
For anyone who is interested - I'll post some more pics once the shirts reach 20 hot washes, because I'm still not sure exactly what I did to make the 100 wash shirts. All but one of the others done the same days failed.
For anyone not interested, or who wants to say it can't be done - there's lots of other reading on the forum.
For Tony, here's that pre-stretched cotton canvas. Blank framed canvas costs $8 stretched, sells for $35, after printing.Stretched Canvas - dye subbed image.jpg
Please excuse my ignorance as i didn't read all tread. Do you pretreat your cotton?
Your framed canvas doesn't look quite as 'dynamic' or have the impact I would expect from such a colour saturated sunset. Is it like that in the finished article or is it due to the photograph? I only ask because I print my canvases on a Versacamm with eco solvent inks and having done similar sunsets the colours on those really 'pop'.Originally Posted by rossdv8
Have you a similar pic that you can post so we can see what you mean please Roger?
regards, tony
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Hi Roger,
I have the dye sub printer pretty closely matched to the pigment printer, and previously I posted the original pic side by side with the finished result in another thread. It does match the pigment output closely and also the original.
If I printed it on polyester canvas it would get a bit of artificial 'pop'.
What I'm doing, as with the cotton shirts, is playing with a market that is there, but not exploited.
Think about it. Previously I was printing direct to canvas with pigment.
Consider the time involved to:
print the canvas
trim the canvas
prepare the frame
stretch the canvas
I base everything on an hourly rate, and it is time consuming.
Now for the pre-stretched canvas.
Print the image on sub paper and while it is printing, spray coat the canvas which is bought stretched, framed. (maybe 30 seconds - reality is about 15sec.)
Drop the frame over the platen of the press.
press for 40 to 60 seconds depending if you want a dark, stormy image or a light vibrant one.
We have taken the finished canvas outside and sprayed it with a garden hose and discovered it is colour fast. This is necessary as some of our stuff is transported by open dinghy.
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