Hi!

I have had a very strange experience with one of those new mini 3D vacuum machines and hope someone has a clever idea.

So far, we are using the standard size 3D press you get from China (ST-3042) and the results are fine beside the often-discussed issue with corners - we only very occasionally have any marks but the process of taping the paper simply takes too long. A few months back, I started looking for a 3D film option as the prospect of no more tape is intriguing and ordered one of those new Mini 3D presses (ST-1520) which look like a Philips fryer.

I also ordered the better Korean 3D film along with the press and obviously followed the procedure in the manual and in the multiple videos step-by-step but so far the results are very mixed. The press itself (mechanically) works fine but the results vary not just by case but by picture.

What I mean - I recently tried sublimating a mainly red logo on a S4 case. That turned out to be a disaster, I tried it about 10 times and every single time, no matter what time and temperature setting I used, I had (a) a large area on top that didn't sublimate and (b) little marks that looked like bubbles all over the case. I assume that there must have been one large air bubble and multiple smaller bubbles in between the 3D film and the case during the sublimation. And yes, vacuum is fine, went all the way up to the left side of the scale (till the end of the green area) and as said, I tried it with multiple time settings and temp settings, nothing helped.

I then thought maybe the red ink causes the air bubbles, so I tried it with an iPhone 4 case and it came out perfect the first time, no bubble, not even a small one, no marks at all. I then assumed maybe the S4 cases are the cause (even though the kit includes S4) so I used the same type of S4 case with a different photo to see if the same air bubbles appear but it came out perfect the first time.

So here we go, the S4 didn't work 10x in a row with one photo but the same photo worked perfectly the first time with the iPhone case, though at the same time the S4 worked brilliantly with another photo. Same with S3 Mini, again there is one photo that didn't work at all, tried a different one and it worked fine. All of them btw. obviously work fine in the 'traditional' 3D machine with normal paper...I attached a JPEG with a few samples:



Any idea what this all means? I could see why a specific case might not work but the fact that the exact same case, same machine, same setting works with one photo but not with another, while this particular photo then agains works fine with a different case, is seriously weird and it means that we can't use it productively as I can't simply 'hope' for one picture to work, I need to know that all photos work...any ideas?

Thanks

Alex