Sublimation: Off-the-shelf blanks, or DIY custom items? ...

[webtrekker]

I'm not a big seller, by any means, it's more of a pastime/retirement booster for me, but I was wondering what your thoughts are regarding buying readily available blanks, versus making your own unique articles.

Buying blanks is easy for everyone and their Mammy's Mammy to get into, but that's the trouble, the market is saturated with these, and there's little variation in the products available. Buying prices are, IMHO, overinflated in many cases, and selling prices are ridiculously competitive, to the point of wondering whether it's all worthwhile.

On the other hand, using readily available sublimation materials but incorporating them into a unique item of your own manufacture provides a way of bucking the competition and realising higher profits for your efforts.

As an example, I've designed some acrylic Tide clocks using a movement and aluminium sheet from online suppliers, but cutting, drilling and bending the acrylic myself. I had to design and build my own acrylic bending machine to be able to do this, but this puts me ahead of most of the competition.

I'm not making this post to do any self advertising so I won't mention where I'm selling these clocks, but here's an example of the product ...

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Profit is good on these and I enjoy actually making stuff myself, rather than just buying in and printing. The acrylic stands are cut, bent, drilled and rounded by myself and the aluminium faces are dyesubbed with my own designs. The Tide clock movements are special movements that rotate once in 12 hours and 25 minutes, in step with the Moon and tides. On the sales I've made so far feedback has been excellent and very positive.

I'm also working on a range of normal clocks using the same stands and aluminium sheet. These will be slightly cheaper as the movements are more readily available and hence less expensive than the tide movements.

I've got many other ideas in the pipeline for my own unique products and I'm phasing out such things as mugs, coasters and the likes which are becoming difficult to sell and sometimes difficult to obtain as suppliers stocks keep drying up eith all the competitors out there.

Even just making the acrylic bending machine has opened up many other possiblities, including just making acrylic stands for various purpose: phone/tablet stands, coaster stands, etc.

So ... do any of you make your own stuff, and how's it going for you?

[Justin]

I'm all for new products, fed up to the back teeth of seeing the same old stuff. I'd hoped that the new SubTHAT material would allow me to complete a number of new products I was looking at but costs are way too high to justify everyday use.

I really like what you've done here. We sell clocks, acrylics etc. and tbh I'm now looking to drop the sublimation lines and just produce images on my Latex printer or even one of my smaller printers, Canon etc. We're always seeing posts where metal hasn't printed properly and can't be sourced at a reasonable price, shipping costs and so on, hence my search for items outside the sublimation range.

Yes to new products! In with the new out with the old!!

[pw66]

Nice product.
Your comments about market saturation rings too true. In the digital/internet age it is so easy to get into nearly any business, source equipment and get hold of stock. Amazon and ebay provide an easy route to market. The element of risk has been reduced to next to nothing - if you trade from home online - and capital needed is minimal. A sublimation business can be started for £500.

Sourcing stock used to be an artform. Now everything is available in small quantities online to anyone who wants to buy it. If your nextdoor neighbour wanted to start up in business every one of your suppliers would serve him without question.
While that is good for start-ups it leads to oversupply and a race to the bottom for the resale price.

[webtrekker]

Yes, I had high hopes for the SubTHAT too Justin. At the momen, I'm stuck with just a Ricoh 3110 for sub printing so I'll have to stay with the aluminium sheet method for now, but they seem to be printing great for me, especially at the size need for the above product (100mm square clock face).

Mind you, my post was aimed more at small businesses, or home hobbyists, who really struggle to compete with the big boys. I doubt whether some of the larger businesses would entertain having to manufacture their own items and are probably doing ok with selling thousands of cut-price items a week.

While I'm here, here's a couple of pics of the bending machine I designed and built. Bit rough around the edges but I'm already working on a MkII version with a better finish and a few improvements. I'm even toying with the idea of selling my plans as an ebook to others as this seems very popular on youtube.

BTW, The measuring grid was just dyesubbed onto 2 A4 aluminium sheets and panel-pinned to the board!

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[pw66]

We had something like that when I was at school, except it used a spiral wound element from a bathroom heater instead of a quartz tube.

[webtrekker]

We had something like that when I was at school, except it used a spiral wound element from a bathroom heater instead of a quartz tube.

Hi PW. It's not a quartz tube, it's a 30cm length of 26 gauge NiChrome wire running through an aluminium U-section. It slides over slotted screws at either end and is anchored to springs to keep the wire taut when it expands under the heat. This gives nice tight bends with no bubbling in the acrylic. The power supply is important as you must have a constant current to keep the wire at a stable temperature. Voltage is very low, around the 12volt mark so the machine is very safe (apart from the heat!).

The hinged board is there to bend to any angle but I rarely use it as it is so easy just to bend the heated acrylic with your fingers. You can set an exact angle by knocking up a jig out of wood, cardboard, or even previously bent acrylic.

[pw66]

The one we had was leathal. Literally a heating element inside a wooden box - made by the woodwork teacher and wired up by the Physics teacher (the same one who got stuck in the lift shaft with four kids for 20hrs when demonstrating the effects of gravity - real rocket scientist....). If you left it on for too long it would risk setting the box alight:biggrin:. Wouldn't be allowed to do it these days.

[ArferMo]

Do you glue the aluminium to the acrylic sheet.

[webtrekker]

Do you glue the aluminium to the acrylic sheet.

No Arfer, the clock movement keeps it in place when the nut is tightened. I use 4 small sticky foam pads between the movement and the aluminium to spread the pressure over a bigger area. They're quite solid when finished.

To mount an aluminium sheet behind acrylic without a clock movement would involve using special adhesive film, as used when face-mounting photos behind acrylic.

I can, however, make other stands with a 180 degree bend in the acrylic that a photo or aluminium print can be slid into and kept in place by friction.

[ArferMo]

Ahh I C. I was thinking if you used glue it might yellow in time (phun not intended), the edge of the aluminium does not tend to lift then.

I laser cut the acrylic and bend in a similar way with a hot wire.