Sublimation | Full sublimation
Sublimation probably offers the greatest freedom when producing or printing clothing. It enables full-surface and photorealistic printing.
Sublimation guarantees 100% functionality and 100% breathability.
Making jerseys | Produce running shirts etc
With our jersey partner DeinTrikot.Shop we can print and produce very individual jerseys of all kinds. There are no limits to jersey design here.
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Sublimation printing
Full sublimation is a finishing process that allows full-surface printing of a textile.
Sublimating allows completely free design options, so that photorealistic motifs and gradients can also be implemented.
Advantages of full sublimation
Thanks to sublimation printing, any motif can be printed onto a textile easily and relatively cheaply. For example, even very delicate images and photos can be transferred very sharply and cleanly onto the textile.
Another advantage of full sublimation is that with this process you cannot feel the print, i.e. the applied color, on the textile, so it cannot fade or become brittle.
Washing the sublimated textiles is also easy. The sublimated textiles will not lose their color brilliance. The colors do not fade even when exposed to UV radiation. Since neither binding agents nor solvents are used during sublimation on the textiles, sublimation printing is also environmentally friendly.
How does textile sublimation work?
Sublimating textiles is a physical process in which a solid substance changes directly into a gaseous state without having previously been liquid. It is precisely this process that plays an important role in the transfer of your motif. First, your motif is printed in mirror image on a transfer film/transfer paper. The transfer is then placed on the carrier material and briefly heated using a thermal transfer press.
In this step, the dyes on the transfer paper sublimate due to the high temperature and, in their gaseous state, can easily penetrate into the fibers of the carrier material and adhere. Since the colors are in the fabric during sublimation printing, no residue can be felt in the area that was sublimated.
Sublimated motifs do not change the properties of your textile; neither functionality nor breathability are affected in any way. Because the dye is in the fabric and becomes part of the structure of the substrate, your design will not fade, crack or become brittle. Even after several washes, the quality of the sublimation remains almost unchanged.
Carrier material for sublimation printing
The most suitable material for sublimation printing on textiles is polyester, a fabric made from plastic fibers. The carrier material should have a polyester content of at least 80% in order to ensure optimal sublimation printing on the textile.
For example, if you want to refine cotton textiles with sublimation printing, they must first be coated with polyester. This is done because otherwise the color would not be able to penetrate the cotton sufficiently and the motif would only be visible for a short time.
Polyester is therefore the ideal carrier material for textile sublimation because at high temperatures it opens its pores into which the gaseous dye can penetrate.
Textiles with a white or light background color are best suited. This means that these polyester fabrics can be easily printed using sublimation printing.