Large sublimation

[Bill W. White]

I just ordered the ricoh printer and GK20s and they should be here in afew days so get ready for some serious questions. I was reading the archives on corian and there was one by K. Otten and he made a photo on corian I believe he said it was 30 inches wide. How is this done if the largest printer goes to say 19 inches. Is there a place to have larger sheets printed for sublimation? Can the sheets be tiled? Bill White

[Dan Hintz]

I just ordered the ricoh printer and GK20s and they should be here in afew days so get ready for some serious questions. I was reading the archives on corian and there was one by K. Otten and he made a photo on corian I believe he said it was 30 inches wide. How is this done if the largest printer goes to say 19 inches. Is there a place to have larger sheets printed for sublimation? Can the sheets be tiled? Bill White
hWy would you think the largest printer only goes to 19"? I've seen flatbeds 6 feet in width, and they get bigger...

[Larry Bratton]

Bill:
Conde Systems does wide format sublimation printing. They also sell the printers. Check them out.

[Keith Outten]

Bill,

At the time I had an Epson 1280 printer that would print 17" wide and I used roll paper so length was limited by the size of my heat press. My largest heat press is 24" by 30" so I was able to dye-sublimante the large picture.

I recently purchased a Ricoh 3300 which has a a maximum width of 8.5" but I understand you can get roll paper for this machine so pictures longer than 11" are possible with this printer.
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[AL Ursich]

Kevin from Johnson Plastics answered the bigger size question I had over on Engraving Etc sublimaton thread.

"The Ricoh GX7000 can be upgraded from 11x17 to 13x19 at any time by adding on the Bypass Tray attachment. The attachment is $140.

It is also nice because you can leave the 13x19 paper in the bypass tray, and smaller paper in the bottom tray, and the correct paper will feed depending on the size you pick.

Kevin Lumberg"

AL:D

[Martin Boekers]

I can do 13x19 on my Ricoh but I didn't know it had a seperate tray too so both could be loaded at the same time.
Is there some part I may be missing?

[Larry Bratton]

Kevin from Johnson Plastics answered the bigger size question I had over on Engraving Etc sublimaton thread.

"The Ricoh GX7000 can be upgraded from 11x17 to 13x19 at any time by adding on the Bypass Tray attachment. The attachment is $140.

It is also nice because you can leave the 13x19 paper in the bypass tray, and smaller paper in the bottom tray, and the correct paper will feed depending on the size you pick.

Kevin Lumberg"

AL:D

What size is your heat press bed?

[Bill W. White]

Larry. my heat press which is on order is 16x20, I got the Ricoh7000 in a couple days ago and was surprised that it was shipped with the 13x19 tray. Is there rolls of paper that will work with this printer also. I assume that my limit is the size of the heat press. I can't imagine doing anything larger at this point. My basic work now is glass trophies mostly fishing tournaments but Keith had a really nice sublimated corian plaque on a curved corian base that I think will be a nice addition to my trophy line. The salesman I bought the printer from suggested that I do water bottles with the fishing tournament info on them, is this something that is easy to do is this type sublimation more trouble than it's worth? Any other good ides would be appreciated Also much thanks for all the help this forum is great for us newbee's Bill W.

[Larry Bratton]

Bill:
I just got this printer about a month ago. I got the Ricoh 3300. I have been amazed at how the printing looks. I don't know where you got your printer, I got mine from Conde. I got the ICC profile that Conde developed and man does it work well. I don't know what program you are printing from, I am printing from Corel Draw X3. David Gross from Conde called and we set up the driver and the profile over the phone. I feel that if I did not have the profile and the proper setup in the driver, my results might be surprising, but in the opposite direction. I bought some of the test kits that they sell that have 50 assorted pieces of 4x4 aluminum, fiberglass and 1/8" Hardboard. They all print well. This material is somewhat on the pricey side but the perceived value of the printed product is good.

To print water bottles, mugs and the like you have to have either a mug press or the wraps. The wraps are probably the best deal, as you can do multiple pieces at a time in a small convection oven. This company has a good selection and the ones for the standard mugs at $20 each is the best price I have found on them.http://www.laserreproductions.com/Sublimation-Heat-Wrap.html (I am kicking myself, I have 6 of these somewhere in all my junk and can't find them, so I have not bought these yet until I have exhausted the search). As to whether or not it is worth the trouble or not..I don't know the answer. Only you can answer that based on what kind of profit you can make and can you do multiples. I am concentrating on marketing to businesses in lieu of individual consumers.

Keith has apparently been doing Corian sublimation for several years now, so he knows more about it than me. Just FYI, there is a guy selling 8x10 pieces of Corian Glacier White-1/4" on Ebay. He is a regular seller of it on there and I ordered 3 pcs from him this last weekend. Eleven dollars a piece, but I can laser cut them and intend to make key tags out of it. I can get about 30 tags out of a piece and at $4.00 a tag, I think I can come out..huh? It will laser engrave as well as sublimate. I have to figure out the time and temp for the 1/4". Keith does 325 for 20 minutes on 1/2. I experimented with a piece of LG HiMacs and did it at 320 for 10 minutes and it didn't transfer completely.

Bill, I'm in Alabama, I see your in Flor ah dah. So if you want to talk sublimation and laser, PM me and I'll give you my e-mail.

[Scott Shepherd]

I'm going to go against the grain here and say that trying to dye sub corian is not something people should get excited about. It's not a very practical setup. Keith does it but does VERY specialized work to VERY high end customers. This is not a material that lends itself well to dye sub. The colors are flat, they don't pop like most all other dye sub, it takes a tremendous amount of time for 1 piece, and you have to deal with some very serious warping issues. Also, the paper is known to stick to the finish product, so you have to "sand off" the paper, more or less, to get back to smooth.

I keep seeing it posted on here and I keep seeing people get excited about it, but I'm telling you, unless you can sell your products for $80 or more, you're going to take a bath on it. I guess you could make keychains out of the 1/4", but how will you put a keyring on it? Drill a hole? A hole close to the edge with a ring in it, in Corian, will break out the edge of the corian in no time.

Is it possible to do. Yes. Do the results look as good as normal dye sub. No. Can you dye sub a plaque and sell it for $40? Not unless you want to lose money. Is it profitable for most people? No.

I don't wish to be negative on it, but Keith has openly said that he does high end, special projects, and it's expensive and time consuming. Expensive and time consuming don't go well with the retail market. I sell a fair amount of dye sub products and I have yet to run across an application that corian would be superior on, in quality of image or price.

I'll sell dye subbed tiles over corian any day of the week. Now tiles, that color pops like crazy.

[Larry Bratton]

Scott:
Thanks for the input. I did not think that the Corian would be that fragile where the chain would attach. Would it be worse than regular acrylic? That's done all the time in 1/8". It is an experiment, so we will see.
I agree 100% that it is a specialized application. The big problem with it I see is the temperature limitation. I bought some of that spray on coating and I am going to experiment with it on the Corian and see what happens. (By the way, I put some of it on some 1/8" birch plywood and sublimated it, it worked. However, the ink being transparent is has kind of an interesting antique look to it.) My theory is that the coating may allow running the heat up to 400 degrees for like 1 minute or so and may change the way the color looks. This stuff has to be cured for 15 minutes at 320 degrees in the oven, so I imagine there will be deflection to deal with in that process. But, if it shortens the time for sublimation that will accomplish the mission.

[Scott Shepherd]

Larry, you might be able to do what you're trying to do, I don't know. I can only speak from personal experience and I see Keith talk about doing Corian and it causes excitement, and I see people that aren't in Keith's market thinking this is the holy grail of material for dye subbing, and I just disagree with it. Corian produces a dull, matte like finish when dye subbed. The colors are not rich and they don't pop, in my experience.

To me, if you have to preheat a blank for 10 minutes, then press it for 20 minutes, then take it out and press it between something flat for another 20 minutes until it cools, then even if you're making 20 at a time, you've still spent a boat load of time on those things. Compare that to a double sided metal blank for a keychain and you can do both sides at once, pull out 20 of them in 60 seconds and be done with it. They both sell for about the same price, so which one would you rather spend time on? I know which one I spend my time on :)

If you figure out a way to shorten the time, it might work, but in the end, I don't have high hopes for corian in dye sub in the retail market. Want to make a sign with it and sell the sign for $100? I say "perfect", but not much else other than that for me.

Corian is brittle, and whether or not it'll break out with the keyring in it, will all depend on how close to the edge the hole is. I'd say it's as brittle or more brittle than solid acrylic in some applications. It's far more brittle than engraving plastics, which are a modified acrylic. Either way, if the hole is close to the edge, it will break out eventually.

Just my thoughts on it.

[Dan Hintz]

Corian produces a dull, matte like finish when dye subbed. The colors are not rich and they don't pop, in my experience.
Is this typically for colored Corian, or is a white base just as bad?

[Scott Shepherd]

All corian. I'd love to give positive reviews and say it's great. I have 1/4" samples sitting on my desk with photos on them, I have a 1/2" sample of a relative, that's got 5 or 6 photos on that one pieces, used to try and get the colors right. I've spent more time than I wish I did trying to make it into a product I could sell.

To me, it's like laser engraving, can someone take dye subbing corian and make products they sell and make good money doing? Probably. Will that happen to 1 or 2 out of 100 that try or will that happen with 80-90 that try. My guess is 1 or 2 will find a way to make something they can sell.

I'll put my dye subbed keychains or tiles up against a corian product any day of the week. Keith's method of selling signs has been to take a corian sign into a place and let them know that that can have that for the same or less than the cheap off the shelf products. He presents them with a superior looking product for less money.

I cannot make that comparison with dye sub. If I have a dye subbed tile and a dye subbed piece of corian, the tile is going to destroy the corian on saturation and color, the tile will be less expensive, and it will take me 1/40th of the time.

I had a conversation with one of the big suppliers at a trade show about it and he was one of their dye sub gurus. He openly told me, without me asking, that they had tried corian many times and they can't produce acceptable products with it. His complaint was the same as mine, the image doesn't pop like most all other dye sub does.

[Larry Bratton]

Hey, who am I to argue with experience. I'll try it, if it doesn't meet my standards, then I'll just engrave it, no biggy. Right now I am just experimenting with some different things and ran across this small quantity of glacier white in 1/4". That stuff is hard to come by. Keith has written reams of information on here about it and showed many photos that look good online. How they look in comparison to Unisub hardboard or frp, I don't have a comparison I can look at, so I will just give it shot and see what I get. I will say this, it has to look pretty darn good to beat it or even be equal to it. I want to try this Digicoat stuff on it and see how that works.

[Scott Shepherd]

I understand Larry, I know you are experimenting, I just want to have some opposing viewpoint on here for people reading, because, as mentioned in a previous thread and acknowledged by Keith, his market is very different than most people's markets on here and what works for him, probably won't work for many other markets. I all for people trying new things. I just want to put some more data points out there before people spend a pile of money on stuff only to find out it doesn't work for their market.

I hope you find a solution that works for you. I've tried many things.

You are right about the 1/4" corian. I think I remember looking at the pricing on it and 1/4" costs more than 1/2" by the sq. ft. It's really expensive stuff considering it's only 1/4".

I'm sure you'll turn them into something nice, no matter if it's dye sub or laser engraving!

[Keith Outten]

The quality of a dye-sublimation transfer on Corian can be near excellent, it depends mainly on the quality of the photograph. The large Peek A Boo picture that I dye-sublimated was a 25 meg digital picture taken by a professional photographer. The quality of this Corian print is amazing, you can see every hair in the picture and the detail in the baby's eyes is awesome. Although you can't get the high gloss finish dye-sublimating Corian a matte finish to minor gloss look is possible depending on how much time you are willing to spend polishing.

In my mind, even though Corian can't compete with the very high gloss dye-sub finishes you can get with aluminum and other products, it has a place in my product offerings because of the WOW factor. People are amazed when they hold them in their hands, knowing that their personal photograph has been captured in a piece of solid surface material. Commercial customers are also impressed when you provide a very unique picture of a building their company built that can hang in their office lobby.

Scott is right when he said that I rarely work for non-commercial customers. Normally I prefer to market large companies that can afford the types of projects I can provide that are more profitable for my company. A Corian dye-sub picture is also a means to provide another unique piece to remind my sign customers that I can provide alternative techniques that make my company different than the more traditional and larger sign companies. I also use Corian dye-sub as a marketing tool when I need to get my foot in the door with a company that I haven't done business with, large companies can be difficult to start a business relationship but they are always open to innovative products that make their company stand out from their competitors.

In a nutshell I found that I can't make a living working for the general public. Many of the small jobs that some people provide like employee badges, coffee cups, rubber stamps and vinyl door signs I provide my customers for free. The cost to provide these items on a small scale is insignificant compared to a large sign contract for an 80 million dollar building and I don't want these companies to go to my competitors for trinkets they need on occasion. Because the ADA door sign business is profitable the small stuff is easy to give away as long as it has my company name on it somewhere :)
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[Scott Shepherd]

Keith, you and I are 100% on the same page. Yes, the images are clear and detailed on Corian, no issues with that at all. It's not the detail, but the saturation and the gloss I'm talking about.

I agree with you 100% and you have said this all before, but I think it gets lost in threads some time and people think "Oh, Keith's doing it and it works for him, so I can do it too", when in fact, they are in a very different business than yours. That's all I'm trying to remind people of because I think it gets lost many times in these posts that you have a very unique situation that doesn't apply to everyone.

Now if you own your own press and do dye sub, I say "Give it a try", however, if you are thinking about buying a press and dye sub setup to get into doing corian, I'd say "give it a second thought".

[Larry Bratton]

I agree with both of you. I have all the tools of the trade, as Keith knows (he was at my place once) and we didn't purchase the sublimation printer with Corian in mind. I have tried to follow Keith's advice since I met him, knowing he is successful at what he does. Since moving down to this location, we did try the approach of trying to market to the individual and it has just been a dismal failure. People here want to purchase at flea market or yard sale prices. So, our marketing effort is now directed to businesses only. We are working diligently to develop products that fit this market and utilize the equipment we have. No, it certainly would not be a good idea to run out and buy a sublimation setup with the idea of using it with Corian only. I can envision that as being a difficult endeavor, even if it did work. My thinking it that the only colors that are going to work would be Glacier White and Champagne for sublimation. Unless you have CNC or woodworking tools, 1/4" is what your limited to for laser cutting and it is hard to find. I do like the idea of Corian as being presented as an ice breaker and if you can walk in with a product made from it, it is a great lead in to the other things and services you can provide. I always like to show a product that demonstrates my ability and quality when talking to potential customers, so an engraved piece of Corian with some color added by sublimation can fill that bill.

[Keith Outten]

I've always thought that you could make a pretty good part time income with nothing more than a heat press and a dye-sub printer. Working at home with very little overhead you could market a few small to medium companies who would use your services or you could team up with a successful trophy shop that would benefit from adding dye-sublimation services to their product line and didn't have the manpower. If you consider how many products you can create with just a couple of machines and very little space it seems to be a great place to start. The upfront investment is very inexpensive when compared with just about any other business and if you live near a college or large University there is a huge market that will more then get you started making T-Shirts, coffee mugs and a host of other personalized stuff. Don't get involved with any logos, stick with dye-sub of personal items like pictures and photo door signs for the dormitories.

Your photo editing skills with make or break you in the dye-sub arena.
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