How can I coat for sublimation printing on a low budget

A. Hi Ronald. there are numerous suppliers of sublimateable coatings if you google. There is also brief coverage of this topic in a recent edition of Products Finishing magazine at:
www.pfonline.com/articles/dye-sublimation-coating(2)

To summarize, in case that article becomes a broken link, it recommends using a 2-component polyester of wax-free composition. Single component coatings (unless specially designed for sublimation) are unlikely to work as well because they may contain drying oils which can interfere with the process. Good luck.

Regards,

A. Hi Maximiliano and folks. This specific material is available on eBay [affil link], and probably other sites. But please search this site for many other threads of ongoing discussions about materials that you can buy or make that will accept sublimation coatings. Good luck.

Regards,

A. Hi Mandy. The word polymer alone doesn't means much, as it covers plastics, proteins, and other things. But the particular polymers in question are polyesters similar to car paints. They are not toxic, but they probably are not food-safe.

Regards,

A. Hey, don't go out and buy the expensive sublimation coatings. I've been doing months worth of research. You really aren't going to believe this but go purchase Rave 4X hairspray .

..(yeah, I'm serious). I've successfully used it on porcelain tiles, wood and most recently a 100% cotton T-shirt. When I used the T-shirt I washed it three times in cold water (didn't use hot) and dried it. NO COLOR FADE. The reason I did this research is because it takes me a week to get the coating in and as a business just starting out I couldn't afford to have a lot of it in stock.

Angela: Are you sure these will work? How about the durability on ceramics?

Sublimation Coating Kit for Hard Surfaces

on eBay or

Amazon

(affil links)

Sublimation Coating for Fabric

on eBay or

Amazon

(affil links)

Hi Mamoru. There's a saying in the USA: "mileage may vary", meaning we can't demand that Angela guarantee that what she has enjoyed success with will work to your expectations :-)
Coating types should ideally be optimized for the kind of object you're putting them on; t-shirts, for example, need soft and absorbable treatments; they don't use the same glossy hard coatings as mugs. And that idea holds whether you wish to sublimate into the coating or not. Hair spray might be fine to be absorbed by a cotton t-shirt (I'll take Angela's word), and it may have met her needs for her porcelain tiles, but hair spray doesn't seem to me to be the ideal coating for either ceramic tiles or a mug.

Regards,

Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey

Hi Niledi. I don't know too much about this subject, but I see many sites that sell everything from the sublimatable inkjet cartridges, to the printing papers, to the coating materials, to various fixtures and machines for the transfer of the images. While it is certainly very expensive to ship mugs, I don't see why the shipping cost for a drum of the coating material would be prohibitive.
Say hello to Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi for me -- two of my No. 1 Ladies.
Good luck.

A. Hi Hazel, and folks. Thread 12938 suggests several ideas including hair spray; and thread 46505 claims that regular automotive polyester clear coats will accept sublimation well. Please let us know what you learn either way.

Regards,

A. Hi Dinesh. Thanks for the kind words, but running this site is just how I earn my living.

It may seem slightly magical that polyester clearcoats can absorb sublimatable ink, but you must not let this steal your focus from the principal issue that they are paints/coatings and that what you are trying to do is to paint/coat a substrate. When you say it washes away from metals, I am not sure if you are talking about the coating or just the image. If the coating is washing away I can only say that you must study painting as much as sublimation science. Paints only wash away if the substrate is dirty, or has not been properly prepared and activated, or if the paint material is wholly inadequate in composition. Try properly pretreating the metal, priming it with a white paint, and THEN applying your 2-component wax-free 100% solids polyester paint for sublimation.

If the paint is sticking properly but the sublimation image washes off, it means it has not been absorbed into the coating. Please read the short Products Finishing article we linked above, and find out if your clear coat has waxes or other ingredients that hamper the absorption. Good luck.

Regards,

A. Hi kudakwashe. Apparently one of the downsides of today's electronic technology is that it doesn't make economic sense to spend years writing a good book or DVD anymore, only to have it ripped off :-)

... because it's funny, but I've been looking hard but unsuccessfully for years for a book covering the whole subject of sublimation coating and haven't found even one. I think you'll need to read what's available on the subject in a half-dozen different arts & crafts books and manufacturing technology books because I don't think you'll find a perfect tutorial :-(

But http://www.myenmart.com/Dye_Sublimation_Guide.pdf may be a good start. Good luck.

Luck and Regards,

A. The company I work for has experimented with countless materials and substrates doing sublimation. From fiberglass resin to hairsprays and automotive clears. The key is 100% polyester coating. We found by far on most substrates, other than fabric, a special powdercoating clear works every time and a pound of inexpensive powdercoating goes a long way. We sublimate all our faceplates of steel doing this. We put a white base on, either liquid or powder. Liquid tends to yellow but works fine. Then spray the clear and it's ready to sublimate. Results are perfect as long as proper pressure, temp, time are used which vary with material. I hopes this helps. Would be happy to answer any further questions.

A. Hi Christina. The "powdercoat" that Chris is speaking of is available from PPG, Tiger Drylac, Interpon, AkzoNobel and many other suppliers who you can find by googling "powder coating powder manufacturers". But I'm not sure if that will actually help you :-(

Chris is talking about a process used in large scale industrial factory coating. It's not a matter simply of buying powder coating powder; you then need sprays guns with electrostatic charge units and a spray booth to apply the powder, then curing ovens to fuse it, and other large equipment. If you are thinking of hobby, craft, or home preparation of parts for sublimation coating, you'll need a technology that can be done at a small scale at home, and that probably limits you to brushable or sprayable liquid paints. Of these (if you don't want to buy coating materials marketed specifically for the purpose) 2-K polyester automotive clear coats are probably the best approach according to previously referenced threads.

Luck & Regards,

A. Hi Kedra. As noted above, two-component automotive clearcoat can be used for clear-coating mugs (the outside surface only; automotive clearcoat is not considered a food-safe surface). So if you can make your own homemade 2-K automotive clearcoat that should work for sublimation coating of mugs.

You can alternately download the safety data sheets (SDS) for commercial sublimation coatings and see if you can obtain the necessary ingredients to start experimenting with your own mixes. But what is the status of your efforts to date, so that readers know the best starting point to help you? Are you presently successfully coating the mugs but using a proprietary which you find non-affordable? Or are you only sublimating mugs which have already been pre-coated with sublimation coatings by someone else? And has everything been going well with these approaches? Or are you closer to being a beginner?

Because usually it is most practical to take things one step at a time:
1. Sublimating pre-coated mugs first, and producing satisfactory quality sublimated mugs. 2. Moving on to applying high quality proprietary coatings to raw mugs yourself, to get your techniques sufficiently refined to maintain the same quality level as pre-coated mugs.
3. After you are producing quality mugs by applying purchased proprietary coatings, trying to formulate the coatings yourself.

Trying to do step 3 if you haven't done steps 2 and 1 is awfully difficult, because if things are not perfect you won't know whether it's the condition of the mugs, or improper methods and practices, or that you coating formulation isn't right, or what -- but good luck. Thanks. Regards,


Ted Mooney, P.E. RET
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey