Large-format dye-sub printer and ink prices have fallen significantly in recent years, with a 40in-wide printer now costing just under £5,000. So many more wide-format print specialists are getting in on, or considering getting in on, the soft signage, furnishing and even apparel printing act.  

What may not have occurred to these printers, is the possibility of using dye-sub technology to print on a rather different, or in fact very different, type of surface. In fact, printing directly onto solid items using dye-sub technology appeared, as long ago as the 1990s, as a low-cost, highly flexible short-run digital alternative to older analogue processes such as screen and pad printing. 

Although it has slipped under many people’s radar, wide-format dye-sub can be the perfect process for producing branded or personalised mugs, coasters, tea trays, key tags, phone and tablet covers, wallets, purses, glass plaques and cutting boards, and Christmas decorations. And now there are some even adding more industrial applications, such as counter tops, signage and decorative architectural panelling to that list.

Solid options

Anything reasonably flat or cylindrical that can be made from or coated with polyester can accept dye-sublimation printed images. After printing a mirror image, the inked side is placed in contact with the target substrate and heat and pressure is applied, using either a flat press or rollers. The heat vapourises (ie sublimates) the ink, which is then absorbed by the adjacent polyester material. 

Nick Davies, owner of I-Sub, a long-established supplier of dye-sub systems and consumables, reports that the trend for printing small merchandise-type items with wide-format dye-sub is picking up. “We find that a lot of people who buy the very large format printers for textiles may then also use them for smaller solid items,” he says. 

Of course, these small items don’t necessarily require a specifically wide-format dye-sub machine. Virtually any inkjet with piezo heads can run dye-sublimation inks, with US ink maker Sawgrass addressing this market with aftermarket cartridges for popular printers, narrow and wide.

So often those buying machines for small solid-item work specifically, rather than adding this as an extra application for their existing wide-format dye-sub kit, will start small to test the waters.

Ian Howley, owner of Anglesey-based dye-sublimation specialist Nova Chrome, sells Epson Stylus Pro printers up to 24in-wide with Sawgrass inks, with a 24in Epson 7890 costing £2,495 when fitted with Sawgrass Sublijet-E ink cartridges. But most customers will opt for something smaller, Howley reports, with the company supplying A3 and A4 sheetfed Ricoh SG-series gel ink models, again with Sawgrass dye-sub cartridges, for between £350 and £725.

A larger machine will, however be needed once volume picks up, making this type of kit the go-to machine for many. “People who start off in solids tend to use small-format printers at first and then move to wide-format when they need more volume,” confirms I-Sub’s Davies.

“Wide-format printers do bring their own challenges, but they can also handle good volumes – you can run a lot of small items at once,” adds Alastair Palethorpe, sales executive at Xpres, a Derby-based dye-sublimation specialist. “For formats up to A0 we tend to sell Epson printers with Sawgrass inks, and above that we go for the Mutoh printers with Mutoh’s own inks.”

The falling cost of wide-format dye-sub kit is of course an important factor in making the figures for this sort of high-volume production stack up.

In recent years, printer manufacturers have introduced wide-format dye-sub models of their own, mainly to address the booming textiles market, with a rash of entry-level dye-sub kit launched over the past year or so. Epson entered the market last year with its first own-label dye-sub printers. While the 64in SureColor SC-F7100 is around £16,000, the 44in SureColor SC-F6000 only costs around £5,000. Similarly Mutoh now offers the sub-£5,000 DrafStation RJ-900X, and Mimaki the entry-level TS3-1600.

“These have really brought the ink prices down compared with Sawgrass, which is two or three times more expensive,” reports I-Sub’s Davies, who sells both the Epson and Mimaki ranges.

But being in possession of a wide-format dye-sub machine is only half the game in terms of processing decent volumes of small solid items. Printing small items by ganging them up on large-format printers will obviously increase efficiency, but the bottleneck of needing to position the transfer paper over individual items and then placing them in a heat press, still remains.

The good news is that heat presses for solid items come in a variety of sizes and formats – including models for specialist applications such as mugs or plates – and can be manual or automated. While there are certainly small heat presses, suitable for phone cases, tablet covers and t-shirts, available at very affordable prices, historically expensive large-format heat presses are also coming down in price. For instance, Xpress sells the recently introduced UK-built Adkins Omega 750 pneumatic press, with a 750x1,050mm heated bed, for £3,995. 

This is also excellent news for anyone tempted by the newer idea of using wide-format dye-sub kit for printing on large solid items, such as counter tops, signage and decorative architectural panelling. The question though, with only a few currently dabbling here, is just how likely this is to take off.

Xpres’s Palethorpe reports a fair amount of interest. “Apart from tablet cases, there’s a lot of demand for large-format photographic panels,” he reports. “We offer packages for really big aluminium or wood panels.”

“We see a market for large signage rigid media using dye-sublimation,” says Phil McMullin, sales manager for pro graphics at Epson UK, which at Ipex 2014 showed – alongside textiles, phone cases and the like – large-format aluminium display panels and polyester-coated table tops, with strikingly glossy finishes. Compared with UV inkjets, dye-sublimation has a wider colour gamut and can produce a very high gloss on smooth surfaces, says McMullin.

I-Sub’s Davies agrees there’s potential but confirms applications are rare. “We’ve only supplied Epson 64in printers to a couple of printers for large metal panels. They’re using them for signage, specialist industrial designs, elevator doors, supermarket shelving, that sort of thing. They print the metal and shape it because it’s malleable. They like it for food use because it’s not UV ink, so there’s no contamination.”

 One of Davies’ customers is Macro Art in Cambridgeshire. It installed an Epson dye-sublimation printer last year, mainly for soft signage, and has produced some large format 1.5x3m aluminium panels, including those shown on the Epson stand at Fespa 2013, and some for a clothing retailer. 

But technical operations manager Adam McMonagle reports mixed results. “We found that the quality of materials is the key. You need a good supplier of high-quality coatings,” he says, reporting that the ChromaLuxe coated aluminium used for Epson’s FESPA stand, was “very good, but expensive.” 

Switching to a lower-cost coated aluminium was a disappointment. “We found we couldn’t get consistency, as there were hot and cold spots where the ink didn’t transfer properly. The dwell time on the heat press is a factor. Cheaper materials can halve the cost, but we’ve found they don’t give the consistency,” says McMonagle, adding that as a result the panel printing project is currently on hold.

Alternate processes

Another thing to bear in mind is that just as diversifying into solid surface printing doesn’t have to mean wide-format, neither does it have to mean dye-sub. There are water slide decals that can be inkjet or toner printed and are highly flexible for all surfaces, and tough lacquer-adhesive heat transfers which can be used with non-polyesters. 

One of the nearest alternatives to dye-sub is toner transfer. This isn’t absorbed into the polyester surface in the same way as dye-sub inks, so the bond may not be as strong. But it preserves sharper imaging and text.

“The thing to remember is that dye-sublimation is great, but it only works on coatings that have a minimum of 55% polyester, and as long as it’s white,” adds Jim Nicol, UK managing director of TheMagicTouch, and one of the liveliest advocates of toner transfer, particularly in the form of TheMagicTouch’s low cost A4 and A3 OKI printers with white toner.

Of course this won’t necessarily be of particular interest to the wide-format printer already in possession of a dye-sub machine for textiles, or considering one, and seeing the opportunity to also produce solid objects as a crucial added bonus. What they will want to know is that printing items such as mugs and phone cases is possible, with many already doing just this.

And while the case for printing solid large-format signage and panels might be less clear-cut at present, this opportunity certainly shouldn’t be dismissed. Certainly few are doing this currently, but if printers can combat the technical challenges this application presents and be one of the first to market, the ability to produce high-gloss, durable and non-contaminating solid wide-format print could become an all-important USP.