Full colour first layers on your 3D prints - Sublimation guide part 1

Check out part 2 here: https://youtu.be/eElO5aso8kY

Absolutely brilliant. I just contacted my local print shop (They're about a mile away) and I found out they do dye-sub printing. I can design artwork for my project, email it to them and later in the day nip over there and pick it up. My shop quoted $6.00US for an 8x10 sheet for singles and a sliding scale for multiples. Instead of buying a printer and all that entails just call up your local print shop and see if they do dye-sub. Oh, and my shop can do prints bigger than my Artillery Sidewinder X2 print bed.

The body spray in the face was the best. LOL Great video as always.

This is genius! I already do both sublimation and 3D printing, but never in a million years thought about combining the two! Thank you!

The humor here is deadpan but genius

This is fantastic - I can't wait to use the T-shirt making excuse to justify a new printer to my wife :D

After 28 years of struggling with troublesome printers, I broke down and got an EcoTank last year. I don't use it for sublimation, but its performance has been relatively stellar. Why? It works. I press PRINT and it prints properly, even after not using it for weeks. No extra steps needed. No driver reinstallation required. No fighting with ink cartridges required. No intrusive, periodic demands to set everything up all over again. When you say it's good for this particular 3D printing purpose, I believe you

Props to Johan!

Would be interesting to see the effect with translucent filament

Interesting and definitely fascinating, but a lot of steps and set-up/calibration for how often it would get used. I used to do a lot of sublimation, but if it's not done daily (or even weekly), the inks in the printer end up drying on the head(s), or if the printer has automatic cleaning/cycling, the ink gets used up in the cleaning cycle and just goes to waste. Sublimation can cost you more than you make if you are not using it on a regular basis... but... I do love this concept!

Wow, this is actually amazing. If I start a 3D print farm, I'll 100% have to add sublimation to supplement the services provided.

Brilliant video Michael. My wife already has a sublimation printer for her etsy store so will now have to combine that with some of my 3d print designs.

extra tip! epson sells sublimation ink for there ecotrank printers. and for the best results I advice a very good icc file to have the best colours printed. the normal settings are ok. but with a good icc file results are 10 times better. I have the file for eco tank printers that will greatly improve the quality of the prints. maybe @teaching tech, you can do another video, with high release paper and my icc files, to see the difference. another tip, when you use a eco tank printer for sublimation. you must print 1 page a day minimal, the paint tends to stick to the printhead if not used in a while.

Hi. I’m a sublimation nerd. My husband is a 3D nerd… so combined we already have the equipment and skills. Firstly, sublimation only works on plastics… so the t-shirts have to be at least 50% polyester for sublimation to work. Yes there are sprays (as shown in the video) but these can be messy and do not always leave a washable image on the cotton garment. An alternative might be a DTF hack … which we shall definitely try … you will need DTF sheets that you print on through either your standard inkjet printer or, if you have one, your sublimation printer, and then you need DTF powder. This powder soaks into the wet ink right after printing, and acts like a plastic glue. If you cure the image and powder with a heat gun then use heat resistant tape to tape it to the print bed, this may provide a stronger transfer. Google DTF sublimation hack … there are a few videos on this. I’ll give it a go later this week and report back. 😊

I've been wanting a sublimation printer for quite a while. This just gives me another use-case for when I eventually pick one up.

this combined with prints that fold up from being printed flat could be very interesting. no need to paint after you fold it all up. Like an unfolded cube, say. print flat, each face gets it's own section of sublimation imagery. Then take it off the print bed, fold it up and glue together, or model in some snaps. boom, full color printed cube. For low poly models this could be really interesting.

Simply brilliant. Although I have to work on my wife first to make room for another machine :) btw. EPSON deserves a praise for the design too.

Another way to do this is to use a laser printer and ohp paper. It's called FDM toner transfer. Like the sublimation method it likes a lot of squish.

Great investigation and thanks to Johan!

"Squish" is objectively a funny word. I don't think I've ever heard it as often in as short a time. 😂