# sub prints coming off faded



## terzdesign (Mar 8, 2010)

Hey yall

I do mostly screen printing in my shop but for ones and twos qty I do dye sub for the clients. I dunno, but how dark will a black get on a white shirt when you dye sub it? It seems like the image is alot more faded then it should be and when I hot peel off the paper, there is still alot of image left on the paper. Shouldn't the colors be pretty vibrant?


----------



## Cre8tivi tee (Mar 12, 2008)

Hello,

I have the same problem with dye sublimation flock, the image does not seem as vibrant and fades slightly when I washed it. I have been told that it was down to the ink I used, has anybody out there got any ideas?

Many thanks.


----------



## Riderz Ready (Sep 18, 2008)

There are so many factors when it comes to colors in dye sub but in the end you should have bold and vibrant colors. It all comes down to having a professional profile that matches your paper, ink and substrate. You also need to make sure the settings are correct in the actual design program you are using. A simple thing to check is to make sure you are using RGB color pallete. If you are usig a CMYK pallet and printing your colors will look faded especially black and reds. Work with the vendor you supplied the ink to insure you have the right profile and right settings for the software.


----------



## lben (Jun 3, 2008)

Dye sub must be done on polyester fabric. The less poly in a fabric the fader the image. I have heard some folks print on 50/50 but the lowest recommended is 65 poly/35 cotton. Even on 100% poly, no matter what I've printed there is still a brilliant image on the paper.

Here's a pic of a scrap shirt that I use for first prints and housework. It has been washed dozens of times without fading. It is a Hanes soft link shirt. 100% polyester outside and cotton inside. It is a thick heavy shirt but I have to admit it's the softest shirt I've ever had on.


----------



## joeshaul (Mar 1, 2008)

Most important variables when heat transfering: 
Time temp and pressure. 

My settings for polyester shirts:
67 seconds, 405 degrees, medium pressure

If you're using something similar, then check your profile settings, and also make sure you are using a dye sub paper. The latter may sound a bit dumb to state, but a lot of people will use a copy paper and some copy papers can have great results with sublimation, until they switch paper companies. You might also want to try sublimating something else if you can, like a mousepad, that way you can rule out the material.

And as the poster above pointed out, polyester is required for dye sublimation, as the inks will not bond well to cotton fibers and may wash out.


----------



## Cre8tivi tee (Mar 12, 2008)

Hello all,

Let me get this right, your saying I should use a rgb pallet instead of cmyk when printing with dye sublimation. I use rotech ink with their profile provided, coreldraw x3 with cmyk pallet. Can you please explain why I am doing it wrong, as I did not know, I was supposed to use the rgb pallet?

Many thanks.


----------



## terzdesign (Mar 8, 2010)

On-line Jerseys said:


> There are so many factors when it comes to colors in dye sub but in the end you should have bold and vibrant colors. It all comes down to having a professional profile that matches your paper, ink and substrate. You also need to make sure the settings are correct in the actual design program you are using. A simple thing to check is to make sure you are using RGB color pallete. If you are usig a CMYK pallet and printing your colors will look faded especially black and reds. Work with the vendor you supplied the ink to insure you have the right profile and right settings for the software.


I dont think im necessarily doing anything wrong with printing the reverse images on my printer. I just dont have much experience with the applying of the image. Do I need to put more pressure/heat on the image for it to peel off better?


----------



## terzdesign (Mar 8, 2010)

lben said:


> Dye sub must be done on polyester fabric. The less poly in a fabric the fader the image. I have heard some folks print on 50/50 but the lowest recommended is 65 poly/35 cotton. Even on 100% poly, no matter what I've printed there is still a brilliant image on the paper.
> 
> Here's a pic of a scrap shirt that I use for first prints and housework. It has been washed dozens of times without fading. It is a Hanes soft link shirt. 100% polyester outside and cotton inside. It is a thick heavy shirt but I have to admit it's the softest shirt I've ever had on.


How do you get the blacks that dark though? mine come out rather faded, much more than that especially.


----------



## lben (Jun 3, 2008)

I use the photo setting on the printer and plain white paper on the paper setting. Then for a 100% polyester shirt - 400 degrees F, medium pressure, 45 seconds. And don't forget to prepress a shirt for 5-10 seconds first to dry it out. I take my transfer and place it on the bottom pallet for a few seconds too (with the top up on the press) to warm it up and dry it out. I peel hot, though a lot of times I have to fight to get the transfer back off the cloth


----------



## terzdesign (Mar 8, 2010)

lben said:


> I use the photo setting on the printer and plain white paper on the paper setting. Then for a 100% polyester shirt - 400 degrees F, medium pressure, 45 seconds. And don't forget to prepress a shirt for 5-10 seconds first to dry it out. I take my transfer and place it on the bottom pallet for a few seconds too (with the top up on the press) to warm it up and dry it out. I peel hot, though a lot of times I have to fight to get the transfer back off the cloth


yea, it tough for me to peel mine off too. Thanks for the advice though.


----------



## EVLIND (Dec 13, 2010)

old post but hey thanks for the help. 380 45 secs.
Thanks!!!!


----------



## MAAG (Feb 20, 2012)

I used to get bright and beautiful prints and now they are coming all washed out and look awful! Terrible quality.
There are only 2 things different from before.
1 - My Ricoh Aficio GXe3300N is requesting a new ink collection unit.
2 - I purchased my 2nd set of Inks directly from Ricoh and they were not the previous sawgrass Sublijet R I had originally.

Can someone let me know how/why this may be affecting so badly the quality of the prints?

What is the fastest way to fix this problem?

Thank you all for your help!!


----------



## Decal_Designs (Jul 4, 2005)

Ricoh does not sell dye sub ink. If I'm understanding you correctly, then you are not using dye sub ink.


----------



## ddante (Aug 2, 2011)

you can use t-shirt 35% poly and 65% cotton that subli works well.
About black, there is 2 or 3 kind of black in the market, a normal one for CMYK (pict reproduction) and two or three deep black.
you can use the normal one in this way 50c 40c 20y 100b, you will have a good black, after it's up to you, print some square with different percentage and transfer it and after make a choice.
you can work with CMYK on your Corel with no problems, it's not necessary to work in RGB (????)
the paper doesn't have to stick on the fabric (hot or cold) if it stick that means you're using a wrong paper with some sort of coating that doesn't release the ink, so sub doesn't work.
Remember that in nature doesn't exist the black color, it's a dark gray ...or black is only inside a closed box without any kind of reflex, so impossible to match.
temperature: from 356 to 375 is enough, 15 to 20 seconds works well , pressure medium/strong.
if temperature is too high and time to long the sublimation process start to fade away, you can try in a sublimated fabric pressing it at 410 for 40-50 seconds.
I hope that you're using a good ink, I mean not the Chinese one sold for 10 bocks a gallon.

1° decent inks
1° right ICC profile
1° right paper
2° right temperature
3° right time




Sent from my iPhone using TShirtForums app - ddante


----------



## mgparrish (Jul 9, 2005)

ddante said:


> you can use t-shirt 35% poly and 65% cotton that subli works well.
> About black, there is 2 or 3 kind of black in the market, a normal one for CMYK (pict reproduction) and two or three deep black.
> you can use the normal one in this way 50c 40c 20y 100b, you will have a good black, after it's up to you, print some square with different percentage and transfer it and after make a choice.
> *you can work with CMYK on your Corel with no problems, it's not necessary to work in RGB (????)*
> ...


Not sure I really understand your black comment  but some black sublimation inks can be very good, some are not. Grey inks don't exist on 4 color printers, if you can force only your black color to print for grayscales, depending on the black ink quality, they can very good. Most grayscale defects are based on poor profiles which creates grayscales artificially using RGB mixtures.

I have to disagree on the use of CMYK in Corel, but I think you added a question mark since you are not sure?


The exception would be if you have wide format and use a RIP, which works in Postscript and native CMYK.

http://www.epson.eu/Printers-All-In...port?target=article&extn=.html&articleId=1104

"
*Inkjet printers are RGB devices*


In general inkjet printers are RGB devices; even if they use cyan, magenta, yellow and black ink for printing. Therefore it is correct to send an image file that is in a RGB colour space to your Epson inkjet printer driver. The printer driver will follow your driver settings to convert the image data from RGB to CMYK values and will calculate how much ink, of the available inks, is needed to reproduce any CMYK value."


----------



## joeshaul (Mar 1, 2008)

MAAG said:


> I used to get bright and beautiful prints and now they are coming all washed out and look awful! Terrible quality.
> There are only 2 things different from before.
> 1 - My Ricoh Aficio GXe3300N is requesting a new ink collection unit.
> 2 - I purchased my 2nd set of Inks directly from Ricoh and they were not the previous sawgrass Sublijet R I had originally.
> ...





Decal_Designs said:


> Ricoh does not sell dye sub ink. If I'm understanding you correctly, then you are not using dye sub ink.


In relation to this thread being revived about the faded out print, I think this poster (Decal_Designs) hit the nail on the head. What you are seeing with your faded out print is the mixture of dye sub ink and non dye sub ink (which you got from Ricoh) producing a "different" result. 

The Ricoh unit has a reservoir and you're basically poisoning this reservoir with the non dye sub ink, which is going to be a pretty expensive mistake as it will take about half a cartridge of dye sub ink to refill/flush it out and the only real way to know if it's fully cleaned is to sample print then test sublimate, so hopefully you have some scrap shirts or giveaway mousepads to print. 

I believe there's an option in Powerdriver to print off a page for each color. You'll be printing out quite a few of those to try to expunge the non dye sub ink, then when you think you are ready, try a sublimation print. If you'll be doing a t-shirt, a wash test may be in order if you plan on actually selling it.

My experience: I loaded OEM inks before dye sub inks expecting the printer to expunge some ink on some test prints, cleans, and etc. Then I found out about the reservoir and that I basically kicked myself in the junk for doing so, wasted quite a bit of ink on expunging pages and had some off the wall prints for a little while.


----------



## MAAG (Feb 20, 2012)

Thanks a lot, Joe.
I did flush the heads 4 times but, from your post, I can tell is not enogh! I will keep printing until we're back to prime quality.
Thanks to everyone. You really helped me out!


----------



## swachal (Sep 19, 2011)

One thing that we have found is that there is quite a difference in transfer paper. On fabrics we only use TexPrint. It gives us the most vibrant colors on fabrics. On every other substrate it doesn't seem to matter which paper we use. We are using Epsons with Artainium inks.


----------

