# Need Help: Black Dots appear after Sublimation



## joehortonart (Aug 17, 2011)

I am somewhat new to sublimation, but have been having problems with black dots showing up in the substrates. I'm using a Ricoh GX7000, with sawgrass' Sublijet R ink and their Power Driver system for printing. When I press onto metal or bag tags I have no problems. When I do coozies or 100% polyester shirts there are black spots that show up all over the press area. They show up after the pre heat, with a piece of paper between the substrate and the Teflon [10 sec press at 4 pressure]. It will typically get a little worse after finishing the press, again having a piece of paper between the print and Teflon [40 sec at 4 pressure]. Can anyone help to get rid of these spots?


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## jpkevin (Oct 22, 2007)

Make sure you use an adhesive lint roller on any fabrics before pressing. Those dots are poly lint that has gotten on those fabric items. When you press them, they outgas and get a little bigger. That is why you see them after you press. Generally they will be blue, but can also be black or red. Lint rolling should remove any of this dust to prevent it.


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## D.Evo. (Mar 31, 2006)

What Kevin said. 
Most likely, it's lint and dust - a thorough run over the coosies with a lint-roller should fix your problem.
Same applies to shirts, mousepads and other textile items.


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## eagleact (Aug 3, 2010)

We had this occur the last few days. Absolutely driving us crazy. I was convinced that is was some type of splatter or overspray on the paper.

I am still not 100% convinced but jt does appear to be from the shirt. We even hit the shirt with no transfer paper at all and the spots still occurred.

Long story short we appeared to have a bad batch of shirts. We tried another brand of shirts and it went away.

I will try to wash or lint roll the next batch as that was the suggestion from my supplier as well.

Good luck!

Brent


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## joehortonart (Aug 17, 2011)

I've used a couple different brands of shirts, and some do it more than others, but they still appear. A colleague that is using the same system and shirts doesn't have any of the problems. Its not like it happens every once and a while, it is every print. I tried using the lint rollers and it hasn't really helped, taking away maybe 20%-30% of the dark spots. any other ideas?


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## D.Evo. (Mar 31, 2006)

If the spots appear when pre-pressing your substrate, before pressing an actual design on it - it sounds very much like dust/lint contamination. 
What is your working environment? Do you have any carpet in your work room? Do you mop and dust often? How do you store your textile items? Are the shirts and coosies in plastic bags? Storage containers?
Are your teflon sheets clean and kept dust-free between jobs?


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## MoeMoni (Sep 7, 2020)

I too have this problem however it has nothing to do with shirts, it actually prints this way. I have cleaned every part of this machine and ran several head/nozzle cleanings and yet those darn black dots are running through my image. Anyone have any other ideas I could try?


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