# Sublimation onto Vinyl?



## DeeAJ

I am just setting up business with T-shirts and other Garments and am finding it a bit overwhelming trying to understand what technique does what. One of my main issues is that most Orders i am getting require pictures/wording on Dark T-shirts, so we were told that we had to buy a Vinyl Cutter and Vinyl to do this as The Sublimation process doesn't print white.
Please can someone tell me if it is possible to do sublimation printing onto vinyl (like a white Vinyl Square on a Dark T-shirt)?


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## tprinters

You can sublimate on twill, never tried sublimating vinyl.


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## Sergent

tprinters is right


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## Decal_Designs

No, you cannot sublimate onto anything that is not polyester unless it has a special poly coating on it. For vinyl, you would be looking into an Eco-Solvent printer/cutter for images, or a regular vinyl cutter for just one or two color simple designs. Or, you could look into the opaque inkjet transfers, which would not be a vinyl product.


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## ydp2014

You need a solvent printer / cutter, or the cheapest way to print full color images is pigment ink onto a heat transfer paper using inkjet printer. I've done this a few times pretty good t shirts


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## Decal_Designs

I would like to stand corrected on the subject of sublimating onto vinyl. In fact, now you can on certain vinyl. I was at an Open House recently at one of my suppliers, and one table was set up for Specialty Materials, the makers of Thermoflex Plus and other garment vinyl. There were several samples of dark t-shirts that had vinyl designs cut and applied and then dye sublimated with an image. The effect was very nice. The hand was of course not like sublimating a poly shirt, but it was a very viable design element for sure. It wasn't the ThermoFlex , but if I remember right it was the Glitter Flex and the Deco Print I believe. You would have to double check on that. The best effect was done on either the silver or white colors of these materials. I don't really see much benefit if you already have an Eco-solvent printer, but if you don't, and you do have a sublimation printer and a cutter then you can do some interesting designs on dark cotton shirts.


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