# Sublimation printing, only on polyester?



## Jef1976 (Oct 16, 2021)

Hello, I have a question about sublimation printing. Do you need polyester fabric for the ink to adhere well to the fabric? 
Or is there a 100% cotton blend or polyester cotton blend?
I am new to sublimation business.

What temperature and how long does it take for the hot press?


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## splathead (Dec 4, 2005)

Jef1976 said:


> Hello, I have a question about sublimation printing. Do you need polyester fabric for the ink to adhere well to the fabric?
> Or is there a 100% cotton blend or polyester cotton blend?
> I am new to sublimation business.
> 
> What temperature and how long does it take for the hot press?


Yes, sublimation only adheres to polyester. 100% cotton will not work. Blends will work in the same percentage that there is polyester. So a 50/50 blend will result in only 50% of the ink sticking. 50%, the cotton part, will wash out.

Follow your ink instructions for time/temperature. But generally it will be anywhere between 350-400 degrees Farenheit for 45 to 60 seconds.

The other gotcha is the garment must be lighter than the ink. Sublimation works best on white garments.


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## NoXid (Apr 4, 2011)

And all those other things you see that are sublimated, like mugs, tumblers, photo panels, or "vinyl" T-shirt transfers, have a built-in polyester coating.

As far as "adhesion," dye sublimation ink vapor enters the pores of the polyester (which expand when heated) and get trapped there when the polyester cools. So not an external coating like paint or pigment inks.


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## Ladogwear (Jun 26, 2021)

Jef1976 said:


> Hello, I have a question about sublimation printing. Do you need polyester fabric for the ink to adhere well to the fabric?
> Or is there a 100% cotton blend or polyester cotton blend?
> I am new to sublimation business.
> 
> What temperature and how long does it take for the hot press?


You can sublimate on 100% cotton but you must use Chromablast ink! It's all I do and then I print that out on Siser HTV easysubli sheets.
Or Chromablast paper if I am truly subbing white..But to sublimate on black or colors use Siser vinyl sheets in your Sawgrass or whatever printer you use. I don't like Polyester and never use it. I tried once and shirt crinkled up and anyway looked like crap! Also I do it @ 400 degrees for 40 seconds on paper and 400 degrees for 25 seconds for vinyl.


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## 13 Stitches (Jul 31, 2007)

Jef1976 said:


> Hello, I have a question about sublimation printing. Do you need polyester fabric for the ink to adhere well to the fabric?
> Or is there a 100% cotton blend or polyester cotton blend?
> I am new to sublimation business.
> 
> What temperature and how long does it take for the hot press?


Only 100% polyester will work with sublimation, and it cannot print white ink.


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## Ladogwear (Jun 26, 2021)

Ladogwear said:


> You can sublimate on 100% cotton but you must use Chromablast ink! It's all I do and then I print that out on Siser HTV easysubli sheets.
> Or Chromablast paper if I am truly subbing white..But to sublimate on black or colors use Siser vinyl sheets in your Sawgrass or whatever printer you use. I don't like Polyester and never use it. I tried once and shirt crinkled up and anyway looked like crap! Also I do it @ 400 degrees for 40 seconds on paper and 400 degrees for 25 seconds for vinyl.


LADogwear.net
New site will be up in a day or 2


13 Stitches said:


> Only 100% polyester will work with sublimation, and it cannot print white ink.


I do it every day using vinyl sheets!


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## Ladogwear (Jun 26, 2021)

Ladogwear said:


> LADogwear.net
> New site will be up in a day or 2
> 
> I do it every day using vinyl sheets!


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## 13 Stitches (Jul 31, 2007)

Ladogwear said:


> LADogwear.net
> New site will be up in a day or 2
> 
> I do it every day using vinyl sheets!


Vinyl is different than using sublimation ink, but I love what you did! I am assuming you printed on the vinyl, cut it, and then heat pressed it?


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## NoXid (Apr 4, 2011)

Ladogwear said:


> You can sublimate on 100% cotton but you must use Chromablast ink! It's all I do and then I print that out on Siser HTV easysubli sheets.
> Or Chromablast paper if I am truly subbing white..But to sublimate on black or colors use Siser vinyl sheets in your Sawgrass or whatever printer you use. I don't like Polyester and never use it. I tried once and shirt crinkled up and anyway looked like crap! Also I do it @ 400 degrees for 40 seconds on paper and 400 degrees for 25 seconds for vinyl.


You can sublimate onto a transfer and then attach the transfer to a garment. I know, I do it. But that is sublimating plastic, not cotton. I know you know the difference, but many new people end up trying to do regular sublimation onto black cotton shirts because they have seen the words: "You can sublimate on 100% cotton" so damn many times. Yes, you mention HTV and Chromablast, but they don't know what that stuff is, so they walk away from the post with only one bit of information: _You can sublimate cotton_, which is 100% impossible.


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## 13 Stitches (Jul 31, 2007)

NoXid said:


> You can sublimate onto a transfer and then attach the transfer to a garment. I know, I do it. But that is sublimating plastic, not cotton. I know you know the difference, but many new people end up trying to do regular sublimation onto black cotton shirts because they have seen the words: "You can sublimate on 100% cotton" so damn many times. Yes, you mention HTV and Chromablast, but they don't know what that stuff is, so they walk away from the post with only one bit of information: _You can sublimate cotton_, which is 100% impossible.


I tried to sublimate onto HTV tonight, just to see, after heat pressing a white square of vinyl onto a hoodie first, and the colors were so muted. I had watched a couple of videos on it (not glitter), and followed the 330 degree, 25 secs, light pressure and think it was muted because sublimation has to be hotter than that to transfer colors properly. So I just did print and cut, and covered it up. I should try sublimating again on white vinyl, higher temp, just to see if it works. Let me know what you think I did wrong. I was trying to do it quick instead of having to set up the Roland, which takes more time than just cutting a square of white vinyl and sublimating on it. Thank you.


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## NoXid (Apr 4, 2011)

13 Stitches said:


> I tried to sublimate onto HTV tonight, just to see, after heat pressing a white square of vinyl onto a hoodie first, and the colors were so muted. I had watched a couple of videos on it (not glitter), and followed the 330 degree, 25 secs, light pressure and think it was muted because sublimation has to be hotter than that to transfer colors properly. So I just did print and cut, and covered it up. I should try sublimating again on white vinyl, higher temp, just to see if it works. Let me know what you think I did wrong. I was trying to do it quick instead of having to set up the Roland, which takes more time than just cutting a square of white vinyl and sublimating on it. Thank you.


Regular HTV does not sublimate well because it is not Polyester. Siser EasySubli has a Polyester layer to accept dye sublimation, as does Siser "sparkle" HTV, or whatever it is called.


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## gidmancaroline (10 mo ago)

Ladogwear said:


> LADogwear.net
> New site will be up in a day or 2
> 
> I do it every day using vinyl sheets!


How do you put the vinyl in your printer do you have to take the protective backing off?


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## webtrekker (Jan 28, 2018)

usama iqbal said:


> no it can also do on cotton fabric but you need only polyester sparay to sublimate on cotton t shirt


Hmm ... Can you show us a cotton shirt done in this way that has been machine-washed several times?

Thanks.


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## binki (Jul 16, 2006)

This is a topic that really needs to die. You can paint a car with a roller or a spray can but your results will be less than optimal so why even try?

Use the right tool for the job.


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## usama iqbal (8 mo ago)

No its not just on polyester fabric it also can be do on cotton fabric but u need just additional thing which is polyester spray


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## rossdv8 (Dec 21, 2012)

Jef1976 said:


> Hello, I have a question about sublimation printing. Do you need polyester fabric for the ink to adhere well to the fabric?
> Or is there a 100% cotton blend or polyester cotton blend?
> I am new to sublimation business.
> 
> What temperature and how long does it take for the hot press?


I get so annoyed when people persist in saying you cannot Print to a 100% cotton shirt using Dye Sublimation. Or that you have to use special transfer materials that print 'on' the shirt, rather than sublimate into the cotton fibres themselves, in a similar way to sublimating a polyester shirt.

The truth is that you can - to a degree.
You can sublimate 100% cotton and it does not involve printing 'on' the cotton, but printing 'into' the cotton fibres.
A bit like traditional dyeing of fabric - except that the sublimation ink (I use normal dye sublimation ink) cannot manage to penetrate all the way through the garment. At least when I stopped working on the project, that was as far as i got.

As for the result. I only managed to perfect the process to the point where I could do wash and wear testing. To do that of course, the shirt had to be worn as a regular clothing item every few days and exposed to normal wear and tear. In my case I wore the shirts in a tropical climate, and while living aboard my yacht. I also sometimes slept in the two shirts that were my final test garments.
Testing ran steadily for five years then I had a drastic change to my health (not caused by chemicals or anything  )

Of all my trials, only two shirts passed all the wash and wear tests. All the others gradually lost their prints. One, I lost when my yacht was wrecked in cyclone Debbie in 2017. The other I still have as a reminder that when people say something is impossible - you just try a different method.

Anyway, this shirt was printed somewhere between 2010 and 2013 - I can't remember which, but there's probably a picture of it on this forum, or on the Dye Sublimation Forum when it was first done. It is definitely not later than early 2013.










The faded 'distressed' look is just something you have to live with when sublimating 'into' cotton rather than printing 'on' cotton like you do with transfer paper or DTG, because some of the fibres are always brushing up over time turning into lint. Because the cotton cannot be 100% saturated by the image the way fabric dye saturates cotton, there will always be a percentage of white fibres mixed in.
Sublimating into the cotton fibres means you must get the cotton fibres to not only absorb the Dye Sub ink, but to HOLD that ink permanently, so it cannot be washed out.

The shirt in the picture has been washed over and over for most of the last ten years or so, in water that is usually 90 degrees Celsius, the the temperature my washing machine - the last two machines actually - heats the water to when set to 'Cotton'.
The shirt was always just thrown in with whatever other clothes were being washed.
From there, the shirt has always been tumble dried at teh hottest settings on whatever dryer we had at the time. I live in the wet tropics. We almost always have to use a clothes dryer if I am at home.
It has probably been washed hundreds of times. I just can't guess how many hundreds.

When living aboard, I mostly wear polyester T-shirts because they are far more comfortable in sweaty humid conditions because they dry quickly, and also because they are far better to swim in.
Washing a cotton shirt aboard a yacht usually involves going for a swim in it, then rinsing it in a tub of seawater and a little hair shampoo, then rinsing that out and hanging it in the wind and sun until it is dry (and usually stiff as a board by then).

So. That shirt is a 100% cotton shirt, Dye-sublimated using standard Moorim Dye Sub ink (for Brother Inkjets) from MIR (Australia).
The Cotton Tee was treated using a common product by a method I developed for my own personal use simply to prove it can be done - because I was told it cannot.

There is no 'hand' on the shirt.
You cannot 'feel' the sublimated image on this shirt any more than you can feel an untreated cotton shirt before it is printed.
Just as you cannot 'feel' the image sublimated into a polyester shirt.

I was planning to take this trick to the grave, because there is no way I can patent it and expect to make money from it. Instead, I gave away most of the secret in my original post years ago and in what I have written above.

What i can say though, is that in my experiments to get this working, there was only one method using two companies' products that worked every time. It is a common enough product made by several manufacturers, but I tried about 10 of them and only two shirts, both treated using one product, lasted the distance.
To make the process commercially viable you would have to be able to buy their product a whole lot cheaper than the current wholesale cost (back then).

So until some one comes up with a similar product that is affordable:
1 - You CAN sublimate successfully and permanently into 100% cotton T-Shirts
2 - Unless you can get a product equivalent to what I used at a bargain basement price - it is simply NOT WORTH DOING !


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## into the T (Aug 22, 2015)

rossdv8 said:


> I get so annoyed when people persist in saying you cannot Print to a 100% cotton shirt using Dye Sublimation. Or that you have to use special transfer materials that print 'on' the shirt, rather than sublimate into the cotton fibres themselves, in a similar way to sublimating a polyester shirt.
> 
> The truth is that you can - to a degree.
> You can sublimate 100% cotton and it does not involve printing 'on' the cotton, but printing 'into' the cotton fibres.
> ...


here you go


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## rossdv8 (Dec 21, 2012)

into the T said:


> here you go


Thanks, I thought it must be on this forum somewhere.

As I mentioned in this post I used two different products on that design, and one I lost when my yacht was wrecked in 2017 - the other I have (the one in this post).
I cannot find that 2013 photo in my system at the moment, so what surprises me is how little the colours changed in the last 11 years, with the two shirts being used at least once or twice most weeks for a couple of weeks every month, for at least four years.

If nothing else the process was 'durable'.

I wish I had not had the second bout of heart infection that eventually caused me to lose interest in the project.

Dyepress was used on one shirt, and on the other I used an Artists' Polymer spray for coating artwork like crayon, watercolour and charcoal works done on paper or canvas etc. I can't remember who made it.
I also cannot remember which is the shirt I have here and photographed today. I do know that the Dyepress one and the one treated with the Artist Polymer spray coating stuff were both holding up pretty well, although one of the two was surviving a little better than the other. That could have been just because It was on the boat more often and treated a little more roughly.

I have stopped doing any sort of sublimation printing these days, but for what it is worth - the secret was in 'completely saturating' the cotton fibres with the polymer.

My idea was based on the method of sublimating ceramics, aluminium sheets, stainless bottles. All products that can't be sublimated. 
But the polymer coating CAN be sublimated! We do it all the time.
So my idea was that the sublimation process should then be able to get 'into' the cotton fibres almost as well as the dye gets into the outer layer of polyester on a poly shirt.
That way it was not like transferring an image 'onto the front' of the shirt, the way other transfer processes work, and more like traditional Dye Sublimation.
If the image was pressed with sufficient pressure, and for just the right amount of time, it should penetrate enough 'depth' of fibres, that even though it only coats the fibres (because the fibres don;t open up like polyester does at 200C) the polyester coating them does open up.
You just need sufficient polymer on as many fibres as possible, and deep enough into the cotton that it can't just 'wear off' as cotton turns to lint.

It sounds a bit weird, but if you think about it carefully - the logic is there. 
It took a lot of failures before I had two complete successes.

What I was working on though, was trying to overcome the 'distressed' look. In 2013 I expected the colour to fade over time, so starting with a faded look seemed a bad idea.
The neat thing was that only the front part of the shirt where the image was going to be pressed had to be saturated. Basically, a sheet of something waterproof has to be slid inside the shirt, and in my case I used a fluffy paint roller to apply the Polymer.
Then the shirt was pressed to set the stuff.

Because I used a Teflon sheet as the insert, I simply left that in when I pressed some shirts. For others I let them air dry then I tumble dried them on HOT before pressing and printing.
I was messing around just experimenting with ideas when I had the two successes and I had not documented what worked, because I was not planning on success with any of it.

In the end, I had also managed several successful prints on artists' canvas treated with this process and on Dacron yacht sail material as well, because I had been experimenting for a particular marketing idea. 
The cotton shirt thing was something I did simply because I had been told it was impossible.

Oddly, I was visiting a house a couple of weeks ago and saw one of my photographs hanging on a wall. It is sublimated on cheap (from a 'Dollar Store') pre-framed cotton artist's canvas with that gauche stuff, that I treated using the Artist polymer spray. I know of a few others that are hanging on walls around the place.

Anyway - 'Thanks For the memories'.

I'm an old man now, and past doing all this stuff, but I would like to see if anyone else decides to push this further.
It does work.

I could not get the Polyester products like Dyepress and the Micador (there, I've remembered the brand name of the Artist coating) products cheap enough to make it commercially viable at the time. 
But it does work.
And the remaining shirt still hasn't faded after 4 years of solid abuse and 6 years of of and on wearing.

Not bad for something that 'can't be done' !


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## rossdv8 (Dec 21, 2012)

Just for comparison. Dye Sub into 100% cotton, Hot washed and Hot tumbled dried, over 11 years.
(not every day of course)

2013
Immediately after printing this shirt was washed using ordinary powder detergent at 95C and tumble dried on the Hottest setting in the dryer.
Then this photo was taken for the T-Shirt forum discussion about sublimation printing on 100% cotton (in March 2013)..











2022:
I saw the question asked, and dragged the shirt out of my wardrobe yesterday (30 june 2022)










I just realised that if anything, now that a lot of the fluffy white fibres have worn off - the shirt is brighter than it was when it was new !
I only realised that when I decided to post the two pics for comparison.


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