# Sublimation not transferring - new to sub



## kellikins18 (Jan 29, 2008)

Hi,
I'm new to sublimation, been doing vinyl and DTG for years though. I wanted to make my yearly Christmas ornaments instead of going through Shutterfly, so I decided to make a sub machine and finally set it up today and can't get the print to transfer. Can you help? Here is what I'm using:

Brother J485DW printer
TexPrint sublimation paper
Stahl's heat press @ 400f for 60 seconds
Bella canvas polyester tank
Ink from Ebay seller Inkworks: https://www.ebay.com/itm/322091807237

I printed on the correct side of the paper and mirrored the image, the print looks fine on the paper, but when I press it, NOTHING transfers at all.

Any advice?


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## owleyes (Aug 10, 2017)

kellikins18 said:


> I printed on the correct side of the paper and mirrored the image, the print looks fine on the paper, but when I press it, NOTHING transfers at all.
> 
> 
> 
> Any advice?




What color is the shirt?


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk


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## kellikins18 (Jan 29, 2008)

very light grey :/


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## twnfinn (Jun 24, 2013)

kellikins18 said:


> very light grey :/


If the print looks very good on paper there is an ink issue. the printout should look pretty dull. Did you use normal inks on the printer before? It takes a long time to flush out.

you can test by smearing a small amount on paper and pressing on any waste polyester, if that transfers then you know you still have old inks in printer. If it does not then maybe they send you wrong ink? Besides that your setup looks fine (double check temperature if you can, if under 300 you will get no transfer what so ever)


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## PatWibble (Mar 7, 2014)

Unlike Epsons ( where the ink cartridges sit in the print head mechanism) your Brother uses long capilary tubes to carry ink from the cartridge to the printhead.


It will take a lot of printing to clean the tubes out, if you have used regular ink in the printer. Best to invest in a set of cleaning cartridges. Cheaper than wasting t-shirts and sublimation paper.


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## splathead (Dec 4, 2005)

kellikins18 said:


> the print looks fine on the paper



You'll know when you've finally used up all the old ink and are finally prnting sublimation ink when the print doesn't look fine on the paper. It will look dull and off-colored.


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## kellikins18 (Jan 29, 2008)

It's a brand new printer, but you do have to put the original ink cartridges in for the start up so maybe it sucked some it up then and I just didn't flush enough when I put the sub ink in. I'll look into cleaning it. Thanks so much!


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## splathead (Dec 4, 2005)

kellikins18 said:


> It's a brand new printer, but you do have to put the original ink cartridges in for the start up so maybe it sucked some it up then and I just didn't flush enough when I put the sub ink in. I'll look into cleaning it. Thanks so much!



On printers with tube systems, it's not unusual for the tubes to hold as much as 25% of the cartridge's capacity. The start up routine would have sucked ink into the tubes to their capacity.


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## PatWibble (Mar 7, 2014)

Like Splathead said the sublimation print should look 'wrong'. The problem you will face is not all colours will print through at the same rate, so your transfer could still look 'wrong' when one or more of the inks is still the original ink.


Luckily Canon uses dye ink as standard (or at least they do in Europe) which has a much more translucent appearence than sublimation ink ( opaque and milky in appearence). Keep your eye on the tubing to check when the old ink is used up.


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