The most popular digital transfer technology for p

Personalized decoration with digital transfer technology (Part 1)

understand the production equipment, materials and process methods of digital transfer technology, and how to use this technology to obtain benefits

does your company often refuse customers because the number of prints they want is lower than the minimum production quantity you can accept? How many potential orders are lost because your company can't meet the product decoration company required by customers? Whether you are a textile printing, decoration advertising company or a signboard painting company, you may have encountered many business opportunities that have passed by one way or another

here we introduce a new technology to meet the needs of short version decoration and expand the business scope of the company without investing a lot of money, which is digital transfer technology

what is digital transfer technology

digital transfer printing is an image that can be heat transferred. It is designed and produced by computer and output from digital printing equipment to a certain carrier in a certain format (usually in the form of transfer paper). When printing, the image is transferred from the carrier to the final substrate through a heat transfer printer. This is the same as the method of transferring plasticized sol to T-shirts by silk printing

digital 4 swing failure is mostly due to the loose electromechanical belt. Transfer printing can be realized by a variety of printers, including desktop inkjet printer, laser printer and hot wax printer; Color, wide width hot wax and inkjet printers can also produce digital transfer products. But which is the best system? It depends on the type of product you want to produce and the characteristics of the product you expect. Before making the right choice of equipment, it is necessary to be able to distinguish the main digital transfer technologies and their working principles

main transfer types

if you try to classify digital transfer technology, you can start with the printing toner used by the equipment. At this time, the equipment can be divided into two categories: sublimation dye and surface toner

sublimation dyes can be used in ink-jet printer cartridges, laser printer toners and heat transfer printer ribbons. The term "sublimation" refers to the direct transformation from a solid material to a gas without going through the usual liquid phase. Sublimated dyes are converted from solids to gases through thermal conversion, and are absorbed by polyester and some acrylic materials to become permanent images

sublimation dyes only react with polyester materials, which limits the product range of digital transfer technology. For example, 100% cotton clothing cannot accept sublimation pigments, and the porous surface without a layer of polyester cannot accept sublimation pigments. Later in this article, we will talk about how manufacturers make improvements around such limitations

sublimation dyes are transparent natural colors, so they are only suitable for white and light color printing objects. No matter what kind of printer, they always use CMYK's ink color deck

surface toner is a traditional toner, toner and ribbon system used in inkjet printers, laser printers and heat transfer printers. These materials are made of traditional pigments or dyes, which do not have to penetrate the surface of the material like sublimated dyes. Instead, these inks rely on polymer coated transfer paper to release the image to the coating on the surface during the thermal conversion process. The transfer paper coating is fused with the surface of the final substrate brush to effectively form an image between the substrate and the coating

the heat transfer technology based on toner is usually composed of CMYK four primary colors of ink cartridge, toner and ribbon. Some inkjet printers use additional shading to expand the color gamut. In addition, heat transfer printers often provide spot color ribbon pigments based on the data of a mainstream intermediate car disassembly manual

special transfer technology

sublimated dyes and traditional toners are applied to different types of heat transfer equipment. This will be introduced below

heat transfer printer. The heat transfer equipment uses the heated print head and pressure to transfer the color wax or sublimation ink on the ribbon to the substrate. The width of these heat transfer equipment ranges from 18 inches to 40 inches

when the hot wax ribbon is used to produce heat transfer products, the image is first transferred to the transfer paper, and then the image on the transfer paper is transferred to the final substrate

hot wax transfer printing is best applied to substrates such as textiles. At this time, wax and coating can well penetrate into the openings and gaps of textiles and fix on textile materials to ensure that the printed image does not fall off. On non porous materials, wax and coating cannot form a solid connection with the surface of the material, and the image ink layer transferred to the surface of the substrate is easy to be scratched off

if you use hot wax transfer printing technology for clothing printing, remember that paper coating will harden the surface of clothing, which looks heavier and harder than traditional silk printing. Some customers will not be satisfied with the results of this feature. The products produced by the hot wax transfer system will also reflect the unique lattice mode of the imaging resolution of the output equipment

desktop inkjet printing systems, such as Epson products, have become the main equipment for digital transfer production. Although the digital transfer printing used on clothing and other textiles can be copied to coated paper using the standard ink cartridge set of the printer, sublimated ink is used to produce printed matter and expand the range of imageable products

most heat transfer printers support sublimation dye ribbons in addition to hot wax ribbons. In fact, when desktop printers were first introduced to produce transfer products in the early 1990s, the most popular system was based on heat transfer technology. At that time, two kinds of thermal sublimation systems appeared: one is based on single weight or called the first generation of sublimation systems, and the other is based on double weight or called the second generation of sublimation dyes

in pure sublimation system (i.e. the first generation sublimation system), sublimation dyes are transferred from the ribbon to uncoated transfer paper through medium (dry resin or wax). The temperature at this stage is lower than that required for sublimation of dyes. When these dyes are applied to the final substrate, the sublimation of the dyes is completed at one time in the heat conversion process at a higher temperature

for systems that rely on second-generation sublimation dyes, the dyes are sublimated onto polyester coated transfer paper. The imprint is sublimated for the second time on the thermal conversion printer, where these images are finally transferred to the polyester surface on the substrate

due to the double sublimation process, the image produced by the second generation sublimation system is not bright enough according to the statistics of environmental impact assessment projects around the country. But because of the double diffusion, the effect of dye particle diffusion transmitted by the printer is better, and the printing quality is closer to the continuous quality of photos