Creativity can often get decorators where they’re going with conventional ingredients and a little outside-the-box trial and error. (Image courtesy The Paper Ranch)

With all ducks in a row, digital-transfer technology is an efficient and inexpensive means of creating colorful quality at any quantity. But in the non-wearables kingdom, aligning compatible duck species gets interesting. Entering the third dimension from plain-planed Ts and sweatshirts adds product scope and a world of new application addendums along with it. Printwear steps inside to explore and bring you creative options. 

Equip yourself 

“Heat-transfer paper, printer, ink, press and substrate, in order to work accordingly, it is important to make certain the correct components are being used together,” says Michael Matosky, Color My World Inc. “With so many options available, it can be a confusion-inducing process, but once you find a process that works, write it down and stick with it.” With paper and ink in harmony, the make or break moment then becomes heat-press settings, which may require some time, temperature and pressure-tweaking experiments to get it just right. “Stick with it, ask questions and you’ll be able to add a whole line of product offerings with ease,” Matosky advises. 

The Paper Ranch’s Nick Buettner also notes the heat press’s importance when stepping outside apparel applications: “When you’re talking garments, you always know your surface is going to be something flat and can go in just about any heat press. But when you’re getting into the non-wearables market, there’s going to be unique applications available and special equipment in some cases.” Imaging mouse pads, wooden boxes and mugs, for example, involves a look at alternative heating methods, such as conveyor dryers, adjustable and combination heat presses and even pizza ovens. “A hat press will actually work for embellishing smaller items or substrates like a gym bag,” Buettner mentions. “A hat press is nice because it’s got a lot of area around it that can fit a bag when you’re only trying to embellish a small area on that bag,” he explains. “I’ve seen people jerry-rig their heat press to accommodate some obscure products.” 

Non-wearable substrates add a new dimension to the decoration equation. (Image courtesy Leed’s)

Output is another substrate-bound element that must fall in line with all others and Buettner recommends laser transfers for hard surfaces such as wood, metal and ceramic, and inkjet for mouse pads, koozies and other fabric-covered goods. 

Matosky notes a growing interest in using heat-transfer paper to customize items such as leather, ceramics, wood and other interesting imprintables without the use of special inks or printers. “The paper manufacturers have been developing an array of new papers that can be applied to a variety of substrates, and we have seen customer creations ranging from leather wallets, fabric calendars, mugs, wood plaques, puzzles, mouse pads and more,” he remarks. “The largest non-wearable substrate growth in the inkjet category would be leather and other fabric-made products.” 

Technique-alities 

In this vast market, each item possesses a unique set of transfer criteria, says Buettner, who cautions imagers to mind press pressure settings and avoid squishing mouse pads with too much of it or applying too little when embellishing wood. “Usually, you’re going to turn to your paper supplier or, if it’s sublimation, you might contact your sublimation-ink supplier,” he says of some first-resort resources for such decorating nuances. “For our customers, we put a chart together with all the times, temperatures, pressures, special construction, and they go from there.” 

Matosky has known digital decorators to incorporate some innovative solutions of their own to the process: “Technique is quite the operative word when applying digital-transfer decorations to non-wearable substrates. Basically, anything can be a non-wearable substrate—as long as it won’t melt—with some experimentation. Thus, techniques are very individualized, often inspiring imagers to create special forms, dies and pucks to provide stability in the pressing process. And, certainly, there are many equipment manufacturers that have developed special-use items for decorating non-wearables.” 

Coatings are another consideration most often associated with products prepared to receive digital dye sublimation. However, non-wearables such as mugs are still coated for use with everyday laser transfers. Conversely, “There are substrates out there that can be sublimated without a coating, but for the most part, sublimation is done with the coating process,” reports Buettner. “And that coating process is expensive, which is kind of a deterrent,” he offers. “If I want to buy a regular coffee mug, it costs me twenty-five cents. If I want to buy one that’s coated for sublimation, it’s a buck fifty.” He adds that while it’s increasing, the presently available poly-coated-products market isn’t as diverse as it could be. “If the coating were cheaper and the product scope larger, sublimation decorators could be just knocking it dead. But right now it’s somewhat difficult for them to compete with that technology and they end up using pad or screen printing.” 

Chemistry in color

Steep as price points may be, sublimated products carry an increased value built into their increased expense. Johnson Plastics’ John Barker says that, although sublimation unit costs tend to be higher, savvy end customers with advertising product needs seek businesses with the ability to produce highly customized, full-color short runs for special occasions, as VIP thank-you gifts or to make a bigger marketing splash with quality products—possibilities unheard of in the pad-printed pen world.

As color is the name of the dye-sub game, Barker underlines the importance of maintaining image integrity, suggesting that sublimation practitioners insist on proper graphics from end customers. “That means vector-based company logo files only—EPS, WMF, AI or CorelDRAW native files allow you to better hit spot/Pantone colors—and minimum of three-hundred dpi attendant bitmap images—TIFF, JPEG, BMP—that have not been over-edited,” he explains. “If you can consistently recognize and use only acceptable graphics and have the stomach to turn away low-grade graphics, even from a paying customer, your quality-control numbers will go up tenfold. Garbage in, garbage out.” 

Because all digital-transfer supplies and equipment must work symbiotically to embellish the substrate on which each component depends, purchasing decisions should begin with the end-product in mind. (Image courtesy The Paper Ranch)

For inkjet outputting these vibrant colors, desktop sublimation printers come in a couple sizes, and David Gross of Condé Systems Inc. says bigger is better. The same is not true for heat presses, in his opinion, as the standard 16" X 20" is versatile enough until a business model necessitates and supports larger, more expensive equipment. Gross also directs decorators toward swing-away versus clamshell-style presses for their ability to accommodate both wearable and non-wearable substrates with ease. 

Because sublimation papers act more as an image carrier than active ingredient, this digital-transfer subset is at least one step simpler than traditional transfer technologies. “The sublimation process allows for the solid ink particles to gas off of the printed page and permanently dye the sub-surface of the sublimation substrate, leaving a scratch-proof, full color, photo-quality image behind,” Barker reports. “The only thing to leave the paper is the ink, so no cutting, weeding or masking is involved, though for most products, printing a small bleed is recommended to accommodate for alignment.” 

Advantage digital 

Back on the traditional transfers’ front where the papers carry a bit more weightⁱ, Matosky mentions some advancements here: “In recent years, the use of heat-transfer products being applied to non-wearable substrates has been growing at an impressive rate and this has prompted research and development initiatives that produced some excellent new paper products.” These improvements plus low cost of entry and ease of use make digital transfers a viable stand-alone or means of adding product variety to an existing business, he says. “The creativity of the end-user is amazing—people are out there experimenting with many different substrates and are successful. Once these ideas spread, manufacturers are able to optimize the papers for specific uses.” Applications are only bound by imaginations, he adds, which have so far managed to produce thoughtfully-customized gifts that recipients really appreciate. “Stay tuned,” says Matosky. “There are some amazing and exciting technologies being developed!” 

The digital decorator’s key to success in Buettner’s estimation is uncovering a unique non-wearable niche by applying the technology where it’s yet to be applied. “If somebody’s doing something right now with a mechanical process and I figure out how to do it digitally, I can then offer no limitation on minimums and variable data,” he points out. Translating analog into a method that can create minute to massive numbers of variable-data-friendly units is a strategy that Buettner says will enable embellishers to really carve away a lucrative piece of a market. “You don’t even have to undercut, you can leave your pricing where it is and just offer the extra value of variable data and no minimum run and just decimate the competition.”