Sublimation - Colour Range

[Martin86]

I'm thinking about getting into sublimation printing, mainly as a hobby but with the possibility in future of selling mugs and t-shirts. I'll invest in a heat press at a later date, but for now I've Got a Sawgrass SG400 sublimation printer on order along with a mug press (and some sub paper/blank mugs of course).

Now I know that with sublimation you cannot print white (without a lot of messing around) but just how close to white can I actually get? For example, if I was to sublimate onto a black t-shirt, is there any chance of even hinting at white? Also, is there somewhere a colour chart I can download that will show the colour range that I can cover with my Sawgrass printer?

[Paul]

No white at all. there is no white ink. so All you print will need to be on white/light base.

[pisquee]

With sublimation, you are dying the fabric, not painting on top of it
So you can dye a white tshirt with your blue, pink and yellow inks to most colours making it darker.

If you put those same blue, pink and yellow dyes onto a black tshirt, although they will be there, you won't really be able to see them

[pw66]

The best way to explain to yourself how sublimation colour works is to print a photo onto coloured paper using a regular inkjet printer. On black paper you won't see anything.
On lighter coloured sheets, white areas of the photo will be the colour of the paper and other colours will be affected by the paper colour.

A sublimation printer uses the same colour set as a regular inkjet printer.

[webtrekker]

Dye inks (as used in sublimation) are transparent, so sublimating any black or dark garment is pointless as the whole design will just show the base colour of the garment.

By the same logic, sublimating a pure white, 100% polyester garment will produce the best print possible.

In between those two ranges you will have various results depending upon the base colour and polyester content.

For instance, when printing on a light yellow, 100% poly garment, all of your colours will have a slight yellow cast. Blues will appear green-ish, reds orange-ish, and whites will be the light yellow of the garment.

Printing on a garment that doesn't contain 100% polyester, eg. 50/50 poly/cotton mix, will complicate things further as the sublimation inks will not dye the cotton fibres, resulting in a more faded or 'retro' look. This can be used to your advantage of course if this is the effect you desire.

[Martin86]

Thanks for your info and advice everyone.