sublimation plates - AGAIN :)

[JSR]

i dont remember anyone who actualy ever had any good results with plates
those metal ones from BMS are good but this is diferent product so ceramic would sellfor much more. If I get descent plates I can sell them for £15 each. I asked some people I took photos off about how much would they pay for metal one. £10 is the MAXIMUM. and this is if you push...

Well I price 8" ceramic plates at £9.99 and get hardly any sales (just the recurring customer I mentioned). To be frank, with the lack of decent plates and the lack of decent plate presses at an affordable price, I don't want to sell any more than I currently do. Too much wasteage and too much hassle - both of which would be negated if we had good supplies.

It's a vast missed opportunity that UK suppliers won't support plates. They often bring out new item after new item, most of which disappear quicker than they appear, but when you're trying to run a business you need to be sure of constant supply. It takes time to cultivate customers. They don't all suddenly rush to a new product for fear that it'll disappear tomorrow. I don't know what prompted this "revolving door" policy of introducing new items while abandoning existing ones.

Perhaps the suppliers make more money from introducing new products that sell to their customer because it looks new, but then gets abandoned because our customers don't want them at that price. In the meantime, as we try and get our customers on board for traditional products, the supplier abandons those products on the grounds that they don't sell enough.

It's a backwards way of running a business because we end up being led by the supplier, not by our customer, and it's our customers (the end customer) who pays us all (printer, supplier, and manufacturer) at the end of the day.

[Paul]

Well I price 8" ceramic plates at £9.99 and get hardly any sales (

do you print unique designes or customers picture on them? I want to print Photos I actualy take s People see the photo then I introduce them an idea of having it on the plate instad of paper. and it works.

[JSR]

do you print unique designes or customers picture on them? I want to print Photos I actualy take s People see the photo then I introduce them an idea of having it on the plate instad of paper. and it works.

I print what the customer supplies, but the recurring customer is in a specialist business and sends designs (not photos). The designs only print well enough because I can cut it out quite close to the edges of the design and stick the paper to the plate - which makes up for some of the unevenness in the plate and the rigidness of the heat platen.

The only photos I've printed are ones I've done for myself to try and find best results. However, due to the heat platens being weak towards the edges, it's only possible to print very small photos before the edges of the print wash out due to lack of heat. If I increase the heat or time to get a better print at the edge of the platen, the print is very blurred/soft in the middle.

I know BMS once said that he stopped selling plates because no one bought them. Well, if people were using this heat press then it's no wonder that no one bought plates - because the print quality is just not good enough to be sustainable.

Trouble is, there's little choice when it comes to plate presses. There's only one I've seen that looks like it might be any good, but you're talking about spending £700. No one in their right mind would spend that much on a plate press when the only plates we have available are the shoddy ones that look like C-grade rejects half the time.

So, again, it comes down to the suppliers. There are no affordable plate presses, and no decent supplies of plates to justify the outlay on an expensive plate press. The result is that I can't encourage customers to buy, because the end product just isn't good enough.

I've pondered the idea of getting a custom-made metal weight (or similar) to go in the middle of an 8" plate and put the whole thing in a halogen oven. As the whole plate would heat up at the same time, there'd be no "weak" edges like you get on a plate press. The resulting print might actually be quite good. I don't know where to get such a weight made, though, as I'd imagine it'll be several attempts at trial and error until the right weight/material is found.

[Paul]

thats what i wanted to ask you waht about puck??? conde use them and got some goot results. you heat it up uder normal flatbed
I dont know if you know what i mean but you can see it on this video.

I can get those puck custom made for me in Poland in my dads work place no problem

[JSR]

I've seen the puck on the Conde website. It should be a better system simply because the diameter of the puck is larger than the diddy heat platen supplied with heat presses.

I'm hesitant because it relies on heat going through the puck to the plate, and so there's the same question of consistency of heat. There's also the pre-heating of the puck (put a hot puck on a cold plate and the plate will break). These are reasons why I've been wondering if something similar could be used to just weigh down the print onto the plate and put the whole thing in an oven - so the heat comes from all sides, not just through the puck. It'd probably take longer to press, but the results might be preferable (you could even arrange something similar to press the edge of the plate rather than just the middle).

Also, in that video, you'll notice that she's using a much better plate than the ones we're offered over here. She mentions there are porcelain plates (not over here there aren't) - all we have available are the big heavy unsightly chunks of ceramic.

I note that she said to use light pressure, but she had to lean on it really heavily. If you put that much pressure on to the shoddy ceramic plates we get, they'd break for certain. That again demonstrates the differences between their plates and what we get lumbered with.

If you can get a puck made, I'd be very interested in one for myself (or two, for both sizes of plates).

[Paul]

so oven may be better optionas you said... I will ask my dad if his friend in workshop can roll something for me on his lathe kit from piece of iron . i remember when i useto work there i was damn good on that lathe

[JSR]

so oven may be better optionas you said... I will ask my dad if his friend in workshop can roll something for me on his lathe kit from piece of iron . i remember when i useto work there i was damn good on that lathe

That would be great. Whether we use it in a flatbed or an oven, we'll have the option to try out both. Please ask if he can make two! :biggrin: I'd like to try it, too!

To press through a flatbed, something like copper would probably be a better heat conductor. If using it as a weight, anything heavy that won't rust on us would do. Iron might not be the best choice.

If it's to be used in a flatbed, it needs to be thick enough to keep the press off the sides of the plate. If it's to be used in an oven, it can be as thin as you like so long as the weight is there.

[Paul]

I dont know about cooper but I use to made custom plates for wight lifting for friends and they never rusted. I simply dont know if they use cooper in this workshop or not. But dont worry I try to do my best. and regards to thicknest of this tool I think 1inch should be enough

[JSR]

I dont know about cooper but I use to made custom plates for wight lifting for friends and they never rusted. I simply dont know if they use cooper in this workshop or not. But dont worry I try to do my best. and regards to thicknest of this tool I think 1inch should be enough

Sounds good to me.

I suspect my flatbed won't back-off enough for the combined thickness of puck and plate (I think about 1 inch is its limit), so I'm leaning more towards the oven method initially.

[Paul]

so we can do 0,6in