Cotton & Cotton Canvas Prints

[KHG]

Hi Guys

I am already in the personalised gifts business which is focused on Vinyl and Heat Transfer Vinyl products and I love using cotton and cotton canvas for my products. But as I'm sure you know and understand, Vinyl is very limiting on how complicated your designs can be.

I have been researching Sublimation printing for a while, trying to get the courage to branch into that format but probably the only thing holding me back at the moment is having to move to polyester based products.

I see all over the place websites selling personalised printed items, like the cushion cover below, on cotton canvas and sometimes 100% cotton t-shirts. I can't imagine they are doing these in bulk like screen printing or something like that as the designs are personalised with names and dates.

vB_ID:3953

cotton canvas pillow case.jpg (67.08 KiB) Not viewed yet

So I am wondering if you knew how this might be achieved? Is there any sort of desktop type hardware which can achieve this? I have seen things like DTG which priced into the £1000's which is not viable for me at the moment.

[mags1892]

vB_ID:3954

1cotton.jpg (55.26 KiB) Not viewed yet

As Ink is one of my specialist subjects i did this asa test for table cloths, This is on 100% cotton printed on a wide format epson 9880 using a special pigment ink. You need to have a treated cotton and a pigment ink with a very high pigment content and binding agent. Then you need to heat normally through a tunnel dryer but you can HOVER a heat press ideally you dont want contact as it will flatten any fibers.