I've never bothered with any of the spray coatings for sublimation as personally, I've never felt you would achieve a constant/even covering unless you had a very good setup in a dust free environment, far too much 'faffing' around, in my opinion.
A while back I was sent samples from a company who were on the brink of perfecting and releasing wooden products that were pre-coated, I won't go too much into this here but needless to say they're still not at the market and results were far from good.
So, SubTHAT! what is it? In a nutshell it's a heat transferable film, supplied in sheets which transform raw products into sublimation ready blanks.
Sure, I watched the videos online and Conde made it look very easy and the end product 'looked' superb but unless I've seen it first hand and tested the product I'm always a little sceptical of something that looks so good.
My very comprehensive sample pack consists of matte white, gloss clear and matte clear sheets. Troy even included a few wooden sample discs to test onto with pre-cut sheets.
The wooden discs were totally bare, sanded smooth but coated in no other way. I decided to use the matte white as I didn't want too much of the wood to show through for this test.
The idea is to heat press the sheet/material onto the blank, allow it to cool, remove a carrier sheet and your product is ready to sublimate.
I had a play with a few of the discs but wasn't sure on timings so watched the Conde video and went over the detailed instructions Troy had sent over to me.
First few prints looked good, pretty much what I'd expected, nothing special but hey, it's working. Obviously needed some tweaking. The sheets were going onto the blank discs evenly, no problem. The edges of the discs weren't very clean and were a little rough so the sheet was a little patchy in those areas and was flaking off.
I turned my attention to some other wooden blanks I have. 3mm thick birch ply, well finished/sanded wood. I'd played with the timings and was pretty confident I was close to the optimal time. I put the sheet on and allowed it to apply for 90 seconds. Upon removal from the press (ouch hot!) the carrier was already lifting, that's fine and I was told this can happen. I allowed it to cool before effortlessly removing the carrier sheet.
Upon close inspection I could see the coating had completely covered the surface and this time, because I'd used well finished wood, there was no patchy coating over the edges. So far so good. Now, on to the sublimation process. I pressed my image onto the now coated wood for 45 seconds. Excitedly I removed the wood from the press and tore off the paper like a child at Christmas.....too much?!
WOW! Yes, I used the word and I'll say it again, WOW! I was blown away with the result. It was so much better due to being on a better surface and I'd finally got the timings spot on. The image was incredibly clear, colours spot on in my test image. The very slight grain in the wood can be seen in the image and this looks really, really good.
It appears immediately very hard wearing and I'm told it strengthens over the first 24 hours anyway. It's hard to show on a photograph just how good this is but I'll attach some of my poor offerings below anyway.
OK, back to the 'sceptical' me. I don't mind admitting when I'm wrong and being totally honest I hadn't expected much from this but my initial tests quickly confirmed what's being said that this really could be a game changer. Yes, it's very early days. I need to test the other types of sheet, different materials, larger wooden panels etc. but I have little doubt this stuff will continue to impress. The initial blank product appears to be key, you need a decent surface with well sanded/finished edges. You can print onto less even surfaces by applying multiple sheets to 'fill in' the gaps.
Could this be something new and exciting? I really think it could be. There's no UK supplier/distributor right now so I'm waiting to hear who's going to take this on. We can import form the USA and prices don't seem too bad at all. I have lots of ideas on how this can help my business so I'm sure it could be a valuable tool in the sublimation toolbox. I'm not getting paid for this review and have no involvement with the suppliers/manufacturers in any way but I was keen to share my findings with the Forum. Of course I'll be looking forward to DSF Premium Member discounts but that's not the main focus right now!
Apologies again for the poor photos, not as dark as this in reality, I'll try and get some clearer ones asap.
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- IMG_20180517_135851.jpg (81.98 KiB) Viewed 1 time
- vB_ID:5175
- IMG_20180517_135851.jpg (81.98 KiB) Viewed 1 time
- vB_ID:5175
- IMG_20180517_135851.jpg (81.98 KiB) Viewed 1 time
- vB_ID:5175
- IMG_20180517_135851.jpg (81.98 KiB) Viewed 1 time
