What is Heat Transfer Printing or Sublimation Printing
What is Heat Transfer Printing or Sublimation Printing?
Sublimation heat transfer printing simply means printing disperse dyes onto specific paper, then overlapping the paper and fabric together, under high temperature conditions, the dye on the paper vaporizes and sublimates to the fabric, completing the entire heat transfer printing process. Heat transfer printing can only be applied to polyester fabrics at present, replacing digital direct printing, because digital direct printing uses reactive dyes, which have a poor colour fastness on polyester fabrics.
The advantage of heat transfer printing is that it is simpler and quicker than digital direct printing, the fabric does not need to be sized in advance and does not need to be steamed and washed after printing, so it is much cheaper and more efficient, while heat transfer printing does not need to use water throughout, so it is also an environmentally friendly way of printing. The ink permeability of the heat transfer printing is the worst, which means that the back colour of the fabric is worse than that of other printing, and if used on thicker polyester fabrics, the backside is basically white.
