Personalising all sorts of products by printed transfers is a promising niche market. Nessan Cleary explores the possibilities.

Most people will associate printing with flat surfaces. But there has always been a lot of requirement for three dimensional printing around, for ceramics, mobile phone covers, switches and the like. Over the years quite a few processes have been developed to do this, such as pad printing, screen printing, shrinkwraps and more recently UV inkjets.

However the first process invented is still very attractive in a digital age: transfer printing onto an intermediate sheet, sometimes called decals. This originated around 200 years ago with ceramic decoration transfers printed on tissue paper, though today’s materials are very different.

Today you can get into digital printing of heat transfers for peanuts compared with even a modest light production press, as the media can be printed on low cost colour laser or inkjet office printers. These are fine for small and/or personalised runs of gifts, novelties, tee shirts and small signs.

In many cases you will also need a heat press of some description, but these are low cost too. Most are simple heated flat plates that apply pressure by hand or through mechanical assistance. There are some shaped heat presses designed for specific uses such as for holding mugs or baseball caps.

Sublimagic, for example, sells the Combomagic, available in several different versions ranging from ten to 15 attachments. The basic ten in one device costs around £270 and can handle everything from tee shirts and mugs to plates. It heats up to 380º C and has an automatic timer.

There are also specialised digital systems intended for transfer onto specific materials, often inkjets using dye sublimation inks on papers that can then transfer the image by heat and pressure onto polyester textiles. Direct inkjet printing onto textiles, especially soft signage, flags and garments, is now starting to make an impact.

Another direct process that is fairly new is to use a small flatbed inkjet with UV cured inks, which will stick to virtually any solid surface. As covered previously in Digital Printer, Mimaki makes the UJF-3042, a compact inkjet with an A3 bed, while Roland makes the VersaUV LEF-12, with a 280 x 305 mm bed. Both can lower their beds to accept surprisingly thick 3D objects (such as pens, phone covers, golf balls) which can be kept steady in foam rubber holders – 150 mm for the latest Mimaki HG model, and 100 mm for the Roland. These printers are essentially digital alternatives to pad (otherwise known as tampo) printers.

An unusual technique was shown by Roland DG at last year’s Sign & Digital UK show. This printed the image on ultra thin film. It used a special adhesive applied to heavily textured surfaces such as moulded plaster. Paper backing the film layer is pressed face down into the adhesive with a brush, the film and ink transfers. One sample, shown here, looked like a painted fresco but on Artex.

 

Laser transfers

TheMagicTouch in Dunstable sells a range of transfer papers that are designed to work with colour toner engines, either laser or LED. Using a heat press, images can be easily transferred to other items. The papers are manufactured for the company at a mill in Osnabruck in Germany and come in A4 and A3 sheet sizes.

TheMagicTouch is a franchised business operating in 54 countries. Jim Nicol, managing director in the UK and Ireland, is a keen advocate of personalised marketing, noting: ‘People don’t throw away mugs with pictures of themselves or something that’s special to them.’

He says that 20 years ago he was restricted to those customers that could afford one of the new and at the time fairly pricey Canon CLC or Xerox colour copiers, but now there are much lower cost alternatives. The company tends to recommend the OKI range of LED printers, which are well built and cost as little as £200 to £500 for A4 models. It also offers a complete system including an OKI printer and heat press for under £1500. It also sells heat presses separately as well as a range of blank garments and promotional items that can be used with its transfer materials.

The company’s heat transfer papers will work with most colour toner printers, though there are some exceptions, most notably HP laser printers which have too high a fusing temperature. The papers work by allowing the toner to be lifted off the paper and fused to the substrate by the heat press. As there is no transfer film, the images appear to be part of the substrate surface.

The process will work with a wide variety of surfaces, from wood, metal, ceramics and display boards, to tee shirts and leather jackets. Transfers can also be used with any fabric, including cotton, and with any colour including black. Mr Nicol notes that many clothes nowadays use mixed fibres as well as coating such as for waterproofing which these papers can cope with.

There are different papers for different needs. These include a TTC Textile Transfer paper for light coloured fabrics, WoW 7.2 Professional, for dark coloured garments and CPM for non-porous hard surfaces. The WoW papers get around the problem of coloured toners not showing against a black or strongly coloured surface by incorporating a white backing. There’s also ORD transfer paper for acrylic and glass products, useful for things such as a personalised paperweight. The DCT water slide decal paper works like the marking supplied with Airfix kits, with a white backing to work on coloured surfaces. These are cured at 180 Dec C after application, when they become very durable.

 

Garment films

Textiles are one of the most common substrates for transfer printing. Examples include printing promotional graphics onto tee shirts or baseball hats, or to make personalised mouse mats. They are also commonly used in wide format printing to make lightweight, washable and re-usable marketing banners for exhibition or retail use – these are called soft signage.

You can do this with dye sublimation inks, available for many wide format printers. Dye sublimation inks only work with polyester based textiles (or special polyester coatings on ceramics, phone cases and the like).

There are also special garment marking transfer films that work with solvent inks. They can be used with any kind of substrate rather than being limited to polyester, and with any colour. Dye sublimation tends to be limited to process colours, but many solvent printers offer white and metallic inks as well, though most metallic inks do not have the same kind of wash resistance that the other colours have.

These films have gained a poor reputation for changing the texture of the fabric, and giving quite an unnatural appearance. But in recent years garment marking films have got thinner and more malleable and become a lot more acceptable.

 

Have your cake…

Finally, for those with a sweet tooth, you can even print your own confectionery. The Cake Decorating Company sells specially modified inkjet printers that use edible ink. The ink comes in special cartridges, one for each process colour. Images are printed to icing sheets, just as you would to a normal sheet of paper, except that these are mainly made out of sugar starch. Jamie White, personal assistant at the Cake Decorating Company, says: ‘Anything that you can print to paper, you can print to the icing sheet.’ The sheets themselves are A4 sized, and you can get started with a modified Canon iP3600 printer for £129.99.

At the end of the day, this type of print work is all about establishing a reputation for being able to produce something that little bit different, developing a niche, without investing a fortune. Some companies build a business out of personalisation and corporate branding but others use it simply to give away a personalised gift to entice customers into further orders. For most of these systems the initial investment is low enough to be worth having a go and may prove highly lucrative.

 

 

Dye sublimation

Dye sublimation inks for textiles are usually water based and printed directly to a transfer paper. This paper is then applied to a product and placed in a heat press (or for large rolls of materials, a calendaring press with a heated roller). The inks are heated until they turn into a vapour, which then penetrates deep into the fibres, where they bond so firmly that no amount of washing will displace them. Unlike some screen printing, there is no raised surface either.

Some specialised garment printers can print directly onto textiles (usually with an option to also feed the paper transfer paper). Mat Drake, product manager for Roland UK, says that some people prefer to use a standard printer with transfer papers for textiles and garments as this lets the printer be used for other work after a change of ink.

The main limitation is that dye sublimation inks can only be absorbed by polyester materials. However Duncan Jefferies, marketing manager for Mimaki’s UK distributor Hybrid, points out that there is an enormous range of polyesters available, saying: ‘Polyester is a very versatile material. It can be a fabric or a clear polyester coated ceramic mug.’ Modern polyester can also mimic the look and feel of other fabrics. Mr Jefferies says that tee shirts can have a much more cotton like feel than they did, adding: ‘You can also have a lightweight, almost chiffon type or a heavier flock texture.’

Another issue of dye sub inks is that they are translucent so they are limited to being used with white or light coloured surfaces. People have experimented with printing white ink first, but with mixed results so far.