Pledge: Sublimation Printer

What is it?

A sublimation printer is basically an Inkjet printer with sublimation dye and paper replacing the normal stuff, this means that the printed work can be heat pressed onto mugs, ceramics, metals and plastics.

It can also print onto polyester (100%) and other synthetic fabrics, but not natural fabrics. For natural fabrics we would need another system for heat-transfer ink as replacing the inks between jobs isn't really an option.

Why the hell do we need ANOTHER printer?

More t-shirts! Currently our designs are limited to vector drawings, with the colours limited by what t-shirt vinyl we can source (and that stuffs expensive too!). Having a sublimation printer will allow us to print any standard raster artwork without the need to buy specific supplies for each design.

Will also print on mugs, most other ceramics, plastics, and flat metals (Basically, anything that can withstand being heated in a press)

PCB printing

Can also be used for printing etch resist onto copper laminate, (using toner transfer method). Maybe also will do for printing component labels on the upper-side and for printing legends onto panels.

Where will it live?

Probably around the arts and crafts area. Due to the external ink resoviour it should be moved as infrequently as possible. It's USB so designs can be loaded by laptop. Alternativly this can also live over by Tesla and the vinyl cutter to allow printing from a publicly accessible machine. People should be aware not to accidentally print on it though as the supplies for it are exceedingly more expensive.

What do we need?

Epson Stylus XP-30 bundle - This will give us everything we need to start sublimation printing apart from the paper. This includes:

• Epson Stylus XP-30 printer
• Continuous Ink System
• 400ml of Sublimation inks
• Necessary gubbins

What do we need to keep it going?

Ink: Specifically sublimation ink. The printer has four colours of ink (Black, Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow) that come in bottles ranging from 100ml to 1l, and can cost anywhere up to £80 per bottle. It's expensive, but it will last a long time. the 4 100ml bottles convert to about 80 cartridges worth of ink

Paper: To get the ink to sublimate you need to use special paper. A4 sublimation paper costs around £10 to £15 for 100 sheets

How much will it cost?

• £104.10 - Epson printer bundle
• £15 - Sublimation paper

Pledges

Please remember to pay pledges with the reference "SUBLIMATION"

• £50 - Velyks
• £10 - Drrk (talk) 15:30, 1 July 2013 (UTC)
• £10 - Rob Kam
• £10 - Fuxy
• £9.10 - Wiggler
• £10 - Solexious (talk)

Running Total: £99.10

Target: £119.10