Materials

The process of sublimation works by heating special sublimation inks that bond to the product surface when heated. In order for this process to work, the substrate or product for decoration must be either polyester based or coated with a special polyester coating.

Currently there are many hundreds of products available that have been manufactured for sublimation such as tiles, promotional products, gifts, clothing but with the ability to now decorate a wide range of dimensional products many customers will need to coat their own products and this is where Octi-Tech surpass all our competitors as we have developed a complete range of coatings for sublimation decoration. It is now possible to coat your own products using our simple to use Digi Coat range of sublimation coatings glass metals ceramics wood stone you name it using Digi Coat you can digitally decorate just about any surface.

The use of plastics in the automotive and household products markets is huge and below is a list of plastics that can be directly decorated without coatings or pre treatments

ProductNameImage QualityDurability
PETPolyethylene TerephthalateExcellentExtreme
PBTPolybutylene TerephthalateExcellentExtreme
POMAcetal / PolyoxymethyleneExcellentExtreme
NylonPA6 PA66GoodGood

For a substrate to be suitable for sublimation it needs to be able to withstand around 170c for about 1 minute.

If you are new to sublimation and would like to find out more basic information on how the process works please visit www.howtosublimate.com where there are a host of helpful FAQ’s guides and videos.

If you require more detailed information about materials please contact us directly. We can quite easily test your product in our facility for acceptability.