#dye sub

If you want the best fitting bodysuit start by drafting your own pattern, mocking it up, trying it on and adjusting until perfect. You may want to make some marks on this pattern indicating where certain elements will go in the final design. Take it apart and you have your sewing pattern. *Remember to keep the seam allowances and to open any dart!* You can skip this step by buying a zentai suit or catsuit that fits you and taking that apart. 

From there, create a digital version of the pattern pieces. I recommend taking a picture flat-on so you can trace it in a vector program (like adobe illustrator) and scale it up to the right size. Double check your drawing with the garment’s measurements to make sure everything is accurate. 

Then, either in the vector program or a paint program, you can design the character’s suit. Create the pattern, add logos (like D.VA has), add icons (like Spiderman’s spider symbol) and add any shading / highlights that are needed. Use your marks to help place these properly.

Now that you have your pattern, start looking for a fabric printing service. Usually these designs are printed dye-sub (Dye-sublimation) on spandex or a similar stretch fabric. Find something 4 way stretch. The site should give you instructions on how to set up your design. Try to set it up with the least amount of fabric waste. Then send it to be printed. You can use your mockup as reference for marking darts and knowing where the seam lines are, but you also may want to include lines or markers that indicate these on your printed fabric. Keep in mind that, when sewing, you want to sew it outside of your lines so they won’t be visible on the final garment. 

When you get it back, you have your fabric with a sewing pattern printed on it. Cut it out and sew it up. Voila! 

You might find these useful:D. Va Overwatch Progress  (Shows the layout of her D.Va suit)How to build an Ultimate Spider-Man Suit (Shows sewing a printed suit)Sonjou of theRPF shares some base zentai suits on photobucket

In recent years, advancements in print technology, equipment, and materials have allowed for further visual merchandising and marketing creativity. Dye sublimation, the preferred imaging method for soft signage and exhibition graphics, uses an ink-jet based method of printing colorants onto fabric.

Here're just a few reasons why demand for dye-sub printing is rapidly increasing:

1) DYE-SUB LASTS LONGER THAN MOST ALTERNATIVES The actual chemical bonding of the ink with the soft material means dye sublimation printing is extremely durable. Dye-sub prints last just as long as traditional graphics, and they're also easy to take care of. They can be washed or steamed easily.

2) DYE-SUB PRINTS LOOK GREAT Materials printed with the dye sublimation process present images that are distinctly superior to inkjet or other printing methods. The dye sublimation process imparts a continuous flow of color rather than individual dots or pixels that typify inkjet printers.

As a result, from distances both near and far, the colors are clearer and brighter when professional dye-sub equipment is used. Given the remarkable depth of color and sharply defined edges, any side-by-side comparison is immediately conclusive.

3) DYE-SUB IS VERSATILE They work great for either indoor or outdoor use. They are also easily shaped - the flexibility and fluidity of fabric allows it to conform to most any desired shape or contoured appearance.

Silicone edge graphics, commonly referred to as SEG, involve adding a thin strip of silicone around the edges of a dye-sub printed fabric. The fabric can then be easily mounted on an aluminum frame. This installation process is very user-friendly. Any store staff can easily install new graphics without hiring a separate crew.

4) LARGE-FORMAT OPTIONS With dye sublimation, you can easily print 10 feet by any length. As a single seamless piece, dye-sub provides many large-format application benefits.

5) VARIETY OF MATERIAL OPTIONS Materials can range anywhere from wovens, vinyls, polyesters, cottons or finer fabrics. The finished product will be inherently strong, resilient and dimensionally stable. For installation, aluminum frames allow for a low-cost and lightweight solution that still looks better than its more expensive and heavier alternatives.

6) COST-EFFECTIVE Dye-sublimated printed fabric is lighter than traditional rigid materials resulting in reduced weight. As a result, shipping costs are fractions of other printing methods. Dye-sublimated fabric can be folded (rather than loosely rolled or packed flat), so it takes up far less space and can be shipped for a much lower cost.

7) EFFICIENT STORAGE Compared to rigid substrates, fabric is lightweight and flexible allowing for more efficient storage. Due to the convenience of storage, dye-sub pieces can easily be repurposed for future campaigns.

Dye sublimation printing has lots of advantages over other printing methods. Now I will introduce the main advantages of it on fabric.

1. Long lasting printed colors

Dye sublimation printing will give you the longest lasting color in your fabric of any type of printing available on fabric. The best national flags are made of polyester because they are color fast and wind resistant.

2. Best fabric printing method

The best printing method on clothing is dye sublimation printing because there is no ink buildup that will prevent wicking of moisture away from the body. On fabric graphic displays, or art reproductions that are used indoors, the colors are guaranteed to last for 30 years or longer because they are encased in the sealed polymer cells.

3. The dyes won’t easily fade

Another benefit of dye sub printed polyester fabric banners or displays or clothing is that you can wash them for years and not lose any color. I have a shirt that is a dye sublimation floral “Hawaiian-style” print that gets hung out to dry in the sun, and after several years it has not faded at all, unlike my cotton print shirts.

4. Colored-rich prints

Finally, although there are other benefits I could point to as well, the last benefit is the richness of the color print on the polyester fabric. Because the dye is converted to gas during the heat transfer process, the tones blend into each other, creating a photographic quality to the prints, unparalleled by any other printing process.

Here is a quick view of one of our shower curtains being dye sublimated (printed). We lay the blank curtain on the transfer paper and pass it though a high temperature/high pressure press. The inks then evaporate into the fabric.

So…we made it. It was a pretty crazy journey to get here. But we made it to the JVH Digital Festival printing conference and seminars, with a great presentation to give (more on that later, too) and some beautiful 30×40 Chromaluxe metal prints of Art Wolfe’s inspiring work.

I feel honored to have had the opportunity to create these, even if they were primarily as a promotional piece for Art, John, and us.

I’ll let the photos speak for themselves. Not much more to be said, really. John loved them. Art loved them. We’re proud of them.

Great to finally meet the guy, too, I must say. Nice fellow. He gave an awesome presentation, documenting his 40+ years of photographing the world. Art shared a slideshow with images from his new book, Earth is My Witness. It’s a great book. We got two – one signed for Nancy, one signed for me.

It was funny hearing about how his publisher came to him to suggest he create a book that was a retrospective of over forty years of photography, only to have Wolfe say that after reviewing his own work, he wasn’t happy with showing 40 years of photos that he knew he could make better now that technology had caught up to his vision. So what did he do? He spent two years traveling the world again to re-photograph his favorite places, to make a reshot retrospective of what he wished he could have done over the course of 40 years.

So there you have it. Dreams do come true. We got to listen to, meet, and even make big metal prints for one of our photographic inspirations, Art Wolfe. It was pretty awesome. Kind of a big deal. At least to us!

There’s more to share about the conference, but I’ll put that into another post dedicated to it and my presentation there.

Thanks for sharing this little journey with us. :)

Ok, I have to admit, I was a little star-struck. (see Part One here…)

To John, Art was another customer of his. To us, he’d been a source of inspiration for decades.

After getting over myself, it finally sunk in.

Two weeks before the conference, and I had to perfect our dye sublimation printing process for making metal prints. And damn quick. Up until only a few days prior to this big request, we were still on edge a little, having had some troubles with large metal prints – those over 16×20 or so.

Of course, John wanted us to press Art Wolfe‘s images at the largest our press could go, which is 30×40.

And I also had a presentation to put together, for the same crowd that Mr. Wolfe would be presenting to at the conference.

Not a lot of time. But we had to get it right.

John talked to the folks at Chromaluxe and asked them to send us out a handful of 30×40 metal panels to print Art’s images on to. He sent his son and business partner Ryan out to have us run some small test prints to run by Art’s studio manager, and get in front of Art himself to get his go-ahead for the project. The plan was to press his images on to 30×40 metal plates. So we ran some tests on 8×10 plates, so we weren’t blowing through expensive panels only to find out the color was a little off.

Art Wolfe – Mt. Rainier in the print queue

A few days went by…and we got the call. It was a go. We were a little nervous. We had to get the edges fixed. We had to knock out six perfect prints. We also didn’t have the plates yet.

Chromaluxe had a little hiccup in their shipping department. We waited. The conference was in a little over a week. We had all the prints off the printer…but only on paper. The 30×40 plates were somewhere on the other side of the country.

Now here’s the thing about metal plates: they’re heavy, and they have to be shipped freight most of the time…not UPS or FedEx…but on a palette.

Apparently, the freight went to someone else. Not us. Three days before we had to have them printed.

I ran a test on a 20×30. The edges. Oh god, the edges.

The 30×40 plates arrived. 2nd Day to us. That’s not a cheap endeavor, sending a palette of 30×40 metal plates across the country in 2 days. It’s not 2nd Day Air. It was on a truck.

Art Wolfe – Mt. Rainier printing on the Epson dye sub printer

I still was getting between 1/16″ and 1/8″ missing ink along the edges of the bigger metal prints. It really sucked that this was the case. Because I had six 30×40’s to do in a couple days, and they had to be right the first time. I had too few plates to make mistakes, and too little time to reprint or to get more plates shipped to us. Because of a shipping mishap, we were a week behind schedule.

Chromaluxe went the extra mile and sent out some Endura. Overnight. It was a life-saver. Basically just some polyester fabric with the right kind of weight and weave to it that it dispersed the steam from big plates and all the sandwiched layers of paper, removing the issue that caused the edges to be inkless.

We pressed the first one. It looked pretty damn good.

Whew. Crisis averted!

The next five went pretty well. Until I looked up close.

Crap. Specks. WTF and all that?!

So moisture isn’t the only problem. Sometimes, depending on the colors in a print, if there’s just a little too much density of one color…it migrates. Not often. And usually not noticeable. But the blacks from the deep shadows in a shot of an Icelandic waterfall had migrated into the otherwise flawless smooth cascades of icy streams. The ink, while in its gaseous state, is supposed to go straight from the paper into the polyester coating on the aluminum. But sometimes, with really big panels, there are issues. The big panels have to be in the press for a couple minutes longer than the smaller panels. It takes longer for a big metal plate to heat up evenly. In that time, the ink, now as a gas, can move around a little more than you want it to. Most of the time it’s not a problem, but every once in a while………….

dammitdammitdammit.

So we had to throw a plate. A big 30×40 plate of one of the world’s top photographers.

It was a little heartbreaking.

But it happens.

Next plate – the reprint – was perfect. Thank goodness.

Now we just had to get all of these beautiful images to Bellevue without any bent corners or scratches and get them hung up on the twenty-foot wide display panels they’d shipped in just to hang Art’s images.

Luckily, that went off without a hitch. As you can see…in Part Three!

Our attention has been hyper-focused on the edges of big metal prints. The small panels were pressing just fine, but the bigger plates had some issues, until only recently…

We got the capability of dye sublimation printing a few months back, and have been having a blast playing with all of the myriad possibilities provided by such amazing technology.

Well, amazing physics, really.

Mark Trimble explaining Dye Sublimation – the Disperse Dye Phase Shift

Mark Trimble explaining Dye Sublimation – the Disperse Dye Phase Shift

I wrote up a description of dye sublimation printing, which I can paraphrase here: Subliming is a physics term. Basically means something goes from a solid state of matter to a gas without going through the liquid stage. Sublimation is a made up term. Made up by people in the printing industry to riff off of subliming. It means the same thing, but is specifically talking about ink. So dye sublimation is when there’s ink printed on a special kind of paper, and it’s sandwiched into a heat press at around 400º for a specific amount of time, and the ink sublimes from the paper directly into the specialized coating (usually polyester) on whatever surface one is trying to get the image onto. It can be a metal plate (coated with polyester) or an MDF “wood” panel (also coated with polyester), or a coaster (also…well, you get the idea), or polyester fabric – like a t-shirt. The crazy thing is what happens on the molecular level: the ink has dispersed – well, it has sublimed – into a gas, and those ink molecules are now floating around, but have really no where to go because of the intense pressure in the heat press…so they can only go in between the molecules of the polyester coating (or fibers in apparel)…and that polyester coating has “glassified”, meaning the molecules started to move away from each other under the great heat, but not quite enough to turn into a liquid.

Anyway. The dye sublimation process is complete when the ink has gasified and embedded itself into the glassified polyester coated surface, and then it’s all cooled. Then it’s kind of bomb-proof. Well, it’s at least quite durable…because SCIENCE.

HOWEVER.

Moisture is the devil.

At least in this process.

We’ve been “living on the edge” because the edges of our metal prints were giving us a headache. And it wasn’t just the fumes.

You see, when all these materials are sandwiched into a heat press under high pressure, any moisture that exists in the protective paper, in the printed transfer paper, or even in the polyester coating on the metal plate itself, well – it all has to go somewhere. Via steam. Which pushes everything this way and that trying to desperately get out of the sandwich of materials in the heat press.

So it’s a matter of time. Really. It’s a matter of time, and pressure, and heat, and moisture. If it gets too hot too fast, then the steam pushes out too quickly, and it actually pushes those little ink molecules toward the steam escape path, and at the edges of the metal plates, that means the ink gets pushed around and doesn’t alway create a perfectly inked edge.

We struggled with this a bit. We tried different pressure (not enough, and not all the ink would even transfer!), and different heat (not enough, same problem! too much, and we got WAY more steam way too fast).

The solution was a number of variables had to be adjusted simultaneously.

Our monster heat press (GeoKnight MaxiPress Air) with the special Endura polyester fabric around the heat platen to disperse steam

Part of that was fitting a piece of special polyester fabric over the top heat platen so the steam could wick out the sides.

Part of it was pre-heating the big metal panels to allow some moisture to disperse before pressing a printed image onto them. It takes a LOT longer, pre-pressing a panel…and then waiting for it to cool completely before being able to make a print.

A metal print of Art Wolfe’s photograph, prepared for the JVH Print Conference

But the prints, now…are Awesome.

It’s always so nice to solve a problem that has multiple variables. No one variable can fix it all.

The biggest fix? Patience.

And now we’re no longer living on the edge with bad edges.

And just in time for the JVH Digital Festival printing conference and seminars, of which we ended up being a big part. Oh. Also we got to print some of Art Wolfe‘s work. Woohoo!