At Meshtex printing services, as well as providing digitally printed cotton fabrics, we also carry out high-quality digital printing on to polyester fabrics, via the dye sublimation process.
Dye sublimation printing is a miraculous seeming process in which vibrant, fully photographic quality prints vanish from the paper they are printed on, and permanently dye the polyester fabric that we wish to print.
While digital polyester printing via dye sublimation may seem, to the uninitiated, like some kind of strange magic, it’s actually science at work – this is the same process that is used to create dry ice, and to freeze dry instant coffee.
The sublimation process works by applying heat and pressure, to transform a solid into a gas without going through the liquid phase.
When it comes to printing, we use it to dye polyester fabrics, by printing a special holding paper (known as sublimation paper) with dye particles in a water-based solution, and then heat pressing this paper onto polyester fabric.
The dye molecules turn into a (non-toxic) gas, and then bond with the polymer molecules present in the polyester fabric, thus transferring the digital print exactly as it was on the paper, into the fibres of the fabric.
Although we refer to sublimation printing as transfer printing, it’s not actually transfer printing, in that we’re not applying a transfer, we’re actually permanently dying the image into (not onto) the fibres of the polyester fabric.
One of the major benefits of this print process when it comes to digitally printing polyester fabric, is that as well as being permanent and completely wash fast, is the hand, or handle of the fabric.
Please Note – any reference to lead times are a correct estimate at the time the article was published. Lead times are always estimated and never guaranteed, and for our current estimated lead times see: lead times & deadlines.
There is absolutely no difference in hand (the way the fabric feels to the touch) between the printed areas of the fabric and the non-printed areas. This is just one of the things that makes the dye sublimation printing process such a great digital fabric printing process.
Why use Meshtex for digital polyester printing?
Meshtex have been active in the textile printing industry since 1972, we have a lot of history and experience when it comes to providing very high-quality products and services to the fabric printing industry.
Our studio and production staff are extremely experienced and skilled, and our abilities and knowledge in this area is second to none, even if we do say so ourselves.