chris_unique1

sublimation black turning brown

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I recently bought an epson wf2750 with an sublimation connection. I've been testing it out and it seems that the black after i press it to a shirt the black looks brownish. anyone know what this could be? i heard possibly pressing to long or too high heat. 

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could be the brand of ink you are using or too long - generic inks tend to have less accurate ink profiles 

What brand of ink are you using?

What brand of sublimation paper are you using?

are you pressing to 100 percent polyester white shirts?

was your printer ever used with standard ink before installing the sublimation ink - if so how did you flush it?

did your ink come with profiles for your ink and printer from whoever supplied them to you?

 

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Sublimation is cool but tricky. After verifying that you have true sublimation paper and no residual regular ink I recommend printing a solid black sheet then cut it into test strips about an inch wide by a couple long and do many test runs. Vary the dwell time starting well below what you think it should be and increase the time in 5 second increments. Pressure can have an effect but mostly with outgas along the edges and marks from the paper edges. You won't want a lot of pressure most of the time.

Temp check needs to start by checking your press with a temp gun in several places. Cheaper presses tend to have hot or cold spots. If yours is not even you probably won't get good consistent results. No one tells you when they sell you a printer that you also need a quality heat press, the cheap ones are often too unpredictable.  If all the way through the timed trials your color stays brown then you have too much heat and need to back it down. This is assuming you have already established a consistent platen temp of around 400deg or whatever your ink supplier says to shoot for. They are not always gospel so you may find you have to reduce it. Again I recommend in small increments and work down from 400 5 degrees at a time. Use the recommended time whatever it is when dong this since the earlier time changes had no effect. If this still does not product the results you may have to take a look at the time tests and decide if one or two were better than the rest and combine the test doing both lower heat and also shorter time. You may tie up a whole weekend playing with this, I did.

If all these fail the next step is to play with your color profile and depending on your design program you will begin by doing various mixes of black. I recommend 50,50,50,100 to start with. When I did this I was working on orange and navy blue, two of which are really challenging to get to look good. I actually made a test page than had various CMYK mixes with the color combinations listed right beside the actual swatch so I could do a whole sheet at once and it helped immensely to keep track of what color was what. I then had to do the same test as you will have done on black and worked up through the time and then down through the temp. Never did find a navy that satisfied my client. 

You will probably find your temp and or time to be off and once you dial it in most of the rest of the colors will also come alive. 

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I have a similar issue/question. My black ink has always given me a clean black print. Today it suddenly is just brown. I haven't changed any settings. Any suggestions? 

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2 hours ago, Austin said:

I have a similar issue/question. My black ink has always given me a clean black print. Today it suddenly is just brown. I haven't changed any settings. Any suggestions? 

same ink, profiles, and time as you have been using??

 

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Same thing here I have an Epson ET15000 and it’s been seamless working with it until recently. My greys are brown/greenish tint. I haven’t changed any profiles. I’ve tried changing them and still nothing. Just keep wasting materials. My black is true but I can’t get grey to look like it did the first few times. Any suggestions?

Edit to add  I’m pressing at 400F / 25,40, 60 secs  

thanks. 

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2 hours ago, LoloBerry said:

Same thing here I have an Epson ET15000 and it’s been seamless working with it until recently. My greys are brown/greenish tint. I haven’t changed any profiles. I’ve tried changing them and still nothing. Just keep wasting materials. My black is true but I can’t get grey to look like it did the first few times. Any suggestions?

Edit to add  I’m pressing at 400F / 25,40, 60 secs  

thanks. 

sawgrass inks? or other ink - do they offer support on that ink?   times and temps depends on what substrate you are pressing to also - along with who did the coating to make is sublimatable.  part of the reason I use sawgrass ricoh printer with sawgrass ink and good substrates like mugs from Marck assoc.   there are a lot of variables and you want to start with solid base equipment, ink, substrates to start 

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