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Soft L'ink™ products are made with a patented, two-sided fabric, engineered specifically for use with sublimation transfer printing. The fabric combines a 100% ring-spun cotton interior with a 100% micro-polyester exterior.
The images are washer-fast without a heavy transfer paper feel.

Soft L'ink™ T-shirt/SubliJet Printing System Features & Benefits
SubliJet transfers on Soft L'ink t-shirts result in beautiful, vividly-colored images as soft as the shirt itself. The design is virtually permanent, and can be washed or dry-cleaned repeatedly with no cracking, peeling or fading.
Literally every graphic created on or scanned into a computer can be tailored before printing. That means we can customize output for short runs but still offer the high-impact graphics usually associated only with larger orders.
Used in combination, Soft L'ink™ t-shirts and SubliJet inks provide numerous benefits:

Soft L'ink T-Shirt:
Engineered specifically for dye-sublimation transfer printing
Luxuriously soft and heavyweight fabric, with the comfort of cotton against the skin
Micro-polyester yarn resists pilling for great long-term wash-and-wear results

SubliJet transfer ink technology:
Unparalleled wash fastness with no special wash care instructions.
Image is part of the shirt itself – no feel or “hand” to the image.
Excellent color vibrancy and photo realism.
Allows for personalization, customization, and short-run production.

InkJet Sublimation transfer technology offers significant advantages to typical thermal transfer technology since it actually dyes the fabric rather than simply bonding an image to the shirt by using coated transfer media. Because DyeTrans Wearables are dyed, the softness and breathability are unchanged; a level of color and detail (more vibrant and photographic than obtainable with any other garment decorating technology) is achieved; and the dye-sublimation transfer process is permanent, so it will not crack, bleed, peel, or fade as a result of ordinary wash and wear. The image may fade, however, as a result of prolonged exposure to direct sunlight, as UV durability is limited.

Sublimation inks are specially formulated for printers for photographic quality images that surpass high-end silk-screening and rival offset press results. SubliJet can personalize graphic images for transfer on ceramic, metal, polyester fabric, Digital L’ink apparel, Mylar, glass, Unisub plastic and wood, and more!  With SubliJet, we can digitally print colorful, high-resolution transfers. The resulting ink transfer sheet can be used to personalize a variety of products, such as mugs, mousepads, plaques, T-shirts, flags, and banners.

What are sublimation transfer inks?
Sublimation describes the process of a solid substance changing directly into a gas or vapor, without first passing through the intermediary liquid state. An example of this process which most recognize is "dry ice." 

Heat transfers created with color laser, ink jet, or wax thermal printers use a polymer coated transfer paper to fuse ordinary toner or ink particles onto the surface of a substrate. The result is a "decal-like" transfer that can peel, crack, fade, and discolor over time. SubliJet transfers instead rely on sublimation transfer inks to transfer its ink below the surface of a substrate. The result is a "tattoo-like" transfer that will not peel, crack, or fade and lasts for many years.

How is SubliJet different than other transfer technologies?
Ink jet sublimation does not require the use of special transfer papers because the sublimation dyes bind directly to the fabric or the substrate.

Other Digital Transfer Technologies:

Dye Sublimation

Dye Sublimation printers apply varying degrees of heat to generate variable tones of color, typically 256 sizes per primary color to create photorealism or continuous tone images. These ‘multi-level’ dots actually sublimate from a dye-coated ribbon onto paper and blend together vary effectively. Due to the tight heat tolerances, which the printer must maintain, the process is much slower than other technologies. 
Once on paper, images from a dye sublimation printer may be transferred to other surfaces by re-heating or reactivating the sublimation dyes with a heat press. The dyes will vaporize off the paper and onto the final substrate. Because the sublimation dyes are activated twice, the final image appears as a ‘second generation sublimation transfer.’ These images may appear fuzzy, blurry, and less vibrant.
Dye sublimation is somewhat limited in application. Typically a special transfer paper is needed to accomplish the transfer, and it is best applied to ceramic surfaces.

Wax Thermal printers utilize low temperatures to melt wax from a print ribbon onto paper. Pigments in the wax are dyes, which create colorful images. Wax thermal printers have relatively high printing speeds but generally use only 3, sometimes 4, colors. To achieve a wide spectrum of colors, or a continuous tone image, the printer uses a method called half-toning or dithering. This produces 200 to 300 equally sized dots per inch, which may look sharp, but when viewed closely the dithering or matrix of dots are evident. This is a disadvantage of wax thermal.
To heat transfer a wax thermal image, you will need to use a transfer paper. Transfer paper has a polymer coating that is transferred to a fabric such as a T-shirt or hat, sealing the wax pigments on the fabric. This coating adds weight to the fabric and makes it stiff. You can only print on white or light fabrics, and you cannot print on hard surfaces, such as plaques and awards.

Wax Thermal Hybrid Sublimation

Wax Thermal Hybrid Sublimation is a merging of wax thermal and dye sublimation technology. That, in fact, is why we call it hybrid sublimation. It is also referred to as true sublimation or deferred sublimation.
Thermal printing technology is used with a print ribbon that contains sublimation dyes suspended in the wax carrier. The low temperatures of the wax thermal process transfer the sublimation dyes to the paper, but does not sublimate them, unlike dye sub printers, which sublimate onto the paper. To transfer the image, heat from a press is used to activate the sublimation dyes from the paper where they then vaporize for the first time and are pressed into the surface of your substrate. This is considered a first generation transfer. No specially treated paper is necessary. Sawgrass Systems holds patents on the hybrid sublimation process.
Because wax thermal hybrid sublimation is printed using wax thermal mode, you will see some of the dither patterns. However, you will also enjoy the speed of wax thermal printing and the ability to transfer powerful, vibrant colors onto many more surfaces than are available with the other methods. Any polymer-coated surface is a candidate for a hybrid sublimation heat transfer.
Using this method of sublimation printing, you can apply the transfer to any substrate. The best application is black on metal used by many trophy and engraving shops.

Color Laser Copier/Printer (applies to most laser systems except the very latest developments)

Color copier transfers are produced using a special color copier transfer paper. After copying an image onto paper, it is simply heat-pressed to the material. This medium can be used for fabric based items. Standard color copier transfers will not act like sublimation inks, nor will it apply to the same type of items which sublimation transfer will work with.

Inkjet Transfer Papers

The Inkjet transfer paper technology works much like the color copier transfer. Standard ink, as opposed to the sublimation ink, is printed from an inkjet printer onto a wax covered paper. The transfer paper is then placed in a heat press. The wax coating will release from the paper and fuse, like a decal, onto the fabric. Again, this technology will not act like sublimation inks, nor will it apply to the same type of items which sublimation transfers will work with.

Thermal Dry Resin Sublimation

Thermal Dry Resin Printers are similar to the dye sublimation printer. Both use color transfer ribbons that provide each of the primary colors (cyan, magenta and yellow—black is a composite of all three of these colors).
Instead of transferring a dot of colored resin to paper, the thermal dry resin print-head heats up a spot on the ribbon and turns the solid color into a gas (that’s what sublimation means). Specially manufactured papers then absorb the gas. The result is a printed output that looks like a continuous-tone photograph from the photo lab.
This image may be transferred to other surfaces by re-heating or reactivating the sublimation dyes with a heat press. The dyes will vaporize off of the paper and onto the final substrate. Again, because the sublimation dyes are activated twice, the final image will appear as a second generation sublimation transfer.