A dye sublimation printer is a piece of equipment that you are going to have to consider if you are a small business or an established company looking for new printers for your business. The question becomes, how much are you willing to spend on this printer? There are many different types of this type of printer, and many companies make a choice based on price, but that isn’t necessarily the best reason to choose one over another. Choosing the wrong one can end up costing you more money than you thought you would have to spend. You should take a look at some of the most basic things to keep in mind before you make a decision about what type of dye sublimation printer to purchase.
The first thing that you will want to decide is whether you need single or double wide format printers. The reason that this is important is because you will need to determine how much dye you are going to need per cartridge. Around the same time, single wide format printers cost around $40, and then you are spending at least sixty dollars for your dye sublimation printers, meaning that you are going to be spending at least sixty dollars to have your dye sublimation jobs up and running. However, this can be good because these are known to produce high quality results and they are quite affordable as well. Double wide format printers cost around a hundred dollars and produce results that are a lot better than the one single model.
While you might think that a dye sublimation printer is only for large companies, it also has the ability to function for small businesses as well. In fact, they can function well for a small office printer as well. However, just like with any other type of printer, there are pros and cons that you will want to be aware of. For instance, if you need to work with large volumes of materials, then it is possible that a heat press is going to be more beneficial.
On the flip side, if you are simply looking for a printer that can get the job done, then the dye-sublimation printers available today will likely meet your needs. Some of these printers use heat presses, which is essentially a press where you can use heat to pass dye molecules through a medium, such as polyester film. You place the material through the heat press, which is controlled by a computer. As the heat passes through the material, the dye gets excited, which is what causes the colors to appear on the screen. This is a similar process that is used in dye sublimation printers, which means that you should know what is exactly being printed.
You should know that there are two different types of dye-sublimation thermal printers. The first is known as solid-state, which means that it does not use a heat press to control the printing process at all. Instead, the printer actually consists of a solid state board that is coated with dye molecules. These can be printed on using a PC or a laser printer.
Dye sublimation printers are very popular, especially for single color materials. For instance, if you wanted to print out an item with only one color (say, the color of your computer monitor), then you can do so using one of these machines. You will be able to get an item printed in less than 1 minute. However, if you want to print multiple colors, then the time increases greatly. In fact, you may find that you need to wait several hours before the item is printed out completely.
One of the downsides of using this kind of Inkjet printer is that you have to change the polyester ribbon from time to time. Although most of them come with a changing drum, it may not always be able to handle one color after another. Also, the printed areas might turn out a different shade than what you expect. It would be best if you bought a printer that comes with a changing kit. If you want to save money, you can also buy an off-the-shelf dye sublimation printer instead and just replace the polyester ribbon.
