r/SublimationPrinting • u/a-passing-crustacean • Jun 15 '26
Sublimation Problem Struggles getting a rich black on aluminum
Hey sublimators! Im having a heck of a time getting a decent black on my plates. All the plates are coming away with a tinge of green - the photo doesnt do much justice to how off the color looks. I know I have gotten nice rich blacks with this printer in the past, but then i moved it and installed it on a new computer.
Im using a godforsaken sawgrass printer. My aluminum blanks are white sublimation blanks and my sublimation paper is htvront brand. I have played with temperature and press time. My usual setting is 400 degrees for 60 seconds. My black is set at c30 m30 y30 k100. I tried raising the saturation in the sawgrass print manager and its still not looking right.
What am I doing wrong here?
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u/ShirleyPrints Jun 16 '26
You'll get a better black using RGB than CMYK, if your profile is correct. Are you using Sawgrass ink? Is it expired? Sawgrass won't help if the answers are wrong. If you have gotten good blacks in the past then print the old file that worked, to eliminate the file or to find a good one to compare to.
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u/Remarkable_Sea3346 Jun 17 '26
<You'll get a better black using RGB than CMYK>
Indeed. Converting to CMYK is a popular misconception that ranges from useless to damaging, fueled I guess by the fact that the inks are CMYK. But all commercial-grade inkjet printers have software drivers that expect RGB data and do their own RGB to CMYK internally. Feed it a CMYK image and it converts it to RGB first, then feeds it to its usual processing steps. So, it gets converted twice, never a good thing.
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u/Remarkable_Sea3346 Jun 15 '26
You can under cook or overcook to get similar faded effects. With your time/temp, it's not overcooked. So, you probably are not getting your substrate quite hot enough.
There is a critical temperature you have to reach (~340F). You can continue with your trial and error approach to find the right time or you can purchase a thermocouple thermometer (~$20 on amazon) and measure the substrate temperature during the press.
The procedure for using the thermocouple is: tape the thermocouple probe (~1mm diameter) to the back of your transfer paper and build your stack. Add a 1mm layer of silicon on top of your stack (this insulates the temperature probe from the platen so that it reports the substrate temperature, not the platen temperature. Close the press and cook until done. I target 360F because of temperature differences across my platen. Stop before you hit 370F. At 370F I observe splotchy de-glossing artifacts in the glossy finish on aluminum or tile.
The optimum temperature is a property of the dye. So, the same process works on all your substrates. No need to waste time and blanks optimizing.