These activations all use sublimation process to print on hard surfaces such as metal, wood or ceramic or onto fabric.

What is a sublimation event?

The Process of Sublimation on Products at Events with FunFotosToGo.com

Sublimation is a popular method for creating customized products, especially at events where personalized items can enhance the guest experience. Fun Fotos To Go can use this process to offer unique, memorable souvenirs. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how sublimation works and how it can be applied to your sublimation events:

Understanding Sublimation

Sublimation is a chemical process where a solid turns into a gas without passing through the liquid state. In the context of product customization, sublimation involves transferring dye onto a substrate (such as fabric, metal, or ceramic) using heat.

Choosing the Right Sublimatable Products

At Fun Fotos To Go, we offer a variety of sublimation-ready products, including:
– Totebags and Puzzles
– Mugs and Drinkware
– Keychains and agnets
– Mousepads and coasters
– Phone cases
– and other items as shown above!

These products are all coated with a special polymer that allows the sublimation dye to adhere properly.

Creating the Design

Depending on the novelty chosen guests can provide their own photos or text. Some products – such as Dry Erase Boards use photos taken against a green screen. Here’s the typical design process:
Photo Setup: At the event, we set up a photo station where our photographer takes pictures to use.
Design Station: Our techs combine text, sent in photos, clip art and designs to make the selected product as personalized as possible and as quickly as possible.

Printing the Sublimation Design

Once the design is finalized, it’s printed onto a special sublimation paper using a sublimation printer and special sublimation ink. The ink used in sublimation printing is unique in that it turns into gas when heated, allowing it to bond with the polymer coating on the substrate. None of the products: printer, ink, paper or substrate are just regular items. They’re all designed specifically for this process.

Transferring the Design

The printed design, on paper, is then placed on the product, and the product is put into a heat press. The heat press applies both heat and pressure, causing the sublimation ink to turn into gas and bond with the product’s surface at a molecular level – actually becoming a part of the product itself.

Pick Up Your Awesome New Item

Once the sublimated items have passed our quality control check, they are ready to be handed out to guests. This usually takes about 5-7 minutes from the time their photo is taken or data is entered until the finished item is delivered.

We here at Fun Fotos To Go dedicate ourselves to developing procedures to enhance production to offer as many choices as possible and still deliver 40-65 items an hour (depending on which novelty you host). We’ve heard other companies talking about how to “slow down the line” so they don’t have to make as many items. Our thoughts are the exact opposite – we want to serve as many people as possible. This guarantees that we’ll be invited back year after year and become the company that all others are judged by. We promise – we won’t let you down.

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