Dye Sublimation Business - Attention Laser and Rotary Engravers!!
Conde has recently developed a new product that is perhaps the first real crossover product ever for sublimation and engraving. It is a very thin, yet strong, plastic that can be both sublimated and cut with a laser or rotary engraver. It can also be cut with an X-Acto knife by scoring and snapping. They call it DyeFlex, with IronClad coating. It is available in 12x24” sheets.
You may be familiar with it as a smartphone insert. It’s good for that because plastic won’t interfere with wireless signals that the phones use for tap payment or wireless charging
At about .025”, it cuts easily with a low power laser and can be sublimated before or after cutting. The material contains no PVC so it is safe to cut. This allows us to cut all kinds of shapes for name badges, inserts for promotional products, plates for trophies, perpetual plaques or even things like gavel bands. I have been using mine to sublimate and cut out signs for my grandson’s model railroad.
If you don’t have a laser but do have a rotary engraver, you can cut the material using a small standard .020 cutter or a profile cutter. To cut straight lines, I suggest just scoring the material about .015” deep and snapping it the rest of the way. This makes securing the sheet to be cut much easier. If the shapes are more complex, you will probably have to cut all the way through the sheet which will require you place a sacrificial sheet of engraver’s plastic under the sheet and securely tape the sublimatable sheet so the pieces can’t move after being cut.
To cut with a utility knife or X-Acto knife, simply score the sheet as deep as possible and snap away the excess. This is easy with straight lines or mild curves but may be too difficult or time consuming to merit doing complex shapes.
Any way you cut it, this is an exciting new product. Not only does it sublimate well, but can be used for hundreds of applications that normally could not be done with sublimation.