True Cost Of Production

In the world of sublimation there is a lot of emphasis placed on ink costs, yet it accounts for a very small percentage of the production costs.  In fact, whether you are using an 8.5” x 14” desktop unit or 44” fulfillment unit, the ink costs are usually along the lines of $0.01 square inch.

Certainly, when faced with forking out several hundred dollars at a time on replacement inks, it will get your attention real fast, but that doesn’t tell the true story about production costs.

Time Is Money

Assume you are a full-time sublimation shop and you have calculated your hourly cost of operation to be $30.00.  If it took 2 minutes on average to print and press something, you could theoretically produce 30 items per hour, which works out to $1.00 each.  But nothing is that simple as you are going to have downtime associated with setup and post-production tasks, so in the case of single piece orders you might be spending more time engaging in those tasks than in the true production process.  For example, if it took 15 minutes to setup the job, 2 minutes to produce it and 3 minutes to wrap up the job details, you would suddenly have a 20 minute job, which is going to work out to $10.00 in costs.  

Sublimation Printer Platforms – What Do I Buy?

The good news when it comes to buying a sublimation printer is that there are plenty of choices.  The bad news is that there are plenty of choices.   In other words, you have to compare printers to decide which one is best for situation, and that can seem a bit challenging – at first.  The key is to understand which features are important for YOU in terms of efficiency, versatility and quality.  To simplify things, its best to make a list of basic printer functions and then compare the different platforms to see how they fit into your business operation:

• Size of printing field.
• Number of ink colors
• Durability
• Speed
• Price

Product Review – Acrylics And Glass

One of the neatest new materials available for sublimation is acrylic.  Very thick and durable, acrylic substrates give an interesting depth to sublimation as the decoration is on the rear instead of the front.  The result is impressive, giving almost a three-dimensional look to the image, something that you can’t do with any other product except glass.