 Hey guys, my name is Michael and I'm the graphic designer over at DynaVap. When I'm not drawn fun little pictures, I'm putting up merchandise on the website like stickers and some of the face masks and a lot more to come. So I've been working on a design that we're going to send over to Lumify, who makes some really cool wall art on aluminum. Alright and sent. So now we're going to go over to Lumify's headquarters and see how it's made on this week's Exploring the Dynaverse. Hey Michael, how's it going? Hey, I just got your file, let's get it printed. Next team takes my image and rips it, which stands for rastered image processing. This sends the image to the printer. This is a dye sublimation printer, prints on transfer paper and uses a specific ink that's designed for the process of sublimation. The ink will dry onto the paper in solid state form and when we put it in the press under heat, temperature and time, it'll release that solid ink, turn it into a gas and allow it to bond to the substrate on the aluminum. So all the images to make sure that when it's on the print are the correct orientation, everything is inversed so that it prints and it looks backwards when it comes out. For the print we're going to do today, the final size is 28x35. We'll be over printing because in dye sublimation you typically need to bleed over the edge of your surface that you're printing onto. So we'll be a little bit larger than that 28x35 today. How long is it going to take? Each print takes somewhere between 12 and 20 minutes depending upon resolution, colors, saturation, just kind of design and print standards. Alright Michael, yeah it's all done. So what we'll do now is we'll take it out of our trough and we'll go lay it out so it can dry and we'll get it ready to press. I noticed that the printed image on paper is desaturated compared to the image on my computer. According to Nick, this happens during the rip process, but it's completely overcome once the image is transferred to aluminum. Next, Nick carefully sprayed down the paper print and aluminum with compressed air to make sure that the surface is perfectly clean. I like to get it in the light, get a little reflection to see if I notice any grease spots or any scratches that I need to address. Even the slightest speck of dust can leave a mark on the final print. As Nick prepared the aluminum for the press, this process was starting to remind me of my t-shirt press. I go through a similar process when I print t-shirts. Both are a sublimation process, but a Lumify's printer is just a little bit bigger than mine. I'm going to be very careful to not touch the print surface with my fingers and we're going to lay it face down on the paper. You'll notice we have our logo here so when we have a logo placed we register to that side. We leave a thin sliver at our bottom, but because we're registering that logo that's right here we want to be really tight to that edge. You'll notice some exposed ink in the corners to protect the platen and the press to keep the ink off of it. We use Teflon sheets just to cover the corners. Michael, I'll give you one to cover if you don't mind. With the corners covered we then take our polypoplin, which is just a vapor barrier. Make sure that if there's any moisture inside that it's able to breathe out, not get trapped between the metal and the print. This also protects any little extra pieces of ink that are on that paper from ending up on the platen, which would then have to be cleaned entirely. So with the poplin on we're ready to go. So we'll roll the drawer in. Everything here is pneumatic so it's all air that's going to do the hard work. Lift the drawer up, squeeze it against the heating surface of the platen and on a little bit it'll be done and be ready for forming. So what exactly is happening to the ink and stuff when this is going on? So the solid state ink that's on that paper under heat temperature and time, which is what the purpose of this machine is, it's going to go from that solid state to a gas and it's going to bond on to the aluminum substrate, which ultimately is the picture you're going to hang on the wall. Cool. So it's pretty similar to the t-shirts that I'm making for 90 seconds. It's very similar to the t-shirts. Even though our temperature, time and pressure may be a little different than you, the process is exactly the same. Our paper won't have the tack like yours does, which helps bond to polyester. We want to be nice and smooth because we're using a smooth aluminum substrate. So our time is probably a little longer than you use for t-shirts. Our pressure is probably a little bit different, but ultimately the sublimation process for shirts or any other substrate is exactly the same. My t-shirt process is definitely a lot simpler and faster than Nick's aluminum printing. I can make about 10 t-shirts in one hour while the printing alone at a Lumify took at least 15 minutes. Okay, you'll notice the drawer is going to drop, which releases that pressure. Okay. Ooh, that's hot. It is hot. So we get our vapor barrier off, our poplin. Take our Teflon pieces off. We're going to pull up. Oh, yeah. Wow. There's your image. Very cool. And you can see that you've lost some of the tone on the paper. This is the leftover ink that's on the paper that's still in solid state. As you can see, we now took your digital file. We rasterized it, printed it, got it to our press, heat temperature and time, and we turned it into something beautiful. Very cool. So the cool thing about sublimation is as you did your illustration, any white that you put in your picture, white and sublimation is just void. There's no such thing as white sublimation ink. So anything in your drawing, if we were to pull that back up that would have been white is now just raw aluminum. It looks like you can see some of the grain in there. But as soon as you tint it or you shade it even a little bit, the sublimation printer will apply some ink. It's really cool how the metal comes through the ink as well. Yeah, it's unique to see something that is metal in real life printed on metal with the purpose of trying to look like metal. After the print is made, Nick and his team sends the print over to a manufacturing partner who bends the edges so it's all hanging ready. So you can see that the image as it's been sublimated onto the aluminum and through our forming process is completely continuous. There's absolute continuity of color, shape, any design things you did to this follow every single bend. So it's just like a stretch canvas. It's just like a stretch canvas just made out of aluminum. So on every panel we put knockouts in on every side. These are 16 inch on center, which is what your standard wall studs are. If you're looking to hang this on a studded drywall wall, you'll find your studs. Put your screws in and it'll hang. The prints themselves are pretty light. So you can just hang it with one screw too or a little bracket that'll grab the edge. There you go. It completed a Lumify panel. So I just got the final version of the Lumify print and it's looking pretty good. I think even maybe better than my t-shirt design. A lot better. So yeah, let's go hang this up. All right, George, got the finished print from a Lumify. Yeah, that looks awesome. Yeah, I think it looks really cool. You want to give me a hand hanging it up? You betcha. Put it right up here, yeah. Right there. Yeah, that looks awesome. Yeah, it really does. I love seeing the finished product hung up on the wall. It looks a lot better than just on my monitor. I just like how the metal reflects the light. It really pops out the end. Well, thanks a bunch, Michael. I'm really glad you took on this project. Yeah, Michael. Now we can share with everyone how this process really works. Yeah, I hope everybody got a kick out of it like I did, learning how to sublimate.