My personal understanding about sublimation process keycaps

The information used in this column comes from the Internet and some opinions of group friends and individuals. Friendly discussions are welcome.

Regarding the dye-sublimation process, many bigwigs and practitioners have written popular science and recommendations in this area, and I will only express my shallow views here.

First, let's take a look at the production process of sublimation keycaps.

From Dye Sublimation Machine Manufacturer

This is a dye sublimation machine. Simply put, dye sublimation is essentially a type of printer, but it is different from dot matrix printers, inkjet printers, and laser printers in most people's cognition. The design of dye sublimation printers After the pattern is finished, the heat transfer technology is used to transfer the pattern to the surface of the product. This technology is often used on mobile phone protective cases, water glasses, and even clothing.

It acts on the keycap, and the same is true for the sublimation process. You can imagine the sublimation process as a microwave oven, and the keycap is placed in the transfer basin of the sublimation machine

from a live broadcast

After the heating reaches the temperature, the inside of the pot is evacuated, and the film film is needed to complete the color transfer of the keycaps. If the transfer paper is used, some keycaps may be printed with paste. At the same time, single-sided sublimation is used There is not a big difference between the price of the film film and the transfer paper, which is about 50 cents. The hard film can only be used for single-sided sublimation, and the price is about 8-9 cents, while the price for five-sided sublimation The price of film paper is much higher. The price of film that can be softened is between 6-7 yuan. The film film needs to be dried after printing before it can be used normally. Otherwise, it will cause color blurring when it enters the machine. Not colored.

Finally, put the material on the mold and buckle it with film or transfer paper, enter the machine under high temperature, sublimation ink sublimates, let the ink molecules gradually thermally move to the surface and inside of the pbt material, so as to complete the printing of the pattern.

Witch's Packaging

In the previous article, I ridiculed that the box of the keycaps of the witch was too careless. It turns out that they were indeed packed directly from the machine.

After introducing the technological process of sublimation keycaps, everyone must have known a little about the advantages of sublimation keycaps. The processing difficulty of sublimation can be said to be very low in the keycap process. Anyone who can make thermal transfer products You can learn processing, because the process is highly similar. At the same time, for creators, sublimation can design very complex patterns and transfer them on keycaps. For example, this set of traditional Chinese zodiac designed by GLOVE and manufactured by DOMIKEY

Chinese Zodiac Factory Tiger

But the sublimation process also has very big disadvantages

1. In terms of the clarity of characters and patterns, characters and patterns will inevitably appear smudged and blurred. It is related to the length of heating time in the sublimation process

2. Because vacuum heating is involved in the sublimation process, even if there is a mold to fix it, the keycaps will inevitably be deformed. This kind of situation often occurs on the sublimation space, and it will also happen to serious 1u. However, the deformation of keycaps is also related to many factors, such as glue feeding method, mold design, injection molding equipment, and raw materials.

3. The keycap shading problem, the dye-sublimation keycap color key will have a relatively large shading problem, so some manufacturers will increase the shading degree of the keycap by adding shading powder, but the problem is that the dye-sublimation keycap adds too much On the contrary, shading powder will cause problems with keycap coloring and five-sided sublimation. The most common is that the color is light, without texture, and as thin as a cloud. This problem was not obvious in the past for the keycaps produced by Smile OEM, but some keycaps that have been released recently do add a lot of shading powder, and the color is not good.

After talking about some personal opinions on the sublimation keycaps, you can see that a good sublimation keycap has perfect color matching, no smudges, and clear characters. It is very difficult, and many of them need the manufacturer's experience accumulation and technological progress to complete. , the main reason why I personally like abs keycaps is because the color of abs is really very deep and attractive. Good keycap design is the biggest reason for us to pay for keycaps. At the same time, I hope everyone can understand why the price of sublimation keycaps is so cheap. ABS and PBT are not the main reasons for distinguishing high-end and low-end keycaps. Let’s go back to the overall workmanship and design of the keycaps, and I believe that after reading this article, everyone can understand why there is such a large price difference between the two-color molding keycaps with superior workmanship and the sublimation keycaps. If there is a chance in the future, I will continue to bring you some personal understanding and collected information about keycaps.