Frequently asked questions

Theoretically, all materials with a high melting point can be printed, including most polymers (plastics). Other materials such as glass, wood, metals and ceramics can also be printed after special pre-treatment.

Pre-treatments consist of a pre-coating of the product. The coating enables fixation for the printing inks and can be transparent or white, depending on requirements.  Wood must be dried before treatment. 

We can print all polymers that have a melting temperature/point [Tm] above 140⁰C, which is the majority of polymers. A special moulding is used to prevent the object from deforming in the oven.

Yes - most products fit into a standard machine. However, we are also able to build customised printers for larger or deeper items. We have printed all shapes and sizes of items, from shoes to bottles, fridge doors to guitars.

Perigon has a range of machines that cover all types of production, from personalised service in small shops to high-volume continuous printing machines.

Perigon has application centres in the UK, Germany and the USA that can either print one-off samples or carry out initial test runs for customers to validate the printing process on their products.

We are able to print with a tolerance of up to 0.3 mm.

To achieve white, the same process is used as with any other CMYK inkjet printer, i.e. the background must first be white.  Very often the original product is white, e.g. polyester, nylon etc., in other cases a white varnish can be applied to the product to be printed.

Standard printers use a system of four colours known as CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black). These inks are translucent, meaning they allow a certain amount of light to pass through.  To create a metallic effect, the product to be printed must either be made of metal, e.g. stainless steel, or be coated with a metallic coating, either by metal spray or vacuum coating.  After coating, the metallic surface can either be left or overprinted to create a coloured metallic effect.

The gloss levels of the transfers depend primarily on the gloss level of the substrate to be transferred.  The gloss level can be altered by any coating that needs to be applied before printing.

If the product has a 360-degree print, then it is likely that the product will need to be printed on two sides.  A seamless image can be created by simply manipulating the image in Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator.

Printer profile software is standard, but specialised software can be used to edit the image files to enable thermoforming of deep objects or to avoid any distortion in the image.

In general dye sublimation transfer is allowed for ceramics as the dyes sit in the polyester fibres of the coating, these only open (which would allow the inks to escape) at temperatures above 150⁰C, which is not plausible for a dishwasher.

The inks are fixed in the top 20 microns of the printed product. All the inks used are waterbased and non-toxic.

The process uses waterbased inks which are non-toxic, and a PET monomer which has the highest grade of recyclability.