Getting Your Sublimation Drying Right: The Truth About IR Lamps
Drying sublimation ink is a bit of a balancing act. You need enough heat to flash those solvents off quickly, but if you overdo it, you’re just scorching your material. That’s where our infrared lamps come in. We build them specifically for high-speed lines where every second counts. The Power Side of Things Here is the deal with wattage and voltage: we pack a lot of power into a short length of tube. Why? Because you want a concentrated punch of heat that sinks right into the ink. When the heat penetrates faster, you don’t need a mile-long conveyor belt to get the job done. You can keep your footprint small. Just a heads-up, though—make sure your wiring and power supply can actually handle the draw. If your voltage drops, you’ll start seeing uneven dry spots across your web, and that’s a headache nobody wants. What’s Under the Glass We use heavy-wall quartz for the housing. It’s tough. It can handle being switched on and off rapidly without cracking from the thermal shock. We also use a halogen cycle. Without it, tungsten builds up on the inside of the glass, making the lamp cloudy and weak. Our lamps stay clear, meaning you get the same heat output after thousands of hours as you did on day one. Plus, we offer R7s and Sk15 connectors. You can just pop them into your existing rig without having to rewire the whole shop. Real-World Warnings These lamps get hot. Really hot. They give you that instant heat you need for sublimation, but they also throw a lot of ambient warmth into the air. If your housing doesn’t have a good fan or a way to vent, you’re going to run into trouble. Heat soak can warp your reflectors or fry your sensors. We build these to the same standards as the big-name global brands. We’re obsessive about the raw materials and how tight the filament is wound. It means the lamp won’t just burn out the moment you push it to its limit. It’s all about making sure the light hitting the ink is exactly what the ink needs to absorb.