At Car Beyond Store, sublimation ran approximately daily as part of made-to-order Amazon production. Products included automotive-themed backgrounds and logos sublimated onto metal and acrylic plates used for license plates and hitch covers.
Designs were custom but repeatable catalog products, manufactured in daily batches to incoming orders rather than one-off demonstrations. This capability lived inside the same professional production environment described in Print Production.
Original illustration artwork was created by the head graphic designer. My role was production execution: opening and printing prepared files, printer maintenance, positioning, pressing, inspection, assembly coordination, and repeat manufacturing.
Transfer Print Workflow
I opened prepared artwork in Photoshop and printed sublimation transfers on an Epson sublimation printer. Maintaining that printer was part of keeping daily production runnable.
Blanks were positioned manually on the transfer. Metal or acrylic plates were taped to the transfer paper by hand. Transfer paper and protective heat paper were used as required before the heat press cycle.
Heat-Press Execution
I operated the heat press, removed the pressed item, and inspected the finished output before assembly or packing. Timing and pressure had to stay consistent enough for catalog quality across daily batches—without treating every order as a unique experiment.
Quality Control
Real failure modes included crooked positioning, incorrect timing, under-pressed or over-pressed output, defective blanks, ink or output defects, scratches, dings, chips, and alignment or straightness problems.
A finished part had to be clean, chip-free, scratch- and ding-free, visually correct, straight, and aligned before it advanced. Anything that failed that bar stopped at inspection instead of traveling into packaging.
Layered Product Integration
Some sublimated pieces became components in larger assembled products. One workflow used a sublimated background plate combined with foam-backed laser-cut acrylic lettering positioned in templates to create a layered 3D automotive design.
That handoff depended on both disciplines: sublimation for the background plate, and laser cutting for the foam-backed acrylic lettering. After assembly, finished goods continued into the packaging and fulfillment chain documented on the Print Production case.