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Let's talk about sublimation ovens, including purpose-built sublimation ovens and convection ovens! So what is it and what is it for? A sublimation oven is really any oven capable getting to at least 400 degrees Fahrenheit or 204 degrees Celsius, which is the temperature we need for the sublimation crafting process. An oven lets us transfer sublimation ink into the surfaces of things like tumblers, mugs, glasses, pens, and more, creating gorgeous custom items that we can display, gift, or sell.
Here I have four ovens you could use for sublimation -- a Hamilton Beach convection oven, an Oster convection oven, a mini sublimation oven, and a regular sublimation oven. You could use all four of these for sublimation, but which one is best?
So there are several important things to consider when choosing your oven for sublimation beyond just temperature. We need to think about safety, size, ease of use, and, of course, cost.
First, safety -- once you use an oven for sublimation, it is no longer an oven you'd ever want to cook food in. That's because the sublimation ink turns into a gas in the oven during heating and some of it will stay in the oven. And then everytime you heat up the oven over 350 Fahrenheit, that sublimation ink will re-sublimate and turn back into a gas -- if you had food in there, the ink could contaminate the food. No one should be ingesting ink. So once you use an oven for sublimation, please mark it as "craft only" and only use it for projects, not food. And this is the benefit of using a countertop oven like this -- we can easily mark it and use it only for crafting.
Now let's talk size. Of the four sublimation ovens I have here, the Oster is the largest and the Hamilton Beach is the smallest. But let's see how many sublimation tumblers we could actually fit inside each one.
How about ease of use? So of course how much you can fit at a time is a factor - if you want to do a bunch of tumblers but can only fit one at a time, that's going to make everything take more time. But there are other factors, too, and one of those is the temperature setting. On the little Hamilton Beach oven, the temperature is set with a dial, whereas the other three have a digital readout -- this makes a difference in how easy it is to get just the right temperature. If you have or get an oven without a digital temperature readout, you'll want to be sure to have an oven thermometer to be sure you have the right temperature so you don't undercook or overcook your projects. In fact, you may want to use more than one thermometer in your oven, because temperatures can fluctuate when you open the door to place your item inside, and you need to know when the temperature gets back up to the right point.
On the PYD Life sublimation ovens, which are made for sublimation, they know we'll be opening and closing the door, factor this temperature offset in and won't start their timers until the oven is back at the right temperature, so that's a nice feature you won't get with a regular convection oven.
Beyond the temperature readout and control, you also need a timer. The Oster oven and the two sublimation ovens have timers, but the little Hamilton Beach oven does not. So you'd need a separate timer, or just use the timer on your phone. If this is an inconvenience, get an oven with a timer.
Another thing to consider is the speed at which the sublimation oven heats up. In the video, we turn on all the ovens and see how fast they heat up.
One more thing to consider is the surface inside the oven. The convection ovens have a grate, whereas the sublimation ovens have a mesh basket. I find the mesh basket does a better job of allowing the heat to evenly distribute along the underside of the item. I haven't had issues that prevented a good transfer, but if you do, you could try putting a silicone pad on the grate to better distribute the heat.
And finally, cost -- there's a pretty big cost difference here. The Hamilton Beach was well under $100, the Oster and the Mini Sublimation Oven were just about $200, and the PYD Life Sublimation Oven is usually about $240, but it retails for $300.
In this video, we put a sublimation tumbler in each of the four ovens to test them out and compare them side by side at the end!
