PVC Playing Cards

About.

In this project I will create a deck of PVC playing cards, using a dye-sublimation print process. Why? Because I have a dye-sub printer, but no budget to buy a card printer. Also, ink-jet printing PVC business cards is hardly website-worthy, and using a dye-sublimation process embeds the ink inside the cards, rather than just across the surface where it can wear off.

Materials

I purchased a bunch of PVC 'business cards' from online sources. Note that I had three different attempts at this with mixed success:

As with buying anything like this blind online, you can't really know in advance whether what you get will be at all suitable (especially since we are using the items in a manner they were not really intended for, so the issues probably can't even be attributed to 'poor quality' just good/bad luck on my part). Other than the 'meltiness' of the thinnest cards (due to less mass to absorb the heat during pressing), I doubt thickness was a factor in eventual print quality, and I am guessing that different grades of plastics from different suppliers was the culprit. Expect to make multiple attempts if you are as fussy as me (though any of these versions would have been good-enough as a proof-of-concept).

Melted cards

In the end, I used about twice as many blank cards as I needed for finished cards, to cover mis-alignments, and other issues.

Process

First, I designed my deck of cards. My own deck is 32 cards, with four suits of eight (based off the dot-symbols of my 8-sided dice project).

card deck

As always, I am not going to simply re-create something 'normal' that I can just go and buy online far quicker and cheaper anyway! Using my eight-sided-dice dot pattern as my inspiration, I designed a 32-card deck, with four suits of cards numbered zero to seven. The suits go two ways, either circle-vs-triangle or solid-vs-hollow.

After wracking my brain over how to visually represent zero of triangles distinct from zero of circles, I decided to dodge the issue all together and make the zeros wild-cards, able to represent any suit (though still always zero), a bit like jokers in a conventional deck, but also not exactly like. Also, the zero cards don't appear on my dye-sheets above because there is no point printing blanks!

If you want to re-create my card-deck (you weird weird person!), here is a zip file of the SVGs, both face and two alternative backs. The interleaved circle-triangle symbol is just something I made up in my youth, my version of he 'Cool-S' for doodling in schoolbook margins. It has no actual meaning.

You can use this template (SVG) to design your own, up to 9 cards per A4 page. Note that this template allows for a 2mm 'bleed' area around the cards, so don't design right up to the edge.

The 0.4mm-thick cards came with a protective peel-off layer to remove, front and back for every card. The other cards didn't. Check your cards (at any thickness), as if this protective film is present you will need to remove it to not ruin the print and cards!

Peeling off film

In the course of my process development, I first tried taping the cards down to keep them aligned, but the masking tape caused all sorts of issues with heat dissipation during heat-pressing and glue residue after. In the end, I used my blank template, shrunk slightly, as a laser-cutting template (SVG) to cut an alignment frame out of some stiff cardboard a bit thinner than my cards.

Laser-cutting a positioning frame.

And with the template on the heat-press bed (with some paper underneath to stop it melting into the bed or running ink into it if doing double-side cards), the cards can be place and should stay in place.

Positioning frame in heat-press bed.

Next, we print out the dye-sublimation sheets, using the special ink and the special paper on the special printer. Note that the colours may look odd - this ink is formulated to chemically-react with Polyester (and similar classes of plastic) and the colours will change during this reaction (and become correct, if the plastic is suitable).

Important: Make sure you are printing at 'actual size': don't let the print-driver 'help' you by resizing everything to what some computer-programmer thinks you should want to do!

Printing the dye-sheet.

And now for the tricky bit. First align the dye-sheet over the cards in their frame. This can be quite fiddly to do accurately, and I tried a number of methods:

Trimming the dye sheet.

And now for the other tricky bit! With the heat press set to 200°C, gently but firmly lower the heat plate and lightly press for exactly 20 seconds:

The temperature is important: any lower than about 195°C and the dye will not transfer properly and appear washed-out. Any hotter than 205°C and you risk melting the cards!

The timing is even more important: shorter than 18 seconds and the dye will not have time to transfer properly and appear washed-out. Any longer than 22 seconds and you risk melting the cards!

This is for my heat-press, of course, but I would expect any properly-temperature-calibrated one to be much the same.

Also, I had the press pressure set to firm, but still quite light.

Heat-pressing it all.

Finally, when you lift the press, probably start a second early, and go a little slowly. If you lift too quickly the dye-sheet can shift, and the dye is still transferring for half a second after the heat-plate is lifted, so you can get ghosting.

Cards printed, still hot!

When the cards are still hot, they can bend a little as one side is usually a bit hotter than the other (this is actually a good sign, as it means the plastic hasn't actually melted!). I have found that carefully lifting them to the work table and placing a cutting mat flat on top of them helps a lot. The high-density material of the mat absorbs the heat quite nicely, and it is flat and heavy, so the cards cool nicely flat again.

Heat-pressing it all.

With the 0.4mm cards (and only those thinnest ones), the cards actually melted into both the dye-sheet and the backing paper. This turned out not to be a big deal, as I could just soak the whole thing in warm water for a few minutes and then scrub off all the paper with a stiff plastic brush. Because the dye is chemically bound into the plastic, this didn't affect it at all.

Scrubbbing off paper. Scrubbed off paper.

So now I have a deck of custom playing cards, in waterproof plastic (the 0.6mm ones worked out best, for me).

And here I am playing my hand!

Card Sharp

And I dealt a flush...

Flush of solid-circles

I took my cards down the coast to show my extended family, who were visiting my mum over April-break. My 3yo great-nephew loved them. Possibly because he was in the middle of learning to count. The concept of zero thew him a bit, but it took humanity several thousand years to work that one out, so I won't fault him! Love you Eric!