A New Toy in the Workshop: What the xTool WonderPress Adds to Our Personalisation Toolkit
There is something rather satisfying about reaching the point where an idea no longer begins with:
"Can we make that?"
and instead begins with:
"Which machine should we use to make that?"
Our collection of personalisation and small-scale manufacturing equipment has been growing steadily, and the latest addition is an xTool WonderPress.
At first glance, it might look like simply another heat press. We already have a conventional heat press, complete with the ability to press mugs, so why buy another one?
The answer is that the WonderPress potentially takes us beyond conventional flat heat-transfer work and into a much wider range of three-dimensional products. The machine is modular: alongside conventional heat pressing, xTool offers modules for craft-oven applications and vacuum-forming/3D work. The standard heat-press module has a 380 x 380 mm working area, operates between 80 and 210 °C and provides adjustable pressure from 20 to 100 kg.
For us, however, the specifications are only part of the story.
What interests me is what happens when this machine is combined with all the other equipment already in the workshop.
Personalisation Is Becoming a Manufacturing Process
When we first started producing personalised items, each machine tended to have a fairly clearly defined job.
A heat press could put a design onto a shirt.
The mug attachment could produce a personalised mug.
The embroidery machine could stitch a logo onto fabric.
The xTool S1 could engrave or cut materials.
Individually, each was useful.
But the interesting stage comes when they begin to work together.
A product might now begin as a drawing on the computer, move to the laser cutter for a component, go through a printer for the artwork, then into the WonderPress for sublimation or forming and finally be packaged with another laser-cut or engraved component.
We are gradually moving from owning several interesting machines to having something much closer to a small digital fabrication workshop.
That opens up a completely different set of possibilities.
Why Dye Sublimation Is So Useful
One of the main reasons for adding the WonderPress is to improve what we can do with dye sublimation.
Sublimation printing is rather different from simply sticking an image onto something.
A design is printed using sublimation ink onto transfer paper and then heat and pressure transfer the dye into a suitable polyester or polymer-coated material. That is why sublimation is particularly associated with polyester clothing and specially coated products such as mugs and other blanks.
The result can be extremely attractive because the image effectively becomes part of the printable surface rather than sitting on top of it as a thick layer.
This makes it particularly interesting for photographic images.
And that matters to us.
If I want a simple one-colour Champagne logo on a shirt, screen printing may be an excellent solution.
If I want an embroidered burgee or crest, embroidery may be better.
But suppose I want a photograph of Champagne sailing on the Thames printed across a shirt, mouse mat or other suitable product.
Sublimation suddenly becomes much more attractive.
There isn't really one "best" personalisation technique.
There is a best technique for a particular job.
The New Heat Press Does Not Make the Old One Redundant
One temptation whenever new equipment arrives is to assume that it replaces whatever came before it.
I don't think that is necessarily the case here.
Our older press still works and can still do perfectly useful jobs. It also has our mug-press capability.
The WonderPress gives us greater flexibility and more controlled pressing, but there is no reason why both machines cannot earn their keep.
Indeed, having two presses can become useful if we begin making several items.
One might be set up for one material and temperature while the second is being used for something completely different.
That is the difference between thinking about these machines as toys and beginning to think about them as production equipment.
And, admittedly, I am quite happy for them to be both.
Moving Beyond Flat Objects
This is probably the part I find most intriguing.
Conventional heat presses naturally lend themselves to relatively flat things.
T-shirts.
Sweatshirts.
Fabric panels.
Bags.
Mouse mats.
Signs.
The difficulty comes when the object stops being flat.
A phone case, for example, has edges and curves. Trying to produce an image that continues around those shapes is a very different problem from pressing a rectangular image onto the front of a shirt.
The WonderPress 3D workflow is specifically intended for this sort of work. xTool demonstrates applications including phone cases, badges and keycaps, with sublimation film conforming around three-dimensional surfaces.
That immediately expands the sort of personalised products we can experiment with.
It isn't simply a bigger catalogue of things we can print.
It changes the geometry of what we can make.
Then There Is the Craft Oven
The oven module creates another collection of possibilities.
Rather than relying purely on a flat heated plate, an oven allows heat to reach around an object.
xTool says its WonderPress Craft Oven can handle several curved-object workflows and can accommodate three mugs at once; the company also describes applications including shrinking plastics and baking polymer clay.
Again, what appeals to me isn't simply the ability to make mugs.
We could already make mugs.
It is having another method available when the shape of an object makes a conventional press awkward.
That could mean experimenting with cups, shaped products and other small items where heating needs to be applied around a significant part of the surface.
It adds another tool to the decision-making process.
Vacuum Forming Could Be Even More Interesting
Possibly the most experimental addition is the 3D forming capability.
Vacuum forming takes a heated sheet of material and draws it around a shape using reduced air pressure.
That gives us a completely different process from printing.
We are now beginning to talk about actually forming objects.
xTool describes the WonderPress 3D Form Module as being able to reproduce physical shapes and create moulds, while also suggesting workflows in which laser-cut components can subsequently be heat-bent or vacuum-formed.
Phone-related products are an obvious place to start experimenting, but I suspect that won't be where we finish.
Small covers, protective shells, packaging, badges, displays, moulds and prototype components all become possibilities.
And this is where having a 3D printer and laser cutter alongside the forming equipment becomes particularly interesting.
We might 3D-print the original object.
Use that as a former.
Vacuum-form a copy or shell around it.
Laser-cut another component.
Then personalise the final piece.
Suddenly several completely different manufacturing technologies are contributing to one small product.
The xTool S1 Has Its Own Part to Play
The xTool S1 remains another important part of the workshop because its strengths are quite different.
It gives us cutting and engraving capability across suitable materials and can also be used as part of xTool's screen-printing system. xTool specifically lists the S1 as compatible with its screen printer and provides instructions for using the S1 to process coated screen-printing mesh.
That gives us yet another way of producing shirts.
Suppose we wanted 30 Champagne shirts carrying the same relatively simple logo.
Screen printing could make considerable sense.
Suppose we wanted one shirt with a full-colour photograph of Champagne under sail.
Sublimation might be much more appropriate, assuming we choose a compatible shirt.
Suppose we wanted the Champagne name on a fleece or cap with a traditional, durable finish.
Embroidery might win.
Same workshop.
Same branding.
Three completely different manufacturing processes.
And Embroidery Still Has a Place
I particularly like embroidery because it produces something that looks very different from printing.
There is texture to it.
It can look much more traditional.
That may be particularly appropriate when we are producing sailing clothing.
A small embroidered Champagne logo on a polo shirt or jacket gives a very different appearance from a large photographic sublimation print on a T-shirt.
Neither is necessarily superior.
They are simply different.
In fact, I increasingly think one of the advantages of having this range of machines is being able to match the manufacturing method to the design rather than modifying the design because we only own one type of machine.
Champagne Gives Us the Perfect Test Project
Our Thames A-Rater Champagne gives us an ideal reason to experiment.
There is an almost endless collection of things we could produce.
Crew shirts could carry the Champagne name and sail number.
A polo shirt could have a small embroidered logo.
A more informal T-shirt might feature a photograph of the boat sailing.
Mugs could use photographs, drawings or a graphic representation of the boat.
Phone cases could carry a full-wrap Champagne design.
We could create keyrings, signs, badges, labels and presentation pieces.
The laser could engrave the boat's name into suitable materials.
Screen printing could produce small batches of identical club or crew clothing.
And the interesting part is that we don't have to order 50 or 100 examples of something simply to discover whether the idea works.
We can experiment.
Make one.
Change it.
Make another.
That is one of the great advantages of having small-scale digital manufacturing equipment available.
It Also Lets Us Make Things for Other People
Champagne merchandise is an obvious personal project, but I don't want this collection of equipment to be limited to making things for ourselves.
The same equipment lends itself to small customised projects for other people.
A sailing club might want a small run of commemorative shirts.
Someone might want a personalised mug as a present.
A local organisation might want engraved plaques.
A family might want shirts for a birthday celebration.
A small business might want a handful of branded products but nowhere near the quantities that make traditional mass production economical.
That is where a workshop like this becomes particularly useful.
We're not trying to compete with a factory producing 50,000 identical T-shirts.
The interesting territory is almost the opposite:
Can we economically make one, five, ten or perhaps twenty highly personalised items?
That is where these technologies become remarkably powerful.
The Real Skill Is Choosing the Right Process
Having more equipment does create one problem.
You have more decisions to make.
A design might potentially be produced by sublimation, screen printing, embroidery or another heat-transfer process.
The temptation is always to use the newest machine simply because it is new.
That isn't necessarily sensible.
The questions should be about the finished product.
What material is it made from?
How many do we need?
Does the design need many colours?
Is it photographic?
Do we want a raised, stitched appearance?
Does it need to wrap around a curved surface?
What will the item be used for?
How durable does it need to be?
Only then should we decide which machine gets switched on.
That, I suspect, will be one of the most interesting parts of experimenting with the WonderPress.
From "Maker" Equipment to a Small Production Workshop
There is a wider lesson here.
A laser cutter on its own is interesting.
A 3D printer on its own is interesting.
An embroidery machine is interesting.
A sublimation printer and press are interesting.
But connect those processes together and something changes.
Imagine producing a personalised presentation box.
The box could be laser cut.
Its lid could be engraved.
A shaped insert could be vacuum formed.
The contents could include a sublimated mug.
A small embroidered patch could be added.
The packaging could carry another custom-produced component.
That isn't simply using five machines.
It is developing a workflow.
And I think that is where our workshop is gradually heading.
There Will Inevitably Be Experiments — and Failures
Of course, owning the equipment does not automatically mean that everything produced will be perfect.
Quite the opposite.
There will undoubtedly be shirts pressed at the wrong temperature.
Images that are slightly misplaced.
Colours that don't look quite as expected.
Materials that seemed like a good idea until we actually tried them.
Vacuum-formed pieces that don't release properly from the former.
And probably the occasional item destined directly for the experimental-failures box.
But that is part of the attraction.
I've always been more interested in equipment that lets us investigate and create than equipment that simply performs a single fixed task.
The WonderPress fits rather well into that philosophy.
Conclusion: Another Machine — but Many More Possibilities
So yes, another toy has arrived.
But calling the xTool WonderPress a toy probably understates what we are gradually assembling.
We now have heat pressing, dye sublimation, screen printing, laser cutting and engraving, embroidery, 3D printing and increasingly the ability to form three-dimensional objects.
The WonderPress fills an important gap because it connects conventional heat-transfer work with more awkward shapes and 3D fabrication.
The immediate beneficiary will probably be Champagne.
There are definitely going to be some personalised shirts, mugs and other experiments appearing.
But I suspect some of the most interesting things we eventually make with it are things we haven't thought of yet.
And that is perhaps the best justification for adding a new machine to any workshop.
It doesn't simply make the things you already planned to make.
It changes what you realise you are capable of making.
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