Sorry for the late reply, I'd thought I'd meant to reply to this but had got distracted!I use halogen ovens from B&M Bargains for £30 each but they are pretty much bog standard models that you can find anywhere for that sort of price.
I love them and get much better print than when I used a mug press. Top to bottom is much easier to do as there is no pre-heating to do and using wraps you can get the design much closer to the handle without worrying about fading.
It can take a while to press one mug - I use 18 minutes for a mug - but timing get much better when you do more mugs. I can get 6 in at a time and the timing on that is 28 minutes. for 4 at a time the time is 23 minutes.
At £30 a time I have bought 3 so when I do bulk orders I can do up to 36 mugs an hour. Just make sure you have enough wraps to operate smoothly.
Thanks for the advice, that's interesting .
I guess that's the problem with ovens. A lot of people have said that it's risky, because if you mess-up (or if the oven messes up) it's a whole batch down the drain.We did - bought a full sized kitchen oven from Argos, fan assisted, top and bottom heat elements, could get 24 mugs in at a time.
Problem was to get consistent heat in the whole oven, the fan was needed, but the fan would blow around any gassed ink that had escaped off the transfers, and so any exposed areas of the mugs got a browny tinge on them.
Other problem was our mugs aren't a standard size, and the silicone wraps available were too big, so we had problems with not having enough pressure around the whole mug.
We ended up with tape around the whole transfer so no ink gas could escape, so went through so much heat tape which wasn't cheap, the increased labour time/cost to wrap the mugs in this way was also therefore expensive.
We wasted a few hundred mugs trying to perfect this, and had to give up in the end, and move back to presses unfortunately.
We cleaned the oven down, and it's now in our kitchen doing a fantastic job of cooking food, replacing the gas oven we had which was terrible at cooking and was condemed by the gas board for being too leaky!
It's a shame there are no big table top ovens that do the job, that don't cost an arm-and-a-leg.
I have seen the oven we used adapted as a mug oven from one supplier - the control panel changed out, and I guess the fans changed to suck the gas/fumes out.
brightday83 (10-02-2017)
It would be good if there was someone technical on the forum who could change/improve on ovens for members, so that they sucked the fumes out.
Try some catering equipment suppliers. They stock a range of counter top 13 amp convection ovens, of a similar size to domestic cooker ovens.
This one is £299 + vat, with a temperature range up to 300c.
https://www.cs-catering-equipment.co...onvection-oven
brightday83 (12-02-2017)
Hi PW66Try some catering equipment suppliers. They stock a range of counter top 13 amp convection ovens, of a similar size to domestic cooker ovens.
This one is £299 + vat, with a temperature range up to 300c.
https://www.cs-catering-equipment.co...onvection-oven
Thanks for your reply. Do you know, are these ovens fan assisted? And do they suck the gases/fumes out? As someone mentioned earlier within the thread that ordinary ovens cause the gases to distribute throughout the oven and discolour the parts of the mugs that are exposed .
If you spend a bit more money you will get one were you have the option of turning the fan on or off. If you suck the gas out you are also sucking the heat out with it, causing more problems. The only way to reduce the gas successfully will be to reduce the number of mugs in the oven.
The benefit of a commercial oven is that you can find one with a higher power rating than with a domestic oven, theoretically giving a more stable temperature and heat distribution, meaning you shouldn't need the fan. You can go up to about 3kw on 13amps - a domestic oven is unlikely to be much more than 2kw.
brightday83 (14-02-2017), cleverprintinguk (13-02-2017)
We bought the one in question from Argos for about £100 (maye £120 max) it is fan assisted, had two heating elements for the oven mode. The fan could be turned off, which meant the heat wasn't as consistent, but having it on caused too many problems too.
They aren't selling it anymore (but it is brilliant for cooking, just not mugs)
Although it detailed as needing to be hard wired, it was rated just below 3000W, so I just put a plug on it.
I've had a look for the same model being sold as the sublimation oven, with the control panel swapped out, but can't find where I saw it now. Will post back if I do come across it again.
It strikes me that the best adaptation would involve a filter in the airstream either to or from the fan - that way the excess ink vapour could be removed, whilst leaving the heat evenly distributed where it needs to be!
pw66 (14-02-2017)