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  1. #1
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    MUG time!! and HELLO!

    Hi all!

    Well yesterday I decided to ignore the general wishes of the wifey and start yet another "tinkering about" project: Sublimation mug printing!! Woo hoo!!

    Ive always fancied making t-shirts or doing something similar. Theres something quite cool about making stuff, and if you can make a few pennies along the way then thats a brucie bonus too. Looked into screen printing many many years ago but it seemed too expensive and messy.

    Last year the wife dragged me to an event at skegness butlins, where I witnessed a stand charging over the odds for T-shirts and Hoodies, taking transfers from a folder of pre-prepared logos and applying them in a few seconds with what looked like a mini ironing presses (cut down versions of the one Bea used to use on 'Prisoner Cell Block H"). Money for old rope it looked like to me.

    Anyway the summer is coming and now the wife is bullying me to remove most of my junk from various projects and hobbies (bike restoration, arcade machines, fishing gear) from our house and rent someones garage so we can de-clutter our house. Not quite in the spirit of de-cluttering I see having a garage as an opportuinty to do more stuff, and hence my mind turned back to t-shirts.

    However, as one lot of reading leads to another, I have learned a little about sublimation printing, and having seen some of the cool mugs people have made, I think I'm going to have a go at mug-making instead.

    Ive ordered some half-empty ink bottles from ebay (keep the startup costs as low as possible), some refillable empty cartridges for my old Epson printer that i havent used since I bought a Canon, some heat-resistant tape, and some transfer paper. Im hoping to learn to use Adobe Illustrator (since we already have it) for designs. Do I buy a mug-press or try making them in our oven...?! (I wonder how toxic these subli dyes are...) Do I need wraps or will paper taped to the mugs work fine as they are..??

    Left to buy: some Mugs. Maybe Wraps. Maybe Press. Maybe small convection oven.
    Likely to happen because I'm trying to do everything on the cheap: Ink everywhere other than it should be, lots of mistakes and scrapped mugs, burnt fingers.

    Advice welcome!!
    Cliffy.

  2. #2
    Super Moderator Paul's Avatar
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    Hi Cliffy! welcome on forum mate! few answers now ;)

    got epson? got ink?? what about profile??? what printer you planing to use? you need colour correction profile if you dont want you pictures look odd ;)

    press or wraps?? well... I would go for a press first. oven and wraps is I would say for biger runs. press is perfect for one offs and is more simple to use and set.
    t-shirts??? you never mentioned anything about press. you need heat press to press your transfers. you wont get away wth iren. it simply wont work.

    Adobe illustrator. perfect for designes but again. I dont know if you can print stright from this software using color profiles. most people use adobe photoshop or corel draw.


    as I said first :) welcome in this wired word :)

    Paul

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    Thanks!

    Paul, im not planning any T-shirts at all just yet. Just the Mugs ;-)
    Profile - I assume you are referring to colour correction profiles. Now is that software based from Epson, or some kind of "inbetween" software that meddles with the printer driver? Either way I don't have it! I was going to start off with solid-color designs at first, and print off a bunch of "colour squares" with RGB values, and see how they come out. Correcting manually in my actual designs, this should work ok for basic stuff but for photo images I guess I am going to have to find a better solution than that!

  4. #4
    Super Moderator Paul's Avatar
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    :)
    yes. I mean ICC profile. Epson thingy is for telling your printer how to use epson inks. now you need something that tell your printer how to use sublimation inks.
    btw. dont bother with rgb aqueres as you only waste loads of ink and wont go nowhere. wjat printer you planing to use? and waht inks you got? maybe there is icc already somwhere???

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    Unfortunately, the first problem we encounter when doing thing "on the cheap" is that my inks are NOT all from the same manufaturer. Cyan and Magenta are RICOCH and Yellow and Black are south korean (probably Ink Tech or whatever).. I dont know how these ICC colour profile thingies work, but hopefully I will be able to make one up / tweak one / customise one somehow?? The printer is an old CX3650 which although I know is one not commonly used, I believe it liked to (once apon a time) use durabrite inks, and therefore uses the correct technology (piexo electric) to print.. .. I hope!! lol.

  6. #6
    Super Moderator Paul's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by hooperjaws View Post
    I dont know how these ICC colour profile thingies work, but hopefully I will be able to make one up / tweak one / customise one somehow??
    you can not just tweek icc profile :) you need proper gear for this and it cost £££.

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  7. #7
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    Are you sure you have the right inks? (sublimation)

    I'll be amazed if you get sellable results from the gear you have bought but good luck all the same.

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    Yeah, the four inks are sublimation inks. Well I know the Rioch ones are, the other two were sold as such so I wont be a happy chappy if they are not sublimation inks!

    Regarding heating / pressing the mugs, why is it neccesary to apply pressure (wraps) to the process? I would have thought that as long as the paper is in contact with the mug, they dye should sublimate and bond with poly on the mug?? Why the need for pressure??

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    If its the Ricoh inks I'm thinking of, they are gel cart inks and therefore won't go through an epson printer.

    Pressure is needed so no ink escapes leaving runny/blurry prints - contact has to remain there aslong as there's the appropriate heat.

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    Senior Member bms's Avatar
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    Can't imagine this is Ricoh inks as unless someone has broken open a cartridge (or stolen it from the vats of Sawgrass) then this isn't available in bottles.

    Do you mean Rotech ink?

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