I havnt seen this mentioned in here yet so thought i'd share with you ....
when you cut out the mug design you'll invariably have a thin strip of paper left on the cutting room floor ...
save this !!!
when you cut your mug heat tape attach a piece of the scrap paper to a piece of the tape.
this gives you a handle so to speak ... so that when it comes out of the hot mug press,you wont have to fiddle about trying to scrape back the heat tape from off the red hot mug.
just done my first 20mugs today and after the 3rd time i almost took the skin off my fingers i tried the paper method .... :D :D :D :D :D