Inconsistancy of mug bottom edge printing

[CockerSpanielsRus]

We have a mug press we bought off ebay from Coralgraph before Xmas which we use with a Sawgrass SG800 printer and truepix mug wraps. Our biggest problem is the bottom edge of the mugs some times they come out brilliant others they are slightly faded or like the attached images. We do them at 180 for 180 and have tried preheating the mug bottoms and fiddling with the tightness (so much so we smashed a mug the other day) we have tried A rated mugs from BMS and others from a local supplier who said the have the best coating. We where wondering about getting a 3d vacuum oven to see if we could get better edge to edge printing but after reading views on here I can't see anyone saying good things about them. Are we better off buying a better quality mug press if so what do people recommend I don't really want to keep making our images smaller along the bottom edge as think the gap already is plenty.

[socialgiraffe]

Make a cup of tea and get searching on this site. There are lots of different opinions on mug press or oven and positives for each. I personally switched to ovens as my orders are typically a few hundred at a time. However if I was printing singles on an ad hoc basis I would probably stick with a press. If you are looking at a press then Adkins have an excellent one and might be considered one of the best on the market but a priced accordingly. There are a couple of budget presses that I have seen and used which I would recommend, Listawood and TMT both sell a good decent press.

That aside make sure you are purchasing mugs from a decent supplier (the one you listed is a decent company with good blanks), make sure you are using decent ink and a good quality paper. The blanket will need to be firm but not too tight (no point with sublimation).

If you purchase from one of the suppliers I have recommended they will happily invite you to their showroom so you can practice printing mugs using their blanks and set you up to make money.

[CockerSpanielsRus]

Thanks for your reply, we are printing ready for a trade stands so we would like the option of batch printing as well as single mugs we had 15 all lined up waiting to go in the other day then started to get issues which was frustrating as we had done 10 or so already which where all fine, but was the first time we had done a batch in one go with our current press. Thanks for the press recommendations Ive been looking at a couple of those this morning, just out of curiosity which oven do you use? It's weight up the costs of oven or press but we wont sell sub standard items as that's what brings our customers back. We went to the P & P live show at the weekend and have a sample mug off novachrome to try today along with some tips off one of the guys on the listawood stand on sticking on the paper. We are trying to stick to quality paper with true pix as tried a cheaper alternative but was a waste of time and we use sublijet HD ink. When it works well they look fab

[socialgiraffe]

OK

Personally I would talk to The Magic Touch and pay them a visit. They will show you how to print and you will also get some fab ideas as their place is loaded with sample prints for you to look at. I take nothing away from Listawood, they are also fantastic, its just in my opinion TMT are better suited to your needs. Once you have the mug press option sorted then I suggest you move to ovens at a later date. I have ST3042 ovens which are purchased from BMS. Brilliant little ovens. But I would wait until you get the press sorted.

Sublimation is one of those industries where you have to start with all the expensive stuff and as you gain knowledge you can chop and change to save the pennies. As an example, for one area of my sublimation I use TESCO £2.50 for 500 sheets paper!

[Justin]

At the top of this (your) thread you'll see a similar threads box, plenty of discussion about this already.

As a quick pointer, pre heat the bottom of your mugs for 20 seconds in the press before applying transfer and pressing. The base is thicker and needs a little more heat.

I prefer a small gap top and bottom rather than full top to bottom printing and you should achieve this quite easily with decent mugs.