Hi everyone,
first post since I’m getting very desperate and know a lot of threads by heart now. If I sound incoherent and like a mad woman, that may be right, I’m about 5 mug boxes along with barely a box of acceptable results.
I have a gigant mug oven and am currently using sublistar mugs. Always used duraglaze in the past but my supplier is discontinuing them.
I get very inconsistent oven results. A batch of three can have a near perfect, a mediocre and a terrible mug.
In the past I had a lot more luck with the oven but I’m not sure if that was the discontinued paper I was using back then in combination with duraglaze. To me duraglaze is like a forgiving mother that even when you messed up your temp or time (too high, too long) will at least provide you with a sharp looking image.
The design I’m working with now is a solid colour teal-ish green. Not sure if that’s what causing issues to surface more prominent.
if I use my regular setting of 185 degrees, the print turns yellowish, faded and blurred. Turning temp down really gives me better results and using my grill-eye pro it seems the temperature on the oven indicator is about 15 degrees lower than on the probe. Bringing the temp all the way down to roughly 160 on external temp and for a long time can at one point give me lovely results and the next batch have hardly transferred.
Basically, I can have a batch of two seemingly come out as perfect, then do the exact same thing again, same temp, time etc, and get a terrible transfer.
Wraps;
the mug wraps are of the red kind that need a machine to clamp. They all had roughly 100-150 mugs on average. I also tried some new ones but didn’t see any improvement. However, I am curious now how I can find out if the mug wraps are getting old or bad and I’ll test and compare these some more.
Mugs;
I think the coating is less hard than I’m used to, but they give me fine results in the mug press and also when the oven feels like it.
ink and printer;
new sg1000 model with sawgrass UhD inks. Think twice before purchasing it already, they’re currently testing because my supplier and I find the dithering worse than on the previous models for certain colours.
paper;
neenah Jetcol. Have tried s-race as well. S-race gives me terrible results but I’ve never been a fan. Jetcol is a very high release paper.
I usually use my handpress as a test, results there are fine, dark, sharp prints at 180/180.
I’m extremely grateful for anyone that can think with me here. If you have any suggestion of things to try for me with my current setup I’m happy to do so. I also have a bunch of spare duraglaze to test and compare if any very experienced people here can rule variations out that way.
My hardware supplier considers the heat distribution being sub par and will test my design in their 140mugsatatime oven. However, that will be their mugs, their paper and their quality check. So I’ll await and share those results. If I knew it was my oven for sure, I’d replace it in a heartbeat since I’m slowly but surely going insane.
Thanks for reading, and even if you don’t have any suggestions, some words of empathy will do as well the struggle is real.