I have sourced black mugs with the white patch from two separate suppliers and the results are the same. No matter what time and temperature I set from 325 - 400 degrees and 3 minutes to 5 minutes the mugs do not come out right. I have incremented the time in 5 seconds intervals and the temp in 5 degree intervals. They come out brown black which I know is supposed to mean too much heat but this even happens at much lower temperatures and shorter times. The difference is how faded it is. At the lower temp or time or both the image completely fades out as it gets closer to the handle. At any rate I cannot get it to look good at all.
My printer is a Sawgrass SG400 using Sublijet-HD ink
It was recently suggested to change from Text Print-R paper to Text Print XPHR paper as it apparently can be saturated better - I have not tried this yet.
I have wasted a lot of the black mugs with the white patch trying to dial in the settings but I am also finding the patch area varies and can cause separate issues with white lines
Another suggestion which seems intriguing and this may be the wrong place to ask is getting a White Toner Printer and using standard all black mugs to print on which are about 1/5th the cost of the black mugs with a white patch, this also eliminates the blending issue. I was shown the results and I must say it looked a lot better than having a white patch you have to turn black to blend in. However I am concerned about the durability vs dye sub.
Does anyone know the durability of white toner printed mugs done with a white toner printer ?
For the dye sub mugs:
Should I be using different black than #000000 ?
Will the Text Print XPHR paper make a difference ?
Is it my printer? I have been told the SG400 cannot do true black and that only something like an epson wide format printer can do I'm not sure if this is true.