Spring Fair NEC - Anyone going as well?

[pisquee]

E2A - for us the toner and papers are significantly more, as we're buying rolls of paper and litres of sublimation ink wholesale, so it's a jump in terms of consumables for this process until we can do more research on sourcing to get the prices down ... found one supplier on Ebay with 1kg bags of white toner, so will be looking over Alibaba etc over next few weeks to suss it all out. Already researching what white toner is actually made up of to brainstorm what else we can use it for!

[GoonerGary]

couple of mins in microwave, not sure of equivilence in oven/press

Although microwaving an item which doesn't absorb the energy will wreck your microwave. Perhaps fill the mug with water?

[pisquee]

microwaving also won't work for anything involving metal!

[UK Printed Mugs]

Apparently the foils are ok in the microwave (e.g. gold on a mug) so says David.

[pisquee]

Yeah, but printing a metal product...

[UK Printed Mugs]

Metal with a white coating can't work for you rather than using white toner?

[pisquee]

We're wanting to use this for printing some products that aren't sold as 'blanks', instead of going down the etching/engraving/laser route, we can use this and have the addition of colour those other methods don't have.

[willd]

You can put metal in a microwave, as long as it is in one piece, isn't pointed and isn't adjacent to other metallic objects or the cabinet.

Not convinced that the metallic decoration on a mug would tick all of the boxes though...

Edited to add: Of course, you'd still need a load in the microwave to absorb the bulk of the energy within, such as a quantity of water as was mentioned earlier, else bad things will happen in any case.

As an aside, years ago I used to repair microwaves as part of my business, and was puzzled as to why one of my local pubs was getting through microwaves like they were going out of fashion, as the chef swore that they weren't doing anything out of the ordinary. One day I saw the light, as she took plates out of the microwave that she had just used to warm them as I walked into the kitchen. There was nothing else in the microwave. Problem solved!

[ArferMo]

It will spark and burn holes in it.

[willd]

It will spark and burn holes in it.

I've added to my prior post ArferMo - as long as the conditions I noted are true, there will be no damage to the microwave or its contents...