Mug Sublimation - Ghostwriting / Spots of previous Mug

[voodoopupp]

Hi all,

I am Dominik from Germany and we are fairly new to the mug sublimation business
We run a little store for gifts and home accessories in the german market.

And now we want to offer personal stuff for our customers. The first idea was mugs!

So now we do the first tests and a lot of trial and error, and we are getting closer to the first working products.

But now a new problem appears:
if we do a few mugs one after another there we can see some unwanted stuff printed on the mugs.

For example: we print two mugs with names on it - and after pressing the second one, there you can see some ghosting of the previous mug.

Here are two examples:
[ATTACH=CONFIG]6373[/ATTACH]
[ATTACH=CONFIG]6374[/ATTACH]

Hope you can see the problem.
Some days before there where some coloured spots on another mug, but this was on one of the first tests! That time I thought that it was a bad print from the printer.
Now I know better :rolleyes:

Anyone familiar with this kind of problems?
What would be the best way to avoid this?

I think that the ink passes the sublimation paper and then lays on the heating map and will then transfer onto the next mug.

Hope there are some experiences with this

Best regards
Dominik

[webtrekker]

Hi. Yes, this is a common problem. Use another sheet of copy paper, or a piece of teflon sheet to cover the transfer when pressing. Also, allow some space around the edges of your design to stop any 'gassing out,' or make sure edges are taped down firmly along their length.

[voodoopupp]

Hi webtrekker,

thanks for feedback. Good to hear, that we are not the only one

I am not if I understand this correctly - can you please clarify:
"Also, allow some space around the edges of your design to stop any 'gassing out,'..."

Do you mean we should avoid by printing the design frameless? So actually we have a space of at least 0,5 cm from the edges of the paper to the design!

But thanks a lot for the input!

One more question to the use of a second copy paper/teflon sheet:
will the second copy paper not also "suck" some ink from the wrapped paper around the mug? And therefore by reusing this second paper layer, the ink will be there again?

Is it possible to use simple baking paper for this?

regards
Dominik

[MrsMawbsMakes]

Don’t reuse the second paper layer, it’s wasteful but necessary to throw it in the recycling and use a new piece each time. I use chip shop paper or the packing paper that comes in amazon boxes, any inexpensive paper that will create a barrier will be great but it does need to be thrown away after use

i won’t use Teflon any more after I got an issue with the image ‘sweating’ and it left water marks in the print

[voodoopupp]

iHi,

thanks for your answer.

One more question: how do you handle the second paper layer? Do you cut it also down to mug size, so that the wrapping is more easy?
And do you tape it directly on the mug then as well, so both layers are taped?

Because I tried it yet with some second layers, but it was a mess to lay it around the mugs and then clamp it.

I have to say that we have a "double" mug press, so that we can place two mugs in the same heating element together....therefore it is not so easy to place two mugs and the second layer together into the mug press....