Ovens to Mug Presses...anyone done it?

[gazfocus]

I've posted on here before about issues with printing using ovens, and I keep coming back to thinking about going back to presses.

Don't get me wrong, I love printing with ovens. You can get so much closer to the handles, do full top to bottom prints without too much bother, but when you get mugs that aren't straight, man they're a pain.

We've tried Listawood (that in my opinion were the worst quality mug but the best print), Orca, Dino, Superglaze, Xpres' 11oz Production Grade Mugs and the only ones that are any good with a degree of reliability are the Superglaze mugs.

We have recently tried Xpres' 10oz mugs which are a much superior coating and print phenomenally but would be quite some process changing all of our products to 10oz.

So, seriously contemplating going back to mug presses to avoid issues with sides of mugs not being straight and just wondering what you guys all think.

[Justin]

We still do all of our mugs in the oven and get 100% consistency. I don't try and overload it though.

Still noly use Xpres XP5013 mugs. Tried some from Signzworld and they were fine also.

[gazfocus]

We still do all of our mugs in the oven and get 100% consistency. I don't try and overload it though.

Still noly use Xpres XP5013 mugs. Tried some from Signzworld and they were fine also.

Thanks for that Justin. I have been speaking to a few people and the general feeling is that 10oz mugs are much more consistent in general than 11oz. The issue we have is that we have around 350 designs that we sell online and it would mean changing all those over gradually and then the possibility of customers buying multiple designs and receiving both 10oz and 11oz.

One option we are looking at is making any new designs from now onwards on the XP5013's only and then figure out a way of moving everything over later on.

[garysub]

I think sometimes we worry about things like that much more than customers do!

I had the same worry as you......We switched from using 10oz to 11oz for some customers last year due to shortages of mugs (we didn't make a big thing of it as then people do complain!). We had been printing 10oz mugs since we started 6+ years ago. Not a single customer said anything about the difference. I'm not convinced anyone even noticed!

[UK Printed Mugs]

Another forum member and friend of mine has exactly the same 11oz issue. They need to use ovens for sheer quantity but have apparently overcome crappy edge issue by using heat shrink wrap at top and bottom of mug as well as wrap which has resolved issue. They probably do hundreds of mugs a day.

[gazfocus]

Another forum member and friend of mine has exactly the same 11oz issue. They need to use ovens for sheer quantity but have apparently overcome crappy edge issue by using heat shrink wrap at top and bottom of mug as well as wrap which has resolved issue. They probably do hundreds of mugs a day.

Yeah we are around a few hundred mugs a day which makes it super frustrating when we get issues. I think if we got enough presses to do 12 mugs a time they would keep up with the ovens but it’s still not ideal.

The shrink wrap idea is an interesting one. We tried shrink wraps on their own and had the same issue as with silicone wraps but hadn’t tried them both together.

[UK Printed Mugs]

Yes, two small strips I think under wrap.

[moocowstudios]

We have been playing around with various ways to overcome the issues at the top on bottoms with mugs in an oven. We have now settled on using shrink wrap to cover all the mug. Do not even heat it. Add the rubber wrap and let the oven do the shrinking. Getting 100% results.
Be interesting, as after a long wait, our tunnel oven should be arriving next week. So all the above may change.

[gazfocus]

We have been playing around with various ways to overcome the issues at the top on bottoms with mugs in an oven. We have now settled on using shrink wrap to cover all the mug. Do not even heat it. Add the rubber wrap and let the oven do the shrinking. Getting 100% results.
Be interesting, as after a long wait, our tunnel oven should be arriving next week. So all the above may change.

We actually tried shrink wrap but never tried the combination of shrink wrap and silicone wrap.

Do you still cut a hole in the shrink wrap for the mug handles?

[garysub]

Hi!

What tunnel oven have you bought (if you don't mind me asking)? The small one I bought off you wasn't much good so (like you) I sold it on.....I'm not complaining, I'm just wondering if you have managed to source something more reliable etc?

Thanks
Gary