Light patches at the bottom and top corners

[viccar]

Which press did you buy?

[bms]

Right, after another day spent wasting mugs I have taken a drastic step and gone back to zero.

Temp : 185 degrees celcius
Time : 180s
Pressure : Just enough so that you can't move the mug when press is closed
Notes : Pre-heated base of mug on a radiator for ten minutes until hot
Results : Clear pattern of the heating element can be seen across the top and bottom left, faint heating element pattern over the rest of the mug

I think you need more pressure. Increase pressure so heat blanket starts to fold over the top and bottom of
the mug. Your mugs might be tapering hence the mug is tight but the blanket isn't tight over the entire printing surface. Straighter mugs might help, but certainly getting the blanket tight over the full surface is critical.

[Joohlyauk]

You must be really frustrated. I wasted about 8 mugs and was miffed. 200 degrees and 4 minutes worked for me. Not good something has melted on your press though, deffo sounds a bit dodgy. Hope Coralgraph give you a better replacement or money back.

[Joohlyauk]

Also, that last mug looked like one of my failures where I'd printed the paper on the wrong side

[purpledragon]

Its the press thats at fault .............. there i said it
Im amazed at all these remidies coming out , preheat the bottom , less pressure more pressure up temp down temp i bet your heads spinning try preheatin g mugs when you have 500 to do or a thousand !!!
You have to consider a few things
is this a hobby or a business
is your equiptment up to the job
are you using the correct papers/inks
If its a business then you really need to consider the quality of your equipment xmas is on its way and orders will start pouring in do you really want break downs or problems like these ? it may cost more in future but its worth buying top notch stuff its said many times here buy cheap buy twice . My mug press cost £700 when i bought it 3 or 4 years ago ive only changed one blanket on it i get top to bottom printing and i have to be honest the pressure i use varys greatly mainly becasuse i use differnt size mugs and dont always readjust from the last job its rare i have problems due to pressure .
the paper and inks used is a contrversial point i would normally say use trupix paper and sawgrass inks as personally i think they are the best but if your equiptment is good then cheaper paper and differnt inks can often give perfectly adaquate results .
Is there someone local to you who presses mugs successfully ? could you go and see what equiptment they use perhaps even make a print and test it on their equiptment?
My feeling is if you have tried altering pressures and temps then its the press thats at fault.
Brett

[scrappydoo]

I am know at the realisation that yes its the press that is the problem. I am starting to get concerned with Coralgraph as it is now 10:30 and still no reply to my email, not even a holding email to let me know they have received and are looking into it.

The main thing that is annoying me is the amount of mugs I have wasted to finally come to the realisation that the press is the problem, that plus the ink, paper and a day of my time.

Lets hope I get a response soon and the guys at Coralgraph can make the situation right.

[scrappydoo]

After still no update hours later I have made some progress. I have replaced the pressure adjustment bolt with something a bit sturdier and with a larger diameter allowing me to fine tune the pressure a bit more. The original plastic one melted when I first turned the press on due to poor design so I have nothing to lose!

With more pressure, as suggested by BMS, I am now able to press acceptable mugs. I say acceptable as sometimes I am getting a bit of blow out on the edges, looks like the colours have smudged out slightly.

Any idea what I should be tweaking to get rid of that effect? It is only occasionally it happens so I am assuming its a slight adjustment I will need to make.

Still seriously wound up that it took 40+ mugs and some hardware modifications to get this press to produce even half decent mugs.

[NASH]

overcooking (blow out) is the problem here

[scrappydoo]

More likely to be fixed by less heat or less time?

[Andrew]

Its the press thats at fault .............. there i said it
Im amazed at all these remidies coming out , preheat the bottom , less pressure more pressure up temp down temp i bet your heads spinning try preheatin g mugs when you have 500 to do or a thousand !!!
You have to consider a few things
is this a hobby or a business
is your equiptment up to the job
are you using the correct papers/inks

It's likely it is the press but often many of the problems can be lessened through trial and error. I have a Coralgraph press we bought to see if it was any good. It's crap in all honesty compared to our main presses but we still find a way to use it. It can't print all designs but we could manage to get a print the the OP is trying to get done to a decent standard. Not sure of the exact press OP has but I have seen many of the cheaper presses and quite often they do not close onto the mug evenly. Additional pressure helps where a press is like this. The only thing that cannot be overcome is the blanket not heating evenly which is a route we haven't been down yet with the OP.

On a side note regarding price, we originally had to double head presses that cost over £1k each. These were great and a couple of years ago we sent them off to be re-conditioned. This cost £600 for the 2. Came back into us all shiny but struggled to get any decents prints and soon enough put them in the bin. Elements were supposed to be better than before and even having a couple of replacements this still did not cure the prints. I would go for reccomendation over cost these days after that.