Colour Laser Printer - anyone use one for Mug wraps ??

[mrs maggot]

Does anyone here print from a laser printer, or do you all use ink printers ?

I need a new printer for the business, and thought the lazer might be the way to go. I know i can get paper for it for hard surfaces - but will it print up on mugs ok ?

thanks

[bms]

Using the right paper you can print onto mugs, but the quality is nothing like the same as sublimation. The colour laser process sticks to the surface of the mug and isn't as glossy.

[jennywren]

Done both and sublimation is far better and the paper as bms said sticks, if you have a laser printer see if you can get a sample, that's what i did and it was a no for me, if you not got a laser printer then see if a friend can print it for you, that way you'll know yourself.

[JSR]

Some years back, there was a movement to develop sublimation toner for use in colour laser printers - this is different to just using regular toner and "Magic Touch" paper. The incentive behind this was to avoid being tied to a single supplier of desktop sublimation ink and, presumably, to avoid the extortionate "£1 per sheet" of Magic Touch style paper.

I don't know what happen to that development, but it didn't make it over here.

[bms]

avoid the extortionate "£1 per sheet" of Magic Touch style paper.

It's not that expensive - around half that price for TMT CPM papers.

[mrs maggot]

mmmm, ok then, looks like i will have 2 run 2 colour printers, i have an epson which uses trubrite ink which i use for transfer printing, but i think (if im right) i cant use that ink for printing hard surfaces ??

[JSR]

It's not that expensive - around half that price for TMT CPM papers.

Well it was some time ago that I looked into it (I have two colour laser printers standing idle). But the initial incentive to move to colour laser printing (of not being tied to a single supplier of expensive ink) is eradicated by the cost of the paper. Instead of costing 15p for the paper and 50p for Sawgrass ink, it costs 10p for the toner and 55p for the CPM paper. All you gain for your trouble is an inferior product at the same cost, so it's not a practical solution.

Did you ever hear about the sublimation toner? Some US websites claim to sell it.

[bms]

Did you ever hear about the sublimation toner? Some US websites claim to sell it.

I heard of something like this several years ago, but never got my head around it. Given we use heat to tansfer the ink from paper to substrate the laser toners have fuser units in them which have heat. So the heat of the fuser unit must do the same as the heat press which makes me wonder how it could work (the sublimation process will have been done, or part done, during the printing of the image to paper).

[mrs maggot]

martin, can you help me re the epson, will it work with the durabright ink work ?

[JSR]

I heard of something like this several years ago, but never got my head around it. Given we use heat to tansfer the ink from paper to substrate the laser toners have fuser units in them which have heat. So the heat of the fuser unit must do the same as the heat press which makes me wonder how it could work (the sublimation process will have been done, or part done, during the printing of the image to paper).

I initially had the same thoughts but, as I understand it, Sawgrass' patent for ink in desktop inkjet printers wasn't originally just a carte blanche "third party ink in printer" patent as we understand it today, it was a patent to protect the significant R&D that they were doing on a non-clogging encapsulation system that would allow sublimation ink to be used in printers with thermal printheads (like HP and Canon printers which were most popular at the time). The advent of affordable and prolific non-thermal piezo-printhead printers clearly meant that such research & development was no longer necessary.

However, with this in mind, it's not a stretch to think that the same encapsulation principle might be applied to toner particles and that, perhaps, this is where the sublimation toner development came from.