DSF

So...heating just the base of the mug seems to do the trick - wow - brilliant! Here I was heating the whole mug..and the waiting for it to cool down again so when I put the transfer on it wouldn't smudge..
Live and learn, Live and learn...
Also it helps if you have a boxful or two of mugs to test with...
What a learning curve....

what are you heating the base of the mugs with?

You also need to get some heat into the top rim of the mug - the base has thermal mass and soaks up the heat whereas the top acts like a heat sink because of its surface area (ie the inside of the mug) and heat is lost.

if you can get something similar to this in Sao Paulo......

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Andrew-James-El ... +hot+plate

they are well worth the expenditure. Set it to the lowest setting and if your mugs are at a reasonable temperature already - ie not stone cold and or damp - does it get cold in SP? You can tape the transfers on first, then sit them on the hotplate. You can get 10 on at a time. Works a treat. Put them on the hot plate as you wrap them, wrap another 10 ready to go, after 5 minutes or so turn them over to stand on the rim for a few minutes and away you go. Put more on as you take them off. In an ideal world having two hotplates makes it even easier and quicker. All really depends on how quick you can get mugs through the press(es) or how many mugs you need to press in a session.

Arthur

I use the same or simular heat tray all the time, makes the job so much easier.

Bought one off eBay for the winter months. I'm working in a colder location now so this should remedy that potential problem.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/New-Andrew-Ja ... 2595ba213a

We have 4 mug presses, and most of our mugs are sold in sets of 4, so only have eight on the hot plate at any one time, and is quite a nice workflow going from hot plate and cascading through the 4 presses.

Once a full set of four is off the plate and in the presses, then the next set of cold mugs from the shelf is put on the plate, with the other 4 on the hot plate now warmed through in time for the next pressing batch.

We put the transfers on the mugs at when the next press in the cycle has 30 seconds on the clock remaining. Once mug 4 is in, there is 100 seconds spare until press one is complete, giving time to get the next set of cold mugs onto the hot plate, and cut the next 4 transfers from the print roll.

Hard to explain - hope it makes sense.

Hi All

We have 14 mug presses which takes 2 people to run (1 to wrap and 1 to print and pack) we simply couldn't heat the base and then wrap as the presses wouldn't have enough mugs!

We've found Xpres mugs have no problems at all when doing a print around the base, BUT, When printing lets say a TMT mug, we have a few problems. Don't know why this is the case! Any ideas?

Tom

Agree with Tom, I've been testing the Xpres mugs last couple of weeks and they're excellent, about to buy a load more in

cleverprintinguk;92917 wrote:Hi All

We have 14 mug presses which takes 2 people to run (1 to wrap and 1 to print and pack) we simply couldn't heat the base and then wrap as the presses wouldn't have enough mugs!

Impressed - how many mugs can you process an hour? (from shelf to box)

cleverprintinguk;92917 wrote:Hi All

We've found Xpres mugs have no problems at all when doing a print around the base, BUT, When printing lets say a TMT mug, we have a few problems. Don't know why this is the case! Any ideas?

Tom

I'd take a guess that the Xpress mugs have thinner bases - less thermal mass to heat up in the press. Do the Xpress mugs weigh less than the TMT mugs?

Arthur

AFAIR the Xpres mugs are made by Raja, though I haven't compared them side by side with Raja's own stock to see if they're the same mold.