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Run of 150 mugs in progress this morning.
Still need to get timings analysed, and do next run, as we had 3 people on it today and there were too many 5/10 minute breaks waiting for the previous batch in the oven. So, we'll do again with only 2 staff on it, and it should flow well.
We printed pretty tight on the presses, so not much size difference but printing tighter to the artwork edge, so less wasted/badly printed stock. Print quality more consistent all round though.
Will post again once i have confirmed timings, staffing etc, along with electric usage.
(This was a reply to another thread, but thought was good to copy/paste here to keep everything together)
We need to do more experimenting ... using a full size fan oven (with top and bottom heating elements)
With the fan on, we can do 24 mugs in about 20-25 minutes, but found that we started having problems with the exposed parts of the mugs (handle area) printing with the gassing inks flying around the oven. With the fan off, this problem is solved, but the mugs take 10 minutes longer.
Finding that the wraps don't always give enough pressure, so we get some blurry areas on the mugs.
On the whole much happier than using a bank of presses, but there's problem solving to sort through as with any new system.
Tried using a spare heat press temp controller and probe we had lying around, wired up just as a digital thermometer, but it doesn't seem accurate, so I don't know if it's not good, or just needs calibrating, and then it's finding something to calibrate it against that we know is correct.
On our mugs, which aren't a standard sublimation mugs - they're wider than a 10oz mug, so tighter in the silicone wraps, which are advertised as 11oz. Stilla few issues, but not as many as the 10oz mugs, and better overall than presses.
So, needing to sort out temperature readings, to nail the temp and timing of the process.
see the green wraps, we use them as well for this / left over from the mini 3d failure.....
do you put paper in-between the printed paper and green wrap ??
we didnt very first one, with just green wrap direct onto printed paper on mug - result, was a wasted green wrap, that had the ink imprint on it ;-(
We put a protective sheet between as some ink has gassed/bled onto the edges of the wraps close to the handle area, so we had some mugs getting vertical lines/marks close to the handle, but no problems with the transfer bleeding through the transfer paper onto the whole wrap.
Hi. Did your oven arrive and have you started using it? We tried three ovens at the start of our business and couldn't get any consistent results. The temperature level we couldn't keep the same so mugs came out under or oven done. If you're managing good results then please post back. Thanks. Olly
We were getting great results with the fan on, but this was blowing too much gassing ink around resulting in exposed areas of the mugs also getting 'printed' to varying degrees of not being white. Much more inconsistent results with the fan off, and 5-10 minutes longer needed. More testing needed to sort out problems.
Interesting. Are you placing the mugs face down (bottom on top)? I must admit I did find the perfect oven once but that was the dedicated sublimation mini oven 3D so could only hold 3-4 mugs at once. Perfect results but time to cook no different than mug press for all of them. Keep us up to date with oven antics!
