New to printing on glass chopping boards - ink bleed?

[CoastalJJ]

Hello everyone,
This is our first post since getting an Epson printer and heat press. All has been well, and our coaster printing and pressing has worked well. We've just printed our second glass chopping board and noticed a strange 'bleed' type effect on the board. It's not easily visible in a photo of the board, but we salvaged the sublimation paper from the bin, and you can see the effect on this too.

It definitely wasn't on the paper before printing, as we would have noticed it, but was on the board and the paper after heat pressing.

It might be something to do with the heat level and/or the pressure, but just wondered if some of the folks on here, who are way more experienced in this than us, might have an idea.

Many thanks in advance.

John.

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[UK Printed Mugs]

Pressure seems to be issue i am sure. Either tighten up or add rubber mat on lower platen to elevate.

[CoastalJJ]

Pressure seems to be issue i am sure. Either tighten up or add rubber mat on lower platen to elevate.

Many thanks indeed for the quick response. We are using a light pressure as advised, but we may well try a stronger pressure. Our press does have a thick surface on the lower platen already though.

What we did realise was that we had printed 12 coasters just prior to printing the chopping board, and the cork coasters did seem to produce some water droplets, we presume out of the cork itself. Could that have added moisture that created the bleed?

Best Wishes

John.

[UK Printed Mugs]

Hi John. Could of but we use quite firm pressure with glass (obviously glass lying on top of the paper) rather than light. We do 190c for 3min 30s.

[CoastalJJ]

Many thanks. We might have to experiment a bit more, as the recommended settings for us are 200c at 300 seconds on light pressure. Interestingly we pressed two boards prior to the faulty one and they were ok. The faulty board images was pressed after the coasters. What will now is to print the image, leaving it for 24 hours and then try the press again. We have gone back to the supplier as well to ask them for ideas. We have seen this issue before on boards we ordered from a white label drop shipper who used to produce them for us. We stopped using them because of this very issue.

Best Regards

John.