Does anyone else ever feel like giving up sometimes?

[gazfocus]

Just under a year ago, we decided to make the move away from mug presses to using convection ovens. We purchased a single BC01 and were really pleased with the results so then purchased another two.

We generally get really good results out of these ovens and I would say the prints are much crisper than coming out of mug presses, however, we regularly experience issues where mugs all of a sudden don’t print properly, and it’s always in the same area. We usually resolve these issues by replacing mug wraps but it’s such a pain trying to work out which wraps need replacing and usually end up with a couple of boxes worth of mugs going in the bin before we solve the issue completely.

Getting really fed up now and contemplating going back to mug presses.

[UK Printed Mugs]

Things can be really frustrating in this game. We do a lot of fine art printing and when printing onto paper then you know what you get send to the printer will always come out the same high quality. But with sublimation (95% of our business) then indeed getting accurate results everytime is not easy and we factor in at least 5% being rubbish. As for printing mugs then we went from mug presses to an oven and back to mug presses! Mainly because the results were very similar and with a bank of mug presses we can get mugs printed much quicker as you can start pressing mugs whilst still wrapping the others waiting to go in. We would though look to invest in a mug tunnel oven at some point in the next 12 months based purely on mass production but being on a conveyor you can wrap and cook others at the same time. So grab a coffee and perhaps think about having a mug press or two as well as the oven whilst you make a business decision. Olly

[Fletcher]

You ain't the only one to get stressed lol. Last year the laptop got launched. I regretted it instantly, But the damage was done. But I always back up the laptops regularly, so not much was lost. I had to then rush get a new laptop which was more stress, and explain to the girls it broke so we was down to one for a few days. Which made jobs a little tricky for a few days.
I swear the older i get the shorter my temper gets. (I'm only 40 now)
But we couldn't deal with the ovens as nothing ever came out the same. So we stuck with mug presses.

[gazfocus]

Things can be really frustrating in this game. We do a lot of fine art printing and when printing onto paper then you know what you get send to the printer will always come out the same high quality. But with sublimation (95% of our business) then indeed getting accurate results everytime is not easy and we factor in at least 5% being rubbish. As for printing mugs then we went from mug presses to an oven and back to mug presses! Mainly because the results were very similar and with a bank of mug presses we can get mugs printed much quicker as you can start pressing mugs whilst still wrapping the others waiting to go in. We would though look to invest in a mug tunnel oven at some point in the next 12 months based purely on mass production but being on a conveyor you can wrap and cook others at the same time. So grab a coffee and perhaps think about having a mug press or two as well as the oven whilst you make a business decision. Olly

Agreed. We do a lot of digital printing and unless there’s a serious issue with our press, we know that what is going to be printed is what we expect.

We have looked at the tunnel ovens as well (did think about trying our conveyor dryer haha), but you’re still left with using silicone wraps (unless you factor in the cost of ceramic wraps), which I think is the single biggest downfall of doing mugs in ovens.

[gazfocus]

You ain't the only one to get stressed lol. Last year the laptop got launched. I regretted it instantly, But the damage was done. But I always back up the laptops regularly, so not much was lost. I had to then rush get a new laptop which was more stress, and explain to the girls it broke so we was down to one for a few days. Which made jobs a little tricky for a few days.
I swear the older i get the shorter my temper gets. (I'm only 40 now)
But we couldn't deal with the ovens as nothing ever came out the same. So we stuck with mug presses.

I’m so glad it’s not just me haha.

Generally we’ve found ovens to be better in terms of quality of print and consistency (especially consistently bad when they go wrong haha).

[pw66]

Every morning at about 8:15 am.

[gazfocus]

Every morning at about 8:15 am.

Haha. I can honestly say I generally love going to work but this past week has been my worst week so far.

[socialgiraffe]

If ever I am having a shite day or if something is going wrong I will do one of two things...

1/ Go home and forget about it until the morning when I tackle it with fresh eyes.

2/ Do something else that I have had on the back burner to "try out". For example my post about printing white on a glass and making dishwasher safe was born out of my Versacam not behaving itself. I tried to sort the issue but it got worse. Thought to myself "screw it" and did something else. End result is that I now know how to print glassware with white that is dishwasher safe and my Versacam issue was solved the next morning.

[gazfocus]

If ever I am having a shite day or if something is going wrong I will do one of two things...

1/ Go home and forget about it until the morning when I tackle it with fresh eyes.

2/ Do something else that I have had on the back burner to "try out". For example my post about printing white on a glass and making dishwasher safe was born out of my Versacam not behaving itself. I tried to sort the issue but it got worse. Thought to myself "screw it" and did something else. End result is that I now know how to print glassware with white that is dishwasher safe and my Versacam issue was solved the next morning.

That’s an excellent way to approach it.

[garysub]

Hi

Just stumbled upon this thread.....I've a "mecolour" conveyor oven for sale if anyone is interested. I can't vouch for how good or not it is as I bought it last year as a backup for my "main ovens" but have never got around to having the 3 phase socket I need to power it and I'm now moving unit and changing from ovens to a large mug pressing system. It is now surplus to requirements. It's listed on EBay but happy to discuss the sale here on a PM.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/184706932865

Thanks
Gary