DSF

bms;53877 wrote:Ah, but the link charges it at 20%!

Well as long as HMRC gets it I am sure they wont complain lol

bms;53878 wrote:£19 for a full set

That was a very quick change Martin. Good competitive marketing techniques.

woow! last night was £49.99

i hope other blanks go down as much as your ink!

The prices of these hadn't changed for a couple of years! We sell mainly cartridges and little bulk ink so it seemed reasonable to drop the price now we get the ink cheaper than before and this hadn't come up on my radar as an issue.

I've been curious about these for ages (I wonder if they'd work in a Brother printer... ), but I've always hesitated because I don't know what people do about food hygiene and the FSA. Do you have to have certificates, or do your printing under strict health & safety/hygiene guidelines?

Surely you can't just buy "unknown brand ink and paper" and flog them without being food certified or something?

JSR;53924 wrote:I've been curious about these for ages (I wonder if they'd work in a Brother printer... ), but I've always hesitated because I don't know what people do about food hygiene and the FSA. Do you have to have certificates, or do your printing under strict health & safety/hygiene guidelines?

Surely you can't just buy "unknown brand ink and paper" and flog them without being food certified or something?

The inks are certified food safe and the papers are edible. After that it is the printers responsibility for abiding by food hygiene requirements.

bms;53933 wrote:The inks are certified food safe and the papers are edible. After that it is the printers responsibility for abiding by food hygiene requirements.

That's what I thought. I wonder how many users of this ink are properly checked and certified, and how many are just hobbyists that don't bother? Given the way many dye-subbers appear to look for the cheapest option, there must be many users of edible inks that do the same and, thus, don't bother even looking up what the food hygiene requirements are. I've not seen any supplier of edible inks even make people aware that there are such requirements.

The thought that children will eat the end product makes me shiver.

Well I wondered if the reason the recommended printer was the Canon was because it heats the ink up to transfer it - you know the idea of heating liquids to kill bugs comes to mind. But I suppose food hygiene is an area where everyone has to eat and they think that their hygiene is good enough for everyone else. How many of us keep tomato ketchup and other condiments once opened in the fridge religiously? With food hygiene there are best practices and then practices that border on the edge of safety and then some that you do not want to know about.

WorthDoingRight;53977 wrote:Well I wondered if the reason the recommended printer was the Canon was because it heats the ink up to transfer it - you know the idea of heating liquids to kill bugs comes to mind.

Even if that was possible (I doubt it with these printers), it wouldn't heat up the rice paper. Nor would it keep your fingers and work surfaces clean.

WorthDoingRight;53977 wrote:But I suppose food hygiene is an area where everyone has to eat and they think that their hygiene is good enough for everyone else. How many of us keep tomato ketchup and other condiments once opened in the fridge religiously? With food hygiene there are best practices and then practices that border on the edge of safety and then some that you do not want to know about.

Perhaps but, at the end of the day, if you're selling an edible product to someone else, you owe it to them to abide by the rules. If you choose, in the privacy of your own home, to dab your fingers in your ketchup, then that's your own private matter. But putting your grubby fingers all over a printed sheet of rice paper that came from gawd knows where covered in ink that has an unknown history, and then selling it on... well, that's another matter entirely.

I'm sure we all know many people who got into the dye-sub businesses cutting every corner possible and using the cheapest equipment possible. Transfer those corner-cutting cheapskate practices to producing/selling an edible product, and it just makes me cringe.

WorthDoingRight;53977 wrote:Well I wondered if the reason the recommended printer was the Canon was because it heats the ink up to transfer it - you know the idea of heating liquids to kill bugs comes to mind. But I suppose food hygiene is an area where everyone has to eat and they think that their hygiene is good enough for everyone else. How many of us keep tomato ketchup and other condiments once opened in the fridge religiously? With food hygiene there are best practices and then practices that border on the edge of safety and then some that you do not want to know about.

You can use a variety of printers. Brother, Canon and Epson have been used in the past as you can get virgin empty cartridges as opposed to recycled HP, Lexmark, Dell etc cartridges which would get contaminated.

Canon printers have been very stable and a preferred choice - cartridges easily available as it's a popular printer and just works. Brother might be a good choice but you're into the refillable end of the market whereas lots a people prefer replace cartridges and print.