Mug quality question xpres - just a bad box? (lots of wonky wobbly mugs)

[gazfocus]

Would be happy to print one of your designs onto a mug for comparison, if that would be of any interest? We use oven/wraps and XP5013.

Thanks Justin, the issue is we can print 20+ of the same design and just have two bad. We can even print 100 and have none go bad one day, then 10 bad the next.

Doesn’t make any logical sense other than it being poor mugs.

Will inbox you though

[Justin]

Understood, no problem at all

[GoonerGary]

Another update...So I'm not convinced that printing 3up on A4 has really helped (although too early to tell really), however, we've had more bad mugs today, but now the blurring is not consistent and sometimes it's on the top of the mug, others at the bottom.

I have noticed that wherever there's blurring there's a slight dip/warp in the mug but I'm really suprised the silicone wraps can't cope with such small dips.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]6874[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=CONFIG]6875[/ATTACH]

Is this batch from a pallet of Xpres mugs? I'm going through boxes of previously discarded Xpres mugs from 2 years ago...trying to save some money and I'm getting frequent blurred patches.

[gazfocus]

Is this batch from a pallet of Xpres mugs? I'm going through boxes of previously discarded Xpres mugs from 2 years ago...trying to save some money and I'm getting frequent blurred patches.

Hey Gary, yes these were from a batch on a pallet (it was a batch of 10 pallets we bought pre Christmas).

We've come to the conclusion that the issue is caused by a mix of dips in the mugs, trupix paper being too stiff to get in the dips, and the green chinese wraps not being tight enough. We've since changed to the Schulze wraps from xpres and changed back to srace paper and have almost completely eliminated the issue.

[GoonerGary]

I have been using S Race recently because it comes through one of my printers without smudging ink. It is 10gsm heavier than Trupix though. And I will get still get the same issue.

Ink expert subli-versa sits in-between the two at 115gsm and their lite paper is 100 gsm.

I have a large batch of blue wraps for 10oz mugs, which are a 1cm shorter than those cheap green ones, so they are nice and tight for 10oz mugs. The smudges still exist, so as I said at the start, te mug is usually the culprit.

I am going to try some Neil Bros mugs again fairly soon, so will report back to see how they perform.

11oz mugs will avoid all of these headaches though.

[Paulprints]

Question about percentage of rejected mugs -

I thought I'd post here instead of starting a new thread as theres lots of xp5013 users here.

I'm currently talking to xpres about levels of rejected mugs.

I worked out that since I swapped to xp5013 in my last 110 boxes ordered (I think I've used about 105 of them) I have just over 16 boxes of rejects - this is all down to pinholes, chips, insanely wonky ones, breakages, weird marks under the coating etc(none down to the straightness printing issues as I use a press).

In a sample of 20 boxes I took a ended up with just under 6 rejects per box of 36 - Does that seem high to any regular user of these mugs?

I'm not overly fussy but my mug designs have a fair amount of white space so some big marks I cant print over and everytime I push using small chips on the bottom I get mixed reviews and in some cases having to resend new mugs to customers.

I just wanted to get an idea of the sort of percentage of rejects are typical for all of you and also what you do with your rejects ie charities etc

Cheers, Paul

[Justin]

We're very fussy over the quality of our mugs, hence we have only ever used the XP5013. I can hand on heart say that I have 1 reject sat here that has a very small coating issue. Other than that I can't remember the last reject.

We have discussed (probably in this thread) that when this mug is bought in pallet quantitites the quality is different. I only every buy in boxes. There was also some discussion of a supplier change but I don't think this was every confirmed?

If I was getting that many rejects or even the occasional reject I wouldn't hesitate to change my suppliers.

[UK Printed Mugs]

Same as Justin. We only buy in boxes (not pallets) and literally had one reject today (coincidence) and again probably been a good three months since the last one. Standards here VERY high so we don't let anything get through if not right. I do wonder if pallets use different stock.

[Paulprints]

Thanks for the replies. I only use boxes as well unless I'm getting them from some other part of their warehouse. Over the next day or two I'll post a few pics of my rejects to get your thoughts - I love the coating so I am not really wanting to change but working through a bad box or two gets really frustrating. My mugs are heavily personalised so a small chip or indent on the bottom next to names often results in an email asking for another one to be sent. Do you guys use mugs with say marks on the handles or with small pin holes where printing doesn't cover?

[Paulprints]

Here's a few pictures of typical rejects where quite small imperfections made them unusable for me. Most are pinholes and weird dent/chips
[ATTACH=CONFIG]6926[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]6928[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]6929[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]6930[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]6927[/ATTACH]

Do these look like typical small things that most of you would just use or I am being too picky?

here's an example of a picture a customer sent me asking for a new mug to be sent it was a very small chip in the bottom of this one

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I am talking to Xpres about these issues just now and hope to get it resolved one way or another this week.

Cheers, Paul