Discuss the various aspects of heat press technology. Transfer paper, inks, plastisol transfers, vinyl cutters, printers, commercial usage, durability, suppliers, etc.
Who here does mugs? Let me see your mug shots. Don't be shy, photos or a video on how they're done. It would all be good. Looking to get into that also.
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Who here does mugs? Let me see your mug shots. Don't be shy, photos or a video on how they're done. It would all be good. Looking to get into that also.
I started doing mugs late last year, and got very discouraged due to the very high rate of mugs not coming out right. I was using a laser printer, and at first my oven, later I bought a mug press, but still I just kept ruining mugs.
Still have a unopened box of mugs upstairs, one of these days I will give it another try.
I do mugs, diffrence between laser and sublimation is my laser has very good output and still vibrant in color up to now. while my sublimation is faded the color. This are wash and dry in dishwasher a couple time. all think in laser if you scratch it it will take the paint out and has two process you need to have oven to do it.
Done a little over a hundred mugs with Dye-Sub, haven't had very many problems except at the start.
We started off with just a single mug wrap and doing a few in the oven at home to pitch to businesses. We had quite a bit of interest, so we bought a mug press from Coastal (Coastal's own brand press) and secured a few orders. We tried some of the settings from the manual and did half a dozen. They came out looking kinda crappy, had fading and what not. I contacted Coastal and the tech there gave me their suggested way of doing it. The suggested way was nowhere near what the book said, but I tried it and have done many without issue now.
I haven't earned back the money from the press quite yet (but I will by the end of this month). We bought the press beginning of April and received it on the 10th. We've been selling to local retailers at a wholesale price, so we haven't been getting as much markup as we would selling to customers direct ($6-$9 vs $16-20). Hopefully the businesses we sold to will have "turned over" their mugs and we'll be able to sell again to them in a few days.
I hear buying multiple wraps and ovening in bulk works good, but I don't have the space to set an oven up in our shop. As far as wash testing the sublimation, only washed the mugs in our shop a few times and haven't had any problems yet!
I have 2 Geo. Knight K3's. I did 101 mugs last week and only ruined 1. Right now for mug sublimation I am using a little C88 with Artanium inks. Beautiful color, no problems. I think one of the main things is making sure the paper is tight, no wrinkles, hold teflon sheet tight when putting into the press. Press should be snug but not overly tight. I drop the mug into a bucket of cold water after removal from the press, remove from water in about a minute, take paper off, perfect mug!
I got to things here, so read your quotes. Thanks.
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We've been selling to local retailers at a wholesale price, so we haven't been getting as much markup as we would selling to customers direct ($6-$9 vs $16-20). Hopefully the businesses we sold to will have "turned over" their mugs and we'll be able to sell again to them in a few days.
I hear buying multiple wraps and ovening in bulk works good, but I don't have the space to set an oven up in our shop. As far as wash testing the sublimation, only washed the mugs in our shop a few times and haven't had any problems yet!
The press is not all you need? You need an oven too? I was thinking of pricing the mugs at $10 - $15 each, is that to low? What do you pay for the mugs?
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I have 2 Geo. Knight K3's. I did 101 mugs last week and only ruined 1. Right now for mug sublimation I am using a little C88 with Artanium inks. Beautiful color, no problems. I think one of the main things is making sure the paper is tight, no wrinkles, hold teflon sheet tight when putting into the press. Press should be snug but not overly tight. I drop the mug into a bucket of cold water after removal from the press, remove from water in about a minute, take paper off, perfect mug!
Do you glaze your mugs? Will that ink, Artanium, work on tees too?
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You use artanium ink on polyester material. You can use a press or a oven to Sublimate mugs. Apress does 1 at a time. If you buy mug raps you can do more at 1 time in a oven. I have made mugs in a toater oven and my home oven. good luck. I have never glazed mugs with the sublimation process. ...JB
I do laser mugs with the hard surface paper from Magic Touch. It's a good product and holds up in the dishwasher. It is durable after it's glazed. I use an oven to do that. It can be scratched, but a fair amount of force is required. A mug press it better than wraps with this paper. Be sure to place an application pad or some smooth, non textured cloth between the teflon sheet and the transfer. It seems that laser transfers are affected by the texture in the teflon sheet and that sometimes leaves a pattern in the image.
Laser mugs with Magic Touch paper don't require a special mug. A .50 cent 11 oz mug is just fine. I suggest printing with the Oki 5500 or comparable printer. Check with colorstarink.com if you have any questions about Magic Touch papers. I'm not trying to advertise for anyone, but they've helped me with a bunch of orders
The press is not all you need? You need an oven too? I was thinking of pricing the mugs at $10 - $15 each, is that to low? What do you pay for the mugs?
There are two methods to sublimate a mug with dye sublimation (no how the laser transfers work).
The oven approach, whereby you buy mug wraps (think they're like $30 each), heat your oven up to around 400 degrees, and toss the mugs in the oven to bake for awhile. I was pointing out that you can do a dozen at a time like this and others have had great success. We used our household oven and a single mug wrap to make a few to pitches to businesses, we found quite a bit of interest, so we bought the press to speed up production and do the work in our shop.
The other method is a mug press ($450 or thereabouts), where you put the mug in and heat it up individually. The press doesn't take up much space, and the method we use, we generally have about 3-4 minutes of labor.
Blank mugs range from $1.50 to $8 depending on fanciness. We primarily sold plain 11 ounce mugs (cost us ~$1.50 each) and 15 ounce mugs (cost us ~$2.00 each). $10-$15 is an ok price, depends on your market. If you're taking someone's photo and putting it on a mug, you'll want to go $15-$20. If you're supplying to a retailer, standard is 2-2.5 markup, in which case you have to go lower so that they achieve a reasonable amount of markup (very few would pay $30 for a mug).
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Originally Posted by Buechee
Do you glaze your mugs? Will that ink, Artanium, work on tees too?
No glazing involved as long as you're buying a sublimation blank. I believe sublimation mugs have a special coating already applied to them that entraps and holds the ink. Sublimation requires special ink and paper, when the ink is heated up to a certain temperature, it turns into a gas, and removes from the paper and transfers to your product.
Sublimation ink does not bind on cotton, it will wash out. It will however bind to polyester, so if you have a white 100% polyester shirt, you can use artainium to sublimate an image onto it. If you have 50/50 blend, I hear you get kind of a washed out effect after the first wash. There is no white sublimation ink, so if you switch to a colored shirt, try to stick with light shirts, as the natural color of the shirt will blend in with what you're sublimating. I haven't played around with sublimating shirts myself though since we have our own DTG machine. You can make other neat things with sublimation too though (puzzles, plaques, mouse pads, name badges, etc). It was one of the best investments I made for around $700 at one of the shows.
Last edited by joeshaul; May 3rd, 2008 at 11:54 AM.
Reason: forgot to comment on pricing
I can't change my inks. I do cheap tees with the ink I have. So I need to stick with the pigment ink. Can I do the mugs with the set-up I have now using dura bright ink?
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I don't think so. You need sublimation or laser. C88/C120's are pretty cheap, so look into getting another one. Besides the expense of the mug press, you'll need about $400 to start doing mugs.
Mugs 
