Printed mugs

You can see them practically everywhere today. Ideal both as a gift for loved ones and as an advertisement for your business.

Printed mugs are a combination of a gadget and a practical thing. After all, most of us like to drink our morning tea or coffee just from mugs. Precisely because of their practicality, the recipients of mugs will be satisfied, despite the fact that there is an advertisement of your company on them. In this case, few will complain.

But how are printed mugs made? There are many ways to produce them, such as firing them in an oven, or even sandblasting the prints into the structure of the mug itself. This produces prints gouged into the surface. However, the most popular form is sublimation printing of mugs. For this type of production you need 3 things:

  • Special cup with polymer coating
  • Press for warming the mugs
  • Printing done on sublimation paper

It may seem simple in theory, but the road to making the perfect mug is winding and bumpy, like a highway in a small municipality. The first and very important step is to prepare the design. It must be the right size and resolution, so that it fits perfectly on our mug, and is properly sharp and saturated after warming. Our model in this tutorial was the Hulk, which we prepared in connection with the release of the new Avengers.

Once the design is ready (remember to mirror invert it in the program, otherwise all the text will be inverted and unreadable) we can quietly print it on the sublimation printer, with the sublimation paper already loaded. While the printer is doing battle, we will prepare the empty cups and turn on the press.

Once our sheet is printed, we can cut up the individual pieces and carefully apply them to the surfaces of the previously prepared mugs. The paper must fit tightly to the mug, otherwise the print will look like modern art, which is something we would all prefer to avoid 🙂 You will probably notice that the color of the design is completely different from what you saw on the computer screen. Rest assured, everything is fine. After warming up the design on the mug, the colors will return to their original form.

Once our mugs are prepared and the press is heated to the manufacturer’s specified temperature, we carefully insert the mug into the heating chamber (so as not to undermine the attached paper anywhere) and tighten the clamp. At this point, the polymer surface of the mug, will accept ink from the paper by sublimation. The ink will turn into a gas bypassing the liquid state and “imprint” into the mug.

Once the machine announces to us the end of the printing dipping process, we come to a very important moment. We need to take the mug out as quickly as possible and very carefully and as quickly as possible remove the sublimation paper from it.

Then I repeat the above steps as many times as we want to eventually get mugs. Arranged side by side, the army of Hulks, looks excellent.

Sublimation printed mugs are highly resistant to abrasion and washing. They will sooner end their life breaking on the floor than fade or rub off. Of course, we advise against wiping them with sandpaper, the above only occurs with normal use of the mugs 😉

As you may have noticed, we did the printing on the white mug, but is it possible to do sublimation printing on mugs in other colors? Special mugs with a frame have been created for this purpose. The mug is produced in an already predetermined color, and only the frame with the applied polymer is left. The design should be prepared in such a way that it blends in with the surrounding background. In this way, it is also possible to print black mugs.

The unquestionable advantage of mugs with sublimation printing is the low cost of manufacturing the mug, and, above all, the possibility of production from one piece. So it is as I wrote at the beginning. They will work well both as an advertising gadget and as a gift for loved ones.

Mega mugs and beer mugs

We use exactly the same printing technique to make 450 ml mega mugs and beer mugs. We make them starting from one piece!

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