Mug Presses

Becky & Tom from Etsy shop SkylineUK have kindly donated their mug printing kit to the hackspace. Their kit includes:

• Two mug heat press machines (UKPress Blue Wave and PixMax)
• EPSON XP-215 printer with Continuous Ink Supply System (CISS) for sublimation ink
• spare (sublimation) mugs
• sublimation paper
• sublimation ink

This page is currently simply a summary of the info from the demo/workshop Tom gave us on the use of the kit. It is intended as a first reference guide to using the printer and presses in order to make beautiful custom mugs.

Brief description

The procedure is simple and quick. You have a design you want to print on a mug (it could be a photo, an inkscape design, a figure from your word document, etc). You print it in (sublimation ink) colour on sublimation paper using the EPSON XP-215 printer, making sure the size will fit on the mug. You turn the heater on the press machine. By the time it heats up (a min or so) your print should have dried and be ready to use. You wrap the printed side around the mug, fix it with Kapton tape, put the mug in the machine and press the button. Remove the mug when you hear the beep. Your mug is ready. Obviously this only works well with special sublimation mugs like these ones.

Detailed Instructions

Printer Connection & Calibration

• You can connect to the EPSON XP-215 printer either by usb or wireless.
• You should not need to calibrate the printer unless it has been recently moved (which would have changed the position of the printheads and the ink in the system). Calibration tool for printer is included in drivers for EPSON XP-215. Run the calibration client, which will involve printing calibration pages and informing the client of the worst printed bits in these printed pages. In each iteration you will have to enter the worst printed number from each numbered section. If after finishing the calibration you see wide strips of pale colour running down the printed calibration page, then there is likely too much ink in the system (because of a recent relocation of the printer). If so, try print a large mount of colour (e.g. large squares of different colours in a page). This should fix it.