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Mug Printing
1ClickPrint mugs make for the perfect gift, promotional item or even treat for yourself. Our prices are the best on the web and yet we never sacrafic quality or service. Our mug printing results in a professional, durable finish that we are proud to put or name to.
A couple of mug printing technologies exist at the moment. Each playing to its own particular market area.
The first one to mention is the one that our customers are most likely to have in their cupboards but strangely enough, least likely to order. That is mug printing using silk screen technology. Often called screen printing. The mugs that most people have in their kitchen cupboards at home have generally been mass produced and have a nice, solid print on them in generally a couple of colours. The mugs themselves may be of any colour but are generally white where any soft colours or shades have been used. These are the sorts of mugs that would use silk screen mug printing. In a nut shell screen printing is fantastic for large volumes of mugs with the same design on and where the designs only use a few colours. The end result is consistent, durable and the colours can the matched exactly to a chosen colour in advance. Unfortanately the screens mentioned cost a significant amount of money to produce and a screen is required for each colour that appears on the mug. This means that for short run mug printing this method is often uneconomically expensive.
The other main method is transfer printing. This can either use sublimation paper or a specially transfer paper. The mug printing design is printed onto a sheet of special paper using either sublimaiton ink or traditional toner. This paper is then pressed onto mug at very high temperature and pressure (our press runs in excess of 200 degrees) so that the design is transferred to the mug. Sublimation printing requires the use of a specially coated mug where as transfer printing can use any hard, smooth surface. In sublimation printing the ink changed from a solid to a gas (sublimates) when heat is applied and then bonds with the mug as a solid. The finished result is a smooth feeling and tough print but the actual sublimation process is very sensitive to varying heat or pressure and so can give an uneven finish. Transfer printing suffers from fewer of the uneveness problems but the print can be felt on the mug. The transfer finish isn't considered a worse finish to the sublimation print but is detectable. Both of these methods are created using a digital print. This means that there is no physical set up costs and so low volume prints can be done affordably. It also means that exact colour matching isn't possible and higher volumes don't benefit from any great cost savings. Generally digital mug printing is chosen over silk screen mug printing for low volumes or full colour prints. Silk screen mug printing is chosen at very high volumes or if an exact colour is needed.
