Coffee Mug Printing for Personal Gifts and Promoting Your Business
Coffee mug printing is easy to carry out with the correct equipment and printing technique, and mugs printed using your company logo are excellent items for promoting your business. They also make great personal gifts, such as for an anniversary or birthday, when printed with the recipients name, appropriate date and perhaps even a personal message.
Take a wedding anniversary, for example. The highlighted anniversaries of weddings are generally annual up to 15 years and then five-yearly. Gifts are generally given according to the anniversary, and while everybody knows that the 15th wedding anniversary is celebrated by a gift of crystal, what about the 16th - or any up to the 20th (China)?
Between 16 and 19 years, a gift of a beautiful printed mug, with the names of the couple and their wedding date would be more than welcome, and a very imaginative gift. The same is true of any unnamed anniversary year after the 20th that does not end in zero or 5. Youu can have a mug printed to commemorate every notable occasion in your life or the lives of your children: a graduation, birthday, engagement or christening. If you feel it insufficient, the mug itself need not be the only gift you offer and you can back it up with a cash gift or something else - perhaps a full coffee set embellished with the dates and names involved.
Coffee mug printing is a totally different process to the traditional form of printing you may be familiar with, and involves none of the impact of a traditional printing press. In fact, one process commonly used is known as sublimation printing, a process initially developed to print synthetic fibers, particularly polyester t-shirts and other garments. In order to use this technique using mugs and other shaped items, the mug or item is first coated with a thin layer of polyester resin that is then baked in an oven to make it secure and resistant to washing and handling, whetehr by hand or in a dishwasher.
A special type of paper, much the same as photographic paper, is printed with the desired image or design using ink jet cartridges filled with vapor phase transfer, or sublimation dyes. Sublimation is the process whereby a solid changes from the solid to the vapor state without first becoming a liquid. The mug is then wrapped with the printed paper, after which one of two things can be done: either secure the printed paper tight against the mug and then place in an oven at a specified temperature for a specific time period, or secure en electrically heated jacket around the printed mug for a set time period.
The dye undergoes sublimation onto the coating, faithfully transferring the pattern or text, and once it cools it is set and you have a printed mug. The final quality of the mug and its image is dependent on a number of factors, namely: the quality of the paper, the printing, the polyester coating, the quality of the sublimation dyes used, the heating time and the skill of the person carrying out the work. Although you could do it yourself, the equipment is expensive and like any other printing process, you are best to have it carried out professionally.
Once you understand how the process works, it should be a simple matter for you to see that any surface can be printed, assuming it is coated with a polyester resin solution first, and that polyester garments can also be printed that way without the need for a polyester coating. However, other printing techniques are less expensive, and sublimation printing is generally used only when necessary. You cannot print ceramic mugs in a normal printing press, of course, but you can pad print an screen print them.
Nevertheless, if you want to reproduce a photograph, such as your own or that of your loved one, then it would have to be ink-jet printed on photo-paper in order to achieve the definition and faithfulness to the color. By placing the paper directly on the surface of mug with a special receptive coating or to any other suitable article, the image can then be transferred to the article. That image will be as resistant to washing as the coating is because sublimation, or vapor phase transfer, tend to be fast to water contact and also have reasonably good light-fastness.
You can use printed coffee mugs for many purposes, and in addition to the anniversary gifts discussed above, they are also useful gifts for promotional events. Not only can they be given to prestigious clients as boxed sets, but also used for the coffee dispensed during your promotion, and the recipients informed that they may keep their mugs and take them away with them.
Due to the nature of the printing process, the sublimation dye coffee mug printing technique is able to print both full solid wrap-around block colors or individual names and logos. They are generally safe to use with dishwashers and microwaves, and you can have your own artwork applied to your work. Be unique, and offer a unique gift of a printed coffee mug to your own design.
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More information on coffee mug printing can be found on http://www.customyourshirt.com/mugs-printing-pg-Mugs.html where you will also find out how to sell your own printed t-shirt designs from your own t-shirt store online.
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