Sublimation Mugs

[captainron19]

a little off the main topic of vinyl but looking for someone with some advice.

Years ago I was heavy into the mug making with dye sublimation but I slowly got out of it and my press went bad anyway. Now I am looking to get back into it 9especially since I am receiving a lot of local requests)

My question is...

As I am looking around for a new mug press I have heard a lot of people mention it is better to go with mug wraps but I have no experience with them. Has anyone used them and if so, what do you think of them. If I go with a new press it is most likely going to be a Knight but I wanted to hear input on the wraps.

I use to use an EPSON C88 for my sublimation printing in the past, but I am considering the Ricoh

 

[steve hernandez]

I do mug wraps now and then, the wraps seem to work fine. I have 4 wraps and have no problem doing 4 at a time. I kinda gave up on the sublimation, when I need something I just have a friend print it up for me.

 

[cajun312]

I've used the mug wraps before and they work good. I don't know what will happen first either my old C88 will die or if not in about three months I'll be out of ink. Sawgrass now controls all the sublimation inks for small format printers and I won't buy from them.
I heard the Ricoh uses lots of ink doing purges every so many hours.

 

[captainron19]

I heard the Ricoh uses lots of ink doing purges every so many hours.

That is the one negative thing I have heard. Most people say that the best think to do is to leave the printer on 24/7 so the ink will not dry in the heads. But obviously leaving it on so it doesn't dry means that the printer is going to cycle through a cleaning on its own (how often I don't know).

The one thing that attracted me to that brand is that it utilizes the gel sublimation ink so the printing goes much farther. Guess I will have to search around a bit more for some more answers.

 

[captainron19]

Sawgrass now controls all the sublimation inks for small format printers and I won't buy from them.

I did check Conde and for some reason the cartridges for the Ricoh are cheaper than the Epson. $60 ea per color for the Ricoh (29 ml) and $85 for a 13ml Sublijet cartridge for the Epson c88 and also saw $74 for an 18ml ArTainium UV+ that I hear is more resistant to UV Light.