Sublimation and Laser Mugs 101

Creating personalized mugs is always a fun, great idea for friends, family and businesses. After all, who doesn’t love their morning cup of joe in a mug made especially for them?

Coastal offers supplies for two different methods of putting images on mugs – laser and sublimation.

For laser transfers, you need Mugs n’ More laser transfer paper. After printing your image, attach it to your mug using thermal tape. Thermal tape is very important – it ensures that your image will not move at all during pressing. Press the image onto your using a mug press at 250 degrees for 90 seconds. Once removed from the mug press, rinse the mug with tepid water until it has cooled to room temperature. DO NOT remove the transfer paper before cooling it with water. This process helps release the transfer paper from the mug and only takes about a minute or so.

Once the mug is cool to the touch, remove the transfer paper.

Unlike sublimation, laser images will only lay on top of the mug. This can lead to the image being more easily scratched or chipped off during everyday use. You can make the image more durable by “glazing” it, though no glaze is actually placed on the mug. A mug glazer is a small machine that helps “bake” the image onto the mug, helping the image last longer. You can also place the mug in an oven at about 150 degrees for 5 minutes. This does the some job as a mug glazer. Though laser mug transferring will not give you a permanent image, you can still achieve a great quality image with just a little extra work.

Using sublimation to transfer images onto mugs will give you a brighter and more durable final product since the image will physically become part of the mug (thanks to the magic of sublimation). After printing, attach your image to the mug using thermal tape. Then, press it onto the mug at 365 degrees for 60 seconds (the time and temp will vary depending on the mug press).

Remove the sublimation transfer paper from the mug immediately after it has completed the mug press cycle. It will be very hot – sometimes I have to use tweezers to pull the paper off because it’s so hot – but try to remove the paper as quickly as possible. If you leave the hot image on more than a few seconds, you may end up with a ghosted/shadowed image. Also, if your images become blurry while cooling, it’s a good idea to use lukewarm water to cool down the mug and stop the sublimation process. Unlike laser transfers, however, using water to cool the mug down is not necessary.

You may notice some fading on your sublimation mugs after several rounds in the dishwasher. If you do see this, you may want to begin hand-washing the mugs or run them in a cooler dishwasher cycle. If the water gets too hot in a dishwasher, it will start the entire sublimation process again, allowing your image to become distorted.

Other basic tips for making mugs: Make sure the printed transfer fits well within the heating element of the mug press (this is helpful for sublimation and laser). If it gets too close to the edges of the heating element, outer parts of your image may not get the same amount of heat or pressure as the rest of the image and the top/bottom of your image may end up blurry or faint.

No mug press? No problem! You can use a silicone-coated mug wrap to sublimate your mugs using a conventional oven. It takes a little bit more time (10-15 minutes at 400 degrees) depending on the oven), but the quality is just as good as using a mug press. Laser mug transfers need more pressure than sublimation, so we don’t advise using mug wraps for laser transfers.

Author: Kim Kelley

Kim Kelley works in technical support, marketing and social networking at Coastal Business Supplies. View all posts by Kim Kelley