Photoceramics – new technologies and equipment

Photoceramics is an occupation that is both creative and rewarding, providing a satisfaction coming from the creation of high quality images on products with a ceramic or enamel covering. A wide variety of objects can serve as your canvas, as you can put a photo on ceramics, a photo on enamel, photos on monuments, and photos on ceramic tile for picture creation. Also, you can put images on souvenirs, mugs, plates, saucers and other products made of ceramic and porcelain.

Now the latest photoceramic technologies, quickly gaining in popularity, are jet printers with overglaze paints and decals, printed by laser printer and ceramic toner.
The best and most available equipment for ceremonial photoceramics is the unique invention of Ukrainian engineers: the specialized printer for ceremonial photoceramics — a jet printer with a high-precision alignment system (a la the jet printer Mirtels). Thanks to this printer, the photoceramics industry is experiencing a substantial improvement in the conditions of small workshops and in the house. With this new technology, there are no harmful smells of varnish or ether, and the entire process consists in the direct printing on an oval or the tablet of a photo with the subsequent firing in a muffle furnace at 800 degrees Celsius (1472 degrees F). For this technology the simplest single-phase muffle furnace uses 2.5 kW from a 220V supply. The Mirtels М101, М102, and М103 series are unique in that they provides high-precision alignment of paint layers, high speed printing and allow the printing of not only black-and-white, but also color photoceramics, thanks to the way they monitor the table position.

Jet printers Mirtels are great for small work loads of 30-50 jobs per day. The cost of producing a photo on an oval of 13×18 cm (5×7 inches) is 20-30 cents.
For higher volumes it is more efficient to print decals with a laser printer using color ceramic toners. In this technology the photoceramics is made on the special laser printer for decal printing by a ceramic toner. Currently the best choice would be one of the models made by “The Center of Photoceramic Technologies”, because the technology inside them is more advanced than the printers from foreign competitors. Advantages of this technology are extremely high-quality printing with bright and saturated colors, including the elusive bright red color.

For this technology the ceramic laser printer, the varnishing device, decal varnish, decal paper and a muffle furnace are required. After printing the photo on decal paper we varnish the image, soak it in water, transfer the image onto a product, dry it, and fire it in a muffle furnace at temperatures of 800-900 degrees. The result is a photoceramic product with bright, saturated colors and high durability.

The main advantages of the ceramic printer for decal printing, developed by “The Center of Photoceramic Technologies”, are:

• high quality of the image
• durability of the image
• bright and saturated colors

The essential advantage of the decal technology is that the ceramic laser printer has high durability at the very low expense of toner. All this equipment for photoceramics is available and you can get it at any of “The Center of Photoceramic Technologies” branches. Furthermore, we provide a guarantee on all of the equipment we sell.
With the equipment there is a complete set of starting supplies and training materials, so you can easily become familiar with the technology by yourself.