Cafe Press

New and Improved Inks

At a recent EOSS face to face someone commented that they had broken their EOSS coffee mug. I said it might have been a blessing in disguise depending on if the cup were faded or not. A brief discussion ensued regarding the permanence of the inks used to print the logo on the mugs. I discovered that others had experienced some problems with the mugs and were unaware that the ink fading was largely a resolved issue.

I also ordered a coffee mug when we first started this service. I was quite disappointed to see the printing fade away after a very few trips through the dishwasher.

First cup ordered.
I have no idea how many washings but certainly not more than 20.

Once the cups were pretty faded I decided to buy new ones but only use them on special occasions.

Don't ask me how I remember cause I frankly don't know just how that happened but, with the most recent order of cups I noticed that there was no apparent fading after 6 washes. I was impressed. The old cups showed fading almost immediately. So, I decided to document this event. Hey, it's EOS(Sciences), inc right? So, empiricism to the rescue.

Here are some non-flash photos of this cup after several washings.

6 times through the dishwasher	10 times through the dishwasher
20 times through the dishwasher	40 times through the dishwasher
100 times through the dishwasher	200 times through the dishwasher

Here are some flash photos:

10 times through the dishwasher	40 times through the dishwasher
100 times through the dishwasher	200 times through the dishwasher

So, while anything like this will suffer from fading over time, I think the printing on ceramics from Cafe Press has evolved into something that makes purchasing items on par with standard commercial wares.

For the record, I don't really notice any perceivable difference in the saturation of the colors on the logo after 200 washings. It may start to fade some day but probably not until the cup is into the 500+ range of washings.