Studios, artists and schools

Ceramic printing for ceramic studios, artists and education: one A4 printer, a small kiln, and every design you can draw or photograph, fired into your own work.

Digitally printed ceramic decoration

The IM C401 is designed for ceramic studios, artists and schools that want to produce photographic images, drawings and text on their own ware without a screen-printing setup.

It is a compact A4 ceramic printer that fits easily into a small workshop or studio. Depending on the application, it can run toner without flux for in-glaze decoration on stoneware and porcelain, or toner with flux for onglaze decoration of finished glazed pieces.

What studios do with it

  • Combine hand-thrown or slip-cast ware with printed imagery
  • Editions of tiles, plates and mugs with a signature design
  • Commissioned pieces with customer photographs
  • Teaching ceramic surface design with a repeatable digital process

Getting started

A starter set, decal paper, covercoat and a firing curve come with every printer. Most studios are producing saleable work in the first week; INEQS supports the first firings remotely. If you would rather start smaller, the print service makes decals from your files so you only need the kiln.

Talk to us about a studio setup

A typical studio setup

  • An A4 ceramic printer: the IM C401, the CeramPrint CP-500 or a used Ricoh SP C440
  • One toner family to start: unfluxed for in-glaze work on stoneware and porcelain, or fluxed for onglaze on finished pieces
  • Decal paper and a covercoat; coating spray suits studio volumes
  • A kiln with a programmable controller that reaches your set’s range, ventilated up to about 420 °C
  • Any image editor that exports PDF, TIFF, JPG or PNG at 300 dpi with an embedded colour profile

Designing for ceramic decals

A few rules save a lot of test firings. White in a design prints as nothing, so the colour of the ware shows through; plan light areas around your glaze. Very pale tints below about 5% can fire out completely. Reds need a red toner set, because magenta and yellow lose their red above about 1,000 °C. And the fired palette is narrower than a screen, so judge colour on a fired test tile, not on the monitor. Full details are in preparing files for ceramic printing.

Teaching with a ceramic printer

For schools, colleges and makerspaces, digital decals turn surface design into a repeatable process students can plan, print and fire within a class timetable. Photographs, drawings and typography go onto hand built or thrown work without screens, films or chemicals, and a single A4 printer serves a whole studio. INEQS supports the first firings remotely, so staff do not need prior experience.