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Edges curling on sovent-printed kiss cut vinyl
Morning,
We’ve printed last night some vinyl, kiss-cut it but now I can see the edges are curling. What you see is the vinyl printed, cut and weeded on its own backing paper. The white background is the backing paper and not a wall or other substrate.
We have a Roland and we use genuine eco-sol.
This is an LG vinyl but we had the same issue with Metamark MD3. None of them laminated.If we cut the same thing on the same vinyl without print, there are no problems at all, everything is perfect. Only when we print it we see the curling effect.
Do you think is the vinyl or it’s a rather printing error, maybe too much ink on it? Or the vinyl needs to stay more to chill out?
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9 Replies
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I would leave it at least 24 hours before cutting..
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I have found that if you weed it without leaving the print to cure properly you can get this effect.
Something to do with the solvent in the ink softening the vinyl.Might be wrong but that’s my guess.
Graeme
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As above, let it out gas. The solvent in the ink, makes the vinyl go really stretchy, and is probably the cause.
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As said, leave to outgas ideally 48 hrs. For work flow use print and cut crop marks so you can take the job off the printer to outgas while you get on with other work then put back and cut – we use ecol sol and predominantly metamark and this works for us.
Hugh -
This is why I dont really see the point of Print and Cut machines..
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H
Are you printing and cutting it instantly? I have found that even a short time of drying/pause between printing and cutting helps with this. And that means minutes, and not hours.Best regards
Tony -
Been years since i operated our Solvent machines, don’t even have them any longer. however…
As Tony has just said there…you have a setting on your printer to allow "a set time" for the solvent to dry better, before it contour cuts.
so it can print, pause for say 5 minutes then start up again and proceed to contour cut, based on whatever you set it to allow.issues with solvent really only occur on full ink coverage like you have done there, but also because you are cutting directly onto the printed area right after. This does not happen if you have a white bleed area around your sticker or label, only when you need to cut directly into the uncured ink.
also, if you are taking the printed media out the machine to allow much longer to cure, ide advise giving a slight bleed on the print because if you leave 24hrs or so as has been suggested. and you need to kiss-cut the print. you may see areas of white showing because the vinyl will warp a little due to the solvent drying out. not visible to the naked eye but can be if kiss-cut and stuck on a coloured background.
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What printers are you running now rob?
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Have a couple of Latex printers now Jon.
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