Advice on UV flatbed printer please?

[Jason Price]

i have heard a mild mix of water and a liquid based washing machine detergent, how true that may be i dont know!
j

[David Rowland]

is it a static look, mainly messy in the white-material areas after it has printed?

[Jason Price]

i found that when i was running a cube, static caused all kinds of agro! we ended up with all kinds of home made gizmos on it to reduce that, used a battery earthing terminal to the frame of our building in the end, job done! lol

[Nic Bessent]

some boards when they come in to us look like they have been in storage for years so they are filthy so we just wiping the dirt of – if i prind any dark colour it shows the wipe marks! the static i can get rid of with static wipes but i need to be able to clean them before i get to that stage?

Also the ink seems to chip of easily on all materiels apart form ali?

[Dave Rich]

Hi Nick

Do you know any technicians for your printer as I am about to buy a second user one and need it serviced?

[Robert Lambie]

quote Nic Bessent:

the ink seems to chip of easily on all materiels apart form ali?

i’ve been in your shoes recently too mate… this IS A Genuine problem with most if not all UV flatbed machines. i "know" there are ways around this and strict procedures that must be followed, limitations and so on…
BUT, i have never heard a sales rep at sign uk, a statement in a magazine and so on warn me. i might be being harsh here but the quicker sales reps start thinking about these issues that we will incurr "for us", instead off thinking more about their £100,000+ sale they are about to make, the better!

walk round trade shows and they will tell you the machine prints onto anything and everything. which in many cases it does, but there are strict prepping procedures on many surfaces.

take correx, simple cheap board, ideal you would think for fast, cheap, flatbed printing. "oh the machine will churn these out at high speed" i was told!
what i wasnt told is that they have a 24hr curing period.
also, that the 20 sheets i just printed shouldnt be stacked in a pile or leaning aginst a wall in a pile or they will stick together?
this is all fine and dandy, but its one thing printing rolls of vinyl and trying to find space for them to air and cure, but not 8x4ft and 10x5ft sheet boards all over the place!

i printed up dozens of 2ft square boards on dibond.
once printed, i proceeded to guillotine the boards as i do daily with all other signage.
BUT… as i did this, the impact of the guillotine cutting the board shattered the print on the surface and it basically flaked off!
i remember printing a 2×2 board and after what i thought was a successful run, i saw a flaked bit of print. i pealed it back and the entire 2ft x 2ft skin of ink came away in one go. i now had a big cripsy print in one hand and a white board in the other!

i was told i would need to wipe the boards with a clear key’ing agent.
fine you may think, but that costs money, it also takes time. and i mean time, because god forbid you miss a swipe when wiping. there you are, print a big 10ft x 5ft sheet of dibond and as the board flexes a patch you missed with key’ing agent flakes off. so yeh, you loss the price of the ink, the print time, the prepping liquid and the time to prep it. but now you ahve just lost your £50 board you printed onto too!

which leads to another lie i was told, "oh if you get drop out or a miss print, just print over it with white and print again" nonsense, doesnt work like that!
for one UV ink is textured. you see a patern under the new skin of ink. another thingg, the ink isnt dense enough to cover the botom print.

another remedy i was offered. slow the machine right down to get much key’ing of the print to the board. ok, i did that too. no it didnt work with the guilotine issue of chipping and where it did work, the machine was running slower than our grenadier! 🙄 which beats the purpose of high output directly to boards at low cost.

oh and dont get me started on the UV lamp life… these are a consumable and not covered. they have a fire’ing life of lets say "example" 1000 times. that means you turn the lamps on and off when you go for your tea. thats 1 of your 1000 killed. 😕 fine, leave them on then? no, theres a burning life also!
these lamps are not cheap and theres at least two on your print head.
find out how long a life they have, firing up and all that too…
i forget the ins and outs of it but i remember thinking how much a joke it was and "never was i told about it".

also, white ink. if its not being run every day, its going to give you ongoing issues. we had it, we hardly ever used it. but, we went through white as much as we did any other colour because although it wasnt being used, the machine still dumped it as part of its cycle to keep the ink in the system moving. white is also more expensive than the other colours.

i could go on and on about uv printing. but i wont. all i will advise here is…

If you are buying a machine, type up a list of the sheet material you will print onto daily. the speed you and quality you require and more.
get the sales rep to give you a reply based on each bullit point.
also your ink costs, uv lamp firing life and so on… what is classed as a consumable etc etc etc if nothing else it will cover you should the sh1t hit the fan!

now all this said…

UV printing is big business. there are a great many beasts out there that never miss a beat. that make companies millions. i know this and it would be stupid of me to say different.
BUT… you, us, we… are not these big companies that print on massive volume. can afford lots of teething losses and more… we are small companies trying to take the next big step in expanding our business.
we are taking on a big learning curve and we make decisions and count our setup and outgoing costs "based on what the sales rep tells us". just be prepaired and do not get miss-sold. as i said, cover your back and get it in writing.

hope this helps raise some questions for folk to think about.
these are just my experiences and views on the subject.

[David Rowland]

I have been studying this for a while, one thing that does improve the adhesion is this product but at a cost.
http://zanedigital.co.uk/products/adhesion-promoters

Correx is the exception, this has other problem as it is treated "Chrona treament" and this increases the surfaces tension a little, but it fades away (so ink as I understand will start to fall off, this is the bit that I cannot get confirmed but I think it does after my own tests)

Zane product works very well but the tricky part is applying it, you have to use it is very small qty’s without smearing it as if you print has many areas of white in it then you see the smears.

Lamp Life is another thing to consider, if your near your hours, then it will come off.

Distance to material, if you putting the head up higher you will causes more static issues (i wont explain it here).

I found Ali to be one of the toughest materials to date to print to, it will do it but where does the white come from?

Dibond is a pain, only few products will the ink settle ok.

Foamex can carry large static amounts within it.

Static bars are necessary…. one across the back of the machine and you should already have two each side of the head.

We have the airline gun, made a big difference and I have the tool to measure static… this works well but not as good as a bar.
http://www.fraser-antistatic.co.uk/prod … tGroupId=4

Fraser came in to see us, the AGFA’s are fitted with them as standard, so they were keen to learn from us.

With regards a second hand zund flatbed, without the backup of Zund engineer you will be stuck. After owning the AGFA for about a year, I know now that I don’t want to put anything under it that has too much static in it as repairs can be needed if it goes horribly wrong.