best media and profiles for a JVC or JV33

[Colin Crow]

HI Ian

We installed our CJV 130 3 weeks ago and have been playing with medias and profiles as you intend.

If you are planning on using the rasterlink bundled software you will find profiles included for Avery MPI200, Oracal 3164 and others (but not mactac).

Who are you buying your Mimaki from as they should be able to help with profiles if they also sell the vinyl.

Having said all this, the generic gloss vinyl profile included seems to print on pretty much anything (vinyl, banner, synthetics etc) without any adjustment.

Regards

Colin

[Jon Marshall]

A lot of it depends on the RIP you buy with the machine. I think we have about 100 with Shiraz Signature. Not many vinyl suppliers seem to have profiles for the JV33.

[Ian Muir]

Thanks John, Colin I will be using rasterlink pro 4 as bundled, machine ordered thru Signmaster, of course will be thinking of many things to ask during the 2 days training..

Ian :lol1:

[Colin Crow]

Rasterlink has just been upgraded to 5 and is available by download from their site. It was still brand new when mine was installed so we didn’t try it then but I may look at this option shortly.

We got a fantastic service (and deal) from I-Sub digital on our Mimaki after a recommendation from John on the signboard and I would hesitate in passing on the recommendation, but they seem to concentrate on the Metamark range of vinyls which are a little unknown to me.

There are quite a few vinyl companies that sell the CJV30 (Hexis, Robert Horne etc) so I dont see why they cant provide the correct profiles for their vinyls.

Its a fantastic printer that has huge capabilities so means a lot to take in after the "simple" Valuejet we were used to but we are now getting there. We equipped ours with the white ink which meant an additional learning curve too but I know most people don’t go down this route.

Good luck and have fun!

[Neil Riley]

What inks are you guys running?
I’ve got a CJV30-130 – here in Australia they only come with Eco sol or Eco-HS1. I went with Eco HS1 in 2xCMYK.
They have some pretty good profiles for Rasterlink on the Australian Mimaki site http://www.dgsmimaki.com.au/. Some just recently added.

These inks seem pretty good. I’ve printed mainly on Oracal 3551, 3169 and Concept and Arlon films and they all print well.

Look forward to swapping ideas with other CJV users.
As Colin says there’s a lot to get used to with this new beast, but I’m getting there!

[Colin Crow]

We are running the SS21 full solvent inks with 6 colour + White. We also run a gerber edge specifically for white work on clear so this just helped it tick another box for us.

The SS21 inks are definitely smellier than the eco inks used in the valuejet we had previously and have necessitated a 9" extractor being installed directly behind the printer. Having said that, they do stand up to rough treatment a little better and as a lot of our printing is solid colour and often black this helps a lot without having to laminate.

I am a little concerned how quickly the waste ink bottle is filling which I think is a result of the more aggressive inks needing more cleaning but time will tell. The information provided by the rasterlink is excellent and the ink usage data makes it easy to price jobs. The control you have within the rip is daunting at first but brilliant when you get stuck in as you will have to if you run the white inks!

One gripe is the single Mimaki blade that came with the unit lost its tip within 2 days and a quick call to Harry at Edward Mathias confirmed that these are prone to the very slightest of damage. His smartknife replacement has been working perfectly ever since.

So far (other than white ink issues) almost every profile has been working on every vinyl/banner/popup I have thrown at it so I am not sure how much of an issue profiles are? I noticed another thread on here recently where people were talking about using 8 pass profiles for higher quality but I only have 12 pass as a minimum on my list of profiles. Again this may be down to the white ink configuration of my printer but does anyone have a less pass profile?

Colin

[Neil Riley]

A lot of the HS1 profiles have varying pass options. Depending on the resolution some offer 4, 8 or 16 pass, others 6, 12 or 24 pass, others still 8,16, or 32 pass. Sounds like you don’t have many profile options due to the white ink.
At the moment I’m setting up my own profiles for use in Signlab.
I have a good 720 x 720 printmode which I can print at 4, 8 or 16 pass plus high speed or normal scan speed.

Also Signlab is about 10 times quicker and easier for me to use than CorelDraw/Fine Cut/Rasterlink for print & cut work.

[Colin Crow]

I know that the 4 colour setup uses 2 sets for each colour so it would make sense that it halves the amount of passes required. I haven’t tried printing from signlab to the Mimaki as I have got used to using a separate rip for this purpose and anyway signlab is often tied up printing to the Edge and cutting vinyl text.

I need to spend more time with the multitude of settings until I arrive at the most consistent profiles that offer the best speed. In order to lay down a really solid white ink I have found that 32 pass with a second delay on each pass works perfectly however it takes an age to complete the print. Good job most of our work with white is small valuable products!

Colin

[Neil Riley]

Yeah, must be a hassle using white ink.
How about 2x overprint with a pause in between?.
What do Mimaki recommend??

I’m pretty sure Signlab doesn’t support the white ink option, you need Rasterlink for that.
It does run the 6 colour option though – are you using Lc,Lm?

How’re you getting on with the stupidly loud fans? Mine’s got a 60mm exhaust fan on the power supply that wails like a siren the whole time the machine is on. Drives me nuts!
I’m used to my old Roland sitting there quietly in between jobs.
This machine sounds like it’s running flat out even when it’s doing nothing.

(Not wanting to put you off Ian…)

There is another problem I’m having – with the contour cuts.
I cut several laminated jobs today and found they hadn’t cut deep enough so I re-loaded them up and re-scanned the marks and cut again.
Four out of 5 of them cut in different places the second time.
Only one of them cut on top of the original cut line.
Not sure why. I set the scanner sensitivity beforehand.

Are you getting accurate contour cuts?

[Colin Crow]

The configuration of the heads means that the white ink is laid down immediatley before the colours so two passes wouldn’t help as the sequence would be white/colour/white/colour. Its this that slows down the printing as it is effectively only using half the width of the head to get the white down first. Its very clever but when using lots of white ink, the immediate laying down of colour over the white can result in flooding if you do not allow enough time.

We do have the lc and mc carts and I do feel these make a difference for our type of work. We used to run a 6 colour Canon prior to switching to 4 colour valuejet and I could definitely tell the difference for the photographic and canvas work which is why we have gone back to 6 colour.

The fans are fairly noisy but no worse than the valuejet and at least it turns off really quickly from the front button when not in use (something missing from the VJ).

Contour cutting is usually 100% although I have found it can be variable if you are only using the outer rollers for cutting. The material flexes in the centre quite a bit when being pushed and pulled from just the edges so I always now run the centre rollers on the low setting so that they do not make an impression on the print.

Colin

[Neil Riley]

Yeah when I had a demo of the machine they tried contour cutting with the middle rollers raised and it went pear shaped.

I’ve set the rollers to be HLLLLH for both printing and cutting.
Saves changing them all the time and as long as the print is dry (or laminated) there’s no reason to lift the middle rollers.

BTW I have some Summa blades from my old D620 which look the same as the Mimaki blades. I tried one out and it works well. Slightly different offset so will need adjusting.