can anyone suggest methods for printing banners correctly?

[Andrew Blackett]

We use the frontlit from Papergraphics, not had a problem with it.

In the past though we had wrinkles like that and it was down to tension as the machine tried to unroll the media from the roll. Have you tried unwinding the roll on the back so the machine just pulls against say 1m of loose media rather than a full roll?

Andy

[mark lane]

thanks for your response, we have tried this method but again keep getting the same results its extremely frustrating, we never used to have this problem, I will try again though.

[John Parfit]

Hi Mark

If it didn’t happen before and now it does with same material then something is wrong (but you know that anyway)

Heat settings (you’ve tried, but try a test with heaters off maybe).

Vacuum, don’t know how to check that on jv5.

One or more rollers collapsed/ stuck, bit of vinyl or similar on part of grit roller?

Perhaps try taping long bits of masking tape down from banner to take up roller so it gives it tension.

Try using just outside rollers as experiment and lift inner rollers (if jv5 does that.

All i can think to try at moment.

Hope you get it sorted soon.

John

[mark lane]

Thanks again I will give this a try, cheers

[Gert du Preez]

You can also try feeding the material off the roll, rather than the printer having to drag it through.

On my SP540, I have this problem with both PVC and Vinyl. Rolling the media off by hand so it feeds from slack media solves the problem. The RS, on the other hand, prints without any problems feeding directly from the roll. As a matter of fact, when I roll off the media, it has tracking problems on longer prints… 🙄

The problem could well be down to a pinch-roller problem, causing uneven tension on the media. Check if all are running free.

[John Parfit]

The strength of the rolands print and cut in media feed has long been known to be weak, Roland themselves stated at some point that banner material was not what these machines were designed to cope with.
The original poster has however problems with a JV5 which under normal circumstances would easily handle banner material without the need to nurse the machine; so I still think there has to be something unusual going on; question being what.

John

[David Rowland]

the thing with printers is the profiles can be provided but i always believe that heat settings is something a printer operator needs to experiment with.

I think things like room size, how hot the room is and media temperature before it is warmed up comes into account. The ideal temp would be to stop the wrinkles and it is just before that, so I would just experiment with that.

[Denise Goodfellow]

Try spraying and poshing the areas where the banner runs through with an anti static furniture polish.

We find that the only way sometimes is to connect the banner material to the take up roller thats supplied with our machine. OK you lose a metre, but small price to pay over a new head or a man watching over the machine.

[mark lane]

thanks guys for all your reply’s, I will keep trying and post my results.

[Mike Grant]

Does your machine have another set of media clamps. My roland came with longer clamps and always fit these when printing posters as the first poster always gets a head strike through wrinkling using the standard ones.

[mark lane]

The Mimaki JV5 only comes with the on set, we have tried some banner material at the high end of the price bracket to get the work through which seems to have worked better but obviously with the market being so competitive its not going to be a solution long term.

[Stafford Cox]

quote Denise Goodfellow:

Try spraying and poshing the areas where the banner runs through with an anti static furniture polish.

We find that the only way sometimes is to connect the banner material to the take up roller thats supplied with our machine. OK you lose a metre, but small price to pay over a new head or a man watching over the machine.

I would suggest exactly that. I have a customer with a JV5 who keeps a tin of Pledge on top for that sort of reason (other furniture polishes are available 🙂 ). It makes a massive different apparently. Are you running it flat out?? Those things can really chuck some media through and static buildup can cause a kind of drag on the front heater.

Also, you can adjust the feed speed on a JV5 too so it might be worth experimenting with that so it doesn’t snag the media so much…? That combined with all the other suggestions, you should be able to at least improve the problem. Or of course, it could just be that the cheaper media you’re using is not up to being run on a demanding printer such as yours.

Good luck and let us know the results.

Stafford

[Matic Serbelj]

I had the same problem with ,y jv3 but now i pump the heat to around 45C and it works great. Oh, and i print 360×540 medium quality bidirectional.

Hope it helps.