can you stack multiple prints?

[David Hammond]

As in at the side of the print?

I don’t see why you couldn’t, if you fed in the media again, positioned it correctly in the rip, however, I wouldn’t recommend it for a number of reasons.

Potential to scuff or mark the print, potential that you get the size/position wrong and ruin both prints.

What RIP are you using?

Most have the ability to nest jobs together, in ONYX you can set it so that it will automatically start printing when a % of the media is filled.

[Leslie Anderson]

thanks david

it is onyx and hp360 latex.

i think i know what you mean about it being possible but it is more about for my day to day work.
sometimes it is not convenient to queue jobs to fill the available space. other times i completely forget and waste a lot of vinyl. inexperience i guess, but frustrating. 🙄

thanks again. 👍

L❤

[David Hammond]

It may be worth looking at using narrower media rolls if your doing smaller, one off jobs, but then you’re having to change media more frequently.

Depending on the job sometimes I will tile long thin prints and mount them with an overlap, explaining to the customer the cost saving.

Try and slow things down too,.not everyone needs things next day, so you can gang up jobs. I would rather have a busy day printing, than stop start days doing little jobs.

[Robert Lambie]

Hi Leslie
David’s suggestions are probably good workarounds, but I am not aware of any default options that allow you to do this.

@DavidHammond
I had Roland printers all my days, i know you did too, but could you not do this with Versaworks?
I dont know if i am thinking “way back” with the old Roland PC60 thermal printers that could do this.
I am sure it was just resetting the origin point and the printer would start wherever you placed it, and set as the new origin.

[David Hammond]

You are correct. You could set the origin on the Rolands I had. You still had the issue of feeding the media back in, with it being solvent the increased risk of the rollers marking the ink. From experience it makes an awful mess 😂

I don’t think you can on the HP 300’s.

[Robert Lambie]

Ahh yeh, I remember now, David. 👍
They had a feature that you could pause the contour cutting process, so that the ink dried, then it would start up and cut. This was as you say, to prevent wheel track lines in the ink.
I “think” on some machines you could lift the middle wheels to hover the prints. That’s certainly not an option on the latex with their rollers spanning the entire width of the media.

[Colin Crabb]

Yeah Mimiki’s Print & Cut machines you could/had to unload media, laminate and reload to origin point for cutting.

HP – you can technically reload media, the OMAS tracking will help you line up the media for straightness, but you will have to manually move it forward to a new printing point and continue – But remember you need a unprintable ‘tail’ of approx.400mm to allow print to go through heaters. If the media has been cut off already, there isnt going to be enough to print on anyways?!

[Robert Lambie]

I forgot Mimaki did the same thing around that time.
I remember the ongoing battle between Mimaki and Roland of what was faster, onboard cutting or separate printer and cutter. Competition like that was good back then. I guess it’s a bit like Solvent and Latex ink today.

[Myles Brewer]

Hi Leslie,

I have a 365 & yes it’s certainly possible if you still have the roll loaded. Because the latex print is fully cured as soon as it comes out of the printer then you won’t have any issues of the rollers marking the 1st print like David mentioned when you reverse it back to the original start point.

You simply go to the printer display panel, tap on substrate & then the move button & you can move the substrate forwards or backwards to the point you want to start printing from.

You do need to be careful to make sure that your 2nd print doesn’t overlap the 1st as mentioned.

It is also possible to load a sheet of media either full width or part width if you have offcuts but they do really need to be at least 2m length to allow for loading/alignment & post heating/drying of the end of the print as it feeds through.

[Colin Crabb]

HP 3** series, tail needs to be minimum of 300mm to go through heaters (just hit end of roll, print dried with a tail of 270mm)