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Curved prints on pop up media
Hi Guys,
not posted for a while as been mega busy.I’m having a wee problem with pop up media for exhibition panels, on one of my JV33s the panels seem to print fine, until I go to cut them.
They seem to be bowed with up to a 3mm difference in the middle of the media, so in effect, I line the two cut marks up at each end in my cutter, but in the middle I can see the the line i should be cutting on is typically 2-3 mm off of where it should be, it’s like the printer has printed a curved line where it should be straight.
This would suggest to me that the media is moving over slightly during the print process, but what I find odd, is that it is exactly in the middle of the print? I suppose it could be the cutter but it’s a keencut bench mounted cutter and I cant see that it could be warped that much due to the construction of it.
Here is the odd thing though, its only happened on 2 out of the 5 panels I have printed, the first 2
Has anyone experienced this before and can anyone help?
Thanks in advance
Mo
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5 Replies
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Hi Mo, what printer is it?
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Mimaki JV33
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If you said it was latex i would have blamed the heaters for media distortion as this can happen with these machines due to hitting over 100 degrees during the curing/drying of the ink. More so on cheap media.
Is your solvet machine doing same, i do not know. it is possible dependant on the media and density of the ink.
different reason to the heat exposure above, as this would be reaction to the solvent. unusual i think if its a decent media and the ink isnt heavy.going back 20+ years before the digital printers appeared in our game i used to flood coat cast vinyl with a solvent ink.
the vinyl would shrivel up on the lining paper like a prune. i mean actually lift off the liner… when you came back in the next day after it had dried out and out-gassed. it was back perfectly flat and ready for us to laminate and then cut. however, there was at least 3mm creep in from the sides of the lining paper down both sides of the roll. so shrinkage due to solvent is possible, just not something ive really noticed with any of our solvent printers. -
We’ve had this before as the print “bananas” so where it curves in on the left side for example, it curves out by the same distance on the right side.
You must make sure that the media is perfectly square and flush against the core end throughout the whole roll. Also make sure that it’s fed through the machine as accurately as possibly by having one person pulling it through at the front and one at the back providing resistance to make it as taut as possible before you drop the pinchers. This eradicated the issue on my mutoh but not something we’ve had on the new printer as it has a more advanced paper feed apparently!
Neil D.
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Yeah, i think its a media issue, the JV33 that we use for our exhibition prints has a great clutch system on it so tension isnt a problem, however this pop up media is quite stiff so it continually wants to unwind itself from the roll, especially when you get down the roll a bit.
But I still had over 10 meters on the roll so in my eyes, i cant be having that kind of wastage.
Ive ordered a new roll this morning because I have had other issues with it.
Thanks for advice everyone
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