Does anyone else’s prints from their CADET scratch easy???

[Cookster]

Hi Mark

We have had a Cadet for a couple of months and have been dead chuffed with the results, haven’t had any problems with scratching our prints seem to be really etched in to the vinyl but if you scratch hard enough you can go through to the white, this could happen even if it was laminated if your prints scratch that easily there must be something wrong.

Let us know how you get on

[signworkshop]

I’d put up some photos off the scatching, but it seams that you can’t do that any more!!!!! It wasnt hard scratching, just a rubbing of a gloss painted do going along on it

We did have a problem with the heads, some nozzel had deflection in them when printing, my be that was the problem, but the deflection has gone now while using it more.

[davebrittain]

ive got a cadett and i find they do scratch easy too i laminated all outside work though if i knew this i would ov gone for the versercam

[Robert Lambie]

quick repy here mate.. but… your using a solvent ink.. bites much harder into your vinyl than a eco-solvent ink. how lond are you giving your inks to cure/ i recommend my customers leave prints 24hrs at least…
all i can say from my experience is that if your not happy with tthe abrasion guard of a solvent ink.. you would have chucked the towel in with the eco-solvent. e.g. (versacamm) 🙄

[James kelly]

Before I bought my printer, one of the tests I did was scratching with different hard objects. I found no noticible difference between the Versacamm prints and the Cadet prints. The layer of ink on printed vinyl is microscopic thin. ‘Bite’ as Rob calls it is bonding to the surface so any scraping of this fine top layer will make a mark no matter how good the bite is.

Cadet solvent inks may possibly bond better but they will not penetrate any further into the vinyl than the eco-solvent inks. The only solution to abrasion apart from laminating would be inks that dye or penetrate right through the vinyl. Failing that, a printer that prints actual coloured liquid vinyl onto bare backing paper!

[Robert Lambie]

I’m kind of confused here guys… are we talking scratching the surface with something like a metal pin? I think you have to be realistic here… we are talking prints/ink!
If you are trying to “score/scratch” something with a hard object, then sure it will mark. That goes for thermal prinst from the likes of an edge or pc600 too!
When you buy a new car, do you take the key and run it down the paintwork, then say, not buying that mate, the paint work is not up to much?
At the end of the day, that’s what we are saying here…
My view on prints these days is that we should be looking at something that gives as close as you can get to the performance of paint. Solvent inks on vinyl out perform any other ink on vinyl as far as wear and tear is concerned… on a vehicle its a different thing… chemical attacks from car washes, road grime, petrol etc will do damage to just about any form of colouring, so lamination is needed. BUT! Even on a vehicle, if “unlamented” the solvent inks will outlast the eco-solvent. So for promotions on taxi wraps and the like, its solvent prints for me, for sure…
In my opinion, the eco-solvent inks are more vibrant and give outstanding clarity.. but the ink sits on the surface of the vinyl. Were as the solvent inks bite onto the vinyl and are much harder to break down. This is the reason why I say for “the signmaker” I advise solvent machines & for printers supplying exhibitions, point of sale products etc then I would advise the eco-solvent.
At the end of the day, both machines are more than capable of doing each others work, but in certain areas, one outperforms the other & vice versa.

[Chris Wool]

expect 5 years life on ip40 3m material i know its true cos roland just sent me a letter to say so.
We keep learning dont we

just some lables to go on the back of a cataloge please .
3 days latter that ink comes off you know. it was a cosmetics cataloge and ladies just throw the stuff all over there face and all over my lables.

chris

[J. Hulme]

Screenwash also destroys the print to nothing, I found out by only removing pencil guides and touched the print then whole print disappeared it also brings the colour out of vinyl, screenwash is a great solvent for cleaning but you do have to careful, not much stands up to this stuff

[Rodney Gold]

What I find amazing is why a digital print is expected to outperform other forms of signage or more to the point , why subject them to torture that you wouldnt on other forms and then moan when they dont shrug it off.
No one would subject a vinyl application of cast polymeric to a sharp instrument test , nor would one subject most any form of signage to chemical attack like acetone etc.
Solvent or eco-sol , makes no diff , both are ink layers sitting atop a media (the medias like vinyl are not porous and the ink doesnt really penetrate or soak in , it sits atop whichever method you use) the less the ink coverage , the worse it’s scratch resistance gonna be. Resistance is not only a function of the inks , but of the media itself.
At the end of it all , you can use *either* machine for short term as the expectations of the user are that the graphic wont last , and for long term or any amount of handling , the graphic *has* to be protected.
Far more important than abraision resistance is color fastness (how quick are you going to lose yellow?)
As to protection , well you can use pledge furniture polish or Spray n cook on the graphic for a first layer of protection and despite the low tech nature , this works damn well. Fine for those decals on brochures etc (be careful of low ink coverage , like printing light grey on white vinyl , and expecting it to last – with ANY inks that our machines use)
Then there are various forms of liquid lams , a waste of time imho as they are often pricey , take long to dry , flake off , bubble on application , lift off with app papers and are a major dust trap whilst drying

Then you can do what we mostly do and that is to use micronex.
Micronex is a holt melt product that applys a very thin conformable and tough “plasticiser” to the graphic.(melts it on) This works with a hot roller laminator and has NONE of the overhead cold lams have , like liners , webbing , boat wakes , washboarding , delaminations , squewing , rucking etc. You can print , cut and THEN micronex and weed. Makes the graphic extremely hardy and costs less than 60 pence a sq meter. Can do gloss , soft matt and full matt with it. Comes in normal (very resistant) and “Dura” which is suitable for food prep and other VERY harsh conditions.(dura requires a print/lam/cut workflow)
Ultimate is cast cold film lams – they survive just about anything including acetone. cost is about 2 quid per sq meter.
HOWEVER you can charge a ton more for an overlammed graphic , far more than just the cost of the overlam and you can give a no quibble guarantee and have peace of mind yourself.
We add at least 10 quid per sq meter for overlammed stuff and are considered “cheap”
There are also some other consideratons re overlammed stuff and cutting , or reloading and then cutting. Long jobs that are just print and cut tend to lose registration for various reasons , like media creep etc. Its often FAR more accurate to print , read crop marks and then cut. Firstly , one can do a lot more printing than cutting in time – cutting takes eons and ties the machine up. Its always better to cut without heaters , the reason is that often a small section stays on the heaters a while and softens and cuts at less pressure than the rest of it as it whizzes over the heaters and doesnt get as hot , so you have variable cut depths occuring. The machine reads the whole piece with Reloading and compensates for any vinyl stretch etc. Thus cutting is a lot more accurate and problems like media curl after cutting are solved. You can queue cutting till there is cutting time and not have to wait for heater cool down or heater warm up between processes.
Robert , with all due respect , I do both short and long term with my soljet and dont consider it less of a signmakers machine than a full solvent modified one. If one wants to specialise in long term outdoor unlaminated durable vehicle graphics , then a thermal printer would have been the way to go , inkjet is not as suitable for this application.
Thing is , the machines are so versatile , on stuff like papers , meshes , tyvek , backlits and many other substrates , there is no durability issue at all with any of these machines.
The biggest problem is to get ones head around the fact that there is life beyond vehicle graphics.

[J. Hulme]

quote Rodney Gold:

What I find amazing is why a digital print is expected to outperform other forms of signage or more to the point , why subject them to torture that you wouldnt on other forms and then moan when they dont shrug it off.
.

I don’t, if screenwash can bring dried in ink out of screens months / years after, *no* thermal/inkjet/digital print stands a chance, digital print isn’t anything new that should last a lifetime it has a working life just as paint on car rusts through in a couple of years (if you own a ford or a ferrari 😉 ) three years is well over ample of outdoor life for any digital print, can’t see what you’re all moaning about really.