need help printing on transparent material

[Phill Fenton]

When you print on clear there is an absence of white in the image you have printed. Consequently anything you print will appear very weak.

Bear in mind that your customer may even be asking for something that is not possible to achieve with a printer.

However, I’m not sure I understand your question properly. Can you explain a bit more what you are trying to do?

[Jamie Wood]

The colours will be too weak. If they are to be used as window graphics, you could possibly get a white floodcoat screenprinted on top of the digital print, but trimming would have to be accurate to enable the screenprinter to get a decent lay edge.

Another way would be to print it onto white blockout vinyl, (or use normal coloured vinyl), cut and weed the text, and supply the sticker with application tape on the front. If you don’t want holes where the text has been weeded, you would have to laminate.

Cheers,
Jamie.

[Adwiz]

If you want to print on transparent material you need white ink, here in poland it’s available only in 220ml cartridges. I’ve never printed on transparent material thought.

[Stephen Morriss]

You could try printing onto a very thin white vinyl, that would mean that the light would shine through a little but to be honest there is so little ink put down that it will most likely shine through it all.
The only reliable way is screen print or cut vinyl onto clear.

Steve

[Pauly]

We do this regularly on our jv3. Although TOTALLY blocking out is going to be impossible considering your using a translucent ink anyway…..

We use Onyx Rip and we set our printer to double or triple strike the media, leaving a 1-2 second pause between passes printing uni directionally, bump up the heat a little, and just play with it a little to find what works for you. We have had a lot of success doing this, the only thing you will have to be weary of are ink limits on the media, its easy to put too much on this way and destroy the media, and you will have to allow a little longer for curing generally.

[Mark Mickelborough]

The Mimaki allows for multiple Ink layering, which basically means it will apply between 1 & 9 layers of ink (it literally passes across the vinyl without moving it by the required amount)

please be aware that anything over 3 and the ink will run of the print and spoil it.

firstly you have to set the priority of Ink Layers to Plot (not host)…this is done in set up>Priority on the Mimaki.

then go Function>Set up>Ink Layers

after you have finished printing you must set it back to 1.

You may also find that small bands will appear too, you must allow for this with the Media comp and leave a very slight gap

I hope this helps

Mark

EDIT: should have read the previous post 🙄

[Josh Steenbergen]

Iwanted to say thanks to everybody that replied to me…I did help me..I want to say thanks to pauly and Mark exspecially…If you guys could give me more detail on that I would appreciate it alot…I am a new comer to this industry and anewbie to the equipment for sure, so all the help about this would help out alot..I am using onyx rips too.

thanks,
Josh

[Pauly]

If using Onyx. Once the job has ripped and sitting in RIP Queue, right click the job, then go to printer settings. Once that box comes up, it will have all the settings that you would have if you clicked printer settings from the list of printers at the top of the screen. The benifit of doing the first way is that it apply the settings to only that job and not the printer as a whole. (Which means it will only apply to that job in particular and not EVERY job sent to that printer)

The settings you will need to change are "Ink layers, pre/post heaters and possibly pass delay/dry time.

The ink layers will just down extra layer of ink every pass, experiment with this and find what works for your application, it will depend heavily on what ink/media/profile combination your using. I would just use a standard white gloss profile for this job, you might be surprised what you can print with this profile, haahha.

Increase your temp settings accordinly, too much will cockle the media and cause head strikes, too little will lead to heaps of bleeding with that amount of ink being applied. Use these setting in conjuction with your drying times, sometimes leaving the print to dry for 1 or 2 seconds between passes can mean the difference between a successfull print and one that has bled everywhere and destroyed the print.

Also, if printing black on the mimaki, i recommend doing a colour replacement for a job like this and making all your blacks a C:40 M:40 Y:40 K:100 makeup. This will help your black from washing out totally when lit from behind.

This works for me, so this is my advice, i cant say whether this is going to work for you or not, but im fairly confident you can nail it.

Pauly

/end rant

[Sign Age]

not sure if i get your question correctly. I guess you want to fill up the transparent sticker with full colors except the text type without any color (transparent)?

I have to agree with the rest that, the effect of the print will be weak especially with sunlight passing through it, if it is to be installed at any window.

For the part on white ink printing on the transparent sticker, I am not very sure about the printing capabilities of Mimaki but if it is possible, you may want to advise your customer to subsitute white to a lighter shade of grey.

Maybe if you could explain in greater details of the thing that your customer want you to acheive, the folks can help better.

cheers,

[Josh Steenbergen]

Pualy,

I was wondering is that just for black or can I print different colors. my customers is giving me more time in trying to get this to work I think..but I am asking questions first about it to give them heads up on what it will look like before I print it out….
my next questions is will this mess up printheads why you are putting that much ink down…I just need to know what to look for when doing this if all possible…
I am a newbie to this kind of equipment..

thanks pualy

josh

[Pauly]

It shouldnt hurt the printheads at all. The only reason your laying thats much ink down is so the print doesnt totally washout when light hits it from behind. This is why you need to turn up the temperature, if you dont, the passes will start to bleed into each other.

You can print with any colour, but you may find they are coming out a lot darker due to the amount of ink being layed down, but that should be fine once its installed and it has some form of light hitting it from behind, just experiment with it a little and find what works with your machine.

Keep us posted with your results, i would like to know how you go with this? 🙂

[Josh Steenbergen]

Pualy thanks for all your help…I will get to start on next week I think…I am doing a big job for another client and I should be done with that by the end of the week..thanks again Pauly for all the help…

Josh

[Pauly]

No worries!! Please be sure you let us know how you went? Its beneficial for everyone to hear whats working and how others are solving problems. There no point in everyone having to re-invent the wheel each time we come across a problem.

Pauly

[Josh Steenbergen]

Thanks you for all the help and the knowledge that you know about the Mimaki printer…It will help me out alot. And I will feel free to tell you about how well it went…Your right…If I can help you out in anyway I will be here anytime…thanks again Pualy..

Josh Steenbergen