Possible to print on metallic with V/Camm?

[Chris Wool]

some of these vinyls are not receptive to the inks but got round it by overlaying printed clear.

chris

[Chris Wool]

quote :

I was told that I can print on white or yellow,

and a whole lot more but remember the base colour will shift all the printed colours so printing a red on to blue vinyl goes nearly black print cyan on to yellow it goes green..

if i need to print red on to yellow then only print the magenta.

chris

[drogers4]

Thanks Chris, I hadn’t even thought of printing on different color vinyls. I will give it a go. For some reason I am afraid to try things with my new machine afraid I will mess it up or something. But there’s no harm in trying different vinyls right? Either it prints well or I trash it, and no harm to the heads or anything right?

Doyle

[Stephen Morriss]

I’ve just printed some images onto clear for trying on a mirror, gave the image a really blured look as the mirror is below the glass and so you can see a mild offset, bit like a badly printed colour picture in a mag.
I was going to try it on mirror vinyl next as then the mirror will be right next to the print.
I’ll let you know how it looks

By the way this was clear mactac 9800 vinyl I used an overprint of 2, 16 passes and variable. Looks dark on the backing paper but still a little too light when removed.

Steve

[Rodney Gold]

You can get foils from the suppliers of Starrex or X-film , they make a coated gold and silver foil that prints really beautifully , we do very high detailed prints on it and dome it. The prints take on a metallic hue and are very beautiful.Cos its coated , you have to protect it after like with a lamination or a dome (we do these with flexibler epoxy)
Heres a pic (its a very poor pic) of some.
http://www.tokerbros.co.za/final%20wae% … /domed.jpg
Just as a hint , if you spray any material with artists fixative , it will print. We print DIRECTLY to 1mm anodised aluminium this way. (I have a soljet that can take up to 1 mm thick rigid substrates. The grenadier should do that too , so you can print directly to abs and styrenes (uncoated))

[drogers4]

Thanks for the info. As for the doming, isn’t the material cost for the liquid rather high? I saw a demo at a trade show and the rep. told me that the liquid cost is .65 per square inch, which I found to be outrageous. Is this true or are there cheaper alternatives?

[Ginny Schaeffer]

I saw dooming at a show recently. I believe it’s cheaper than that. A 3pk cartridge is 15.00. Each cartridge is supposed to cover 55 square inches.

Here’s the guy website:
http://www.rdsacuflow.com/

Ginny

[drogers4]

Thanks. That is cheaper that what I saw. I do remember the guy showing me a print that he did where he domed some lettering, probably about 6 – 5″ letters and claimed that it was about $40 in liquid. I was really impressed with the look of the print, but could not justify the price.

[Rodney Gold]

We use a 2 part urethane for doming that costs about 8 quid per litre , 1000 grams , the rule of thumb is 1 gram per sq inch , so it works out to less than 1 pence per sq inch.
If you want to do it in volume , the dosing and dispensing machines are quite pricey , we got Dopag machines . They range from around 2.5k to well over 20k.
The profits on doming are embarrasingly high , the selling price of small domed labels is close to 350-500 quid per sq meter. A 1″ sq label for a puter or the like sells at round 30 pence , cost to produce is around 1 p for the dome and around 1 p for the label.
The price of doming carts and kits is MUCH higher than bulk purchases. You can either do epoxy or urethanes , the epoxies are not as yellowing resistant and as flexible but are much easier to mix lets say in a paper cup at home. Urethanes need controlled humidity , temp etc but can be dry and ready to go in 1 hr or less. You get uv curable doming resins , but they are hellishly expensive and are not as viscous as epoxy or urethane and cant build very high domes , they can cure in 10 secs.

[drogers4]

Rodney, do you recommend the urethane or epoxy? I would like to give doming a try and would like to get a small startup kit. Thanks

[Rodney Gold]

Whatever comes in those 2 part cart kits with the gun will most likely do you fine , we use both as one (the epoxy) gets glass hard and the other , the urethanes are flexible. If you are doming self adhesive vinyl , then anything that remains flexible is what you should use , if its on a hard substrate like a decal applied to a brass backing to make a keytag , then the hard epoxy is the way to go.
A flexible epoxy is most likely the most forgiving to work with , if you can get it.