Printing onto clear - Mimaki Printers

Mimaki Printers

Printing onto clear

Posted by Thomas Pitt on January 16, 2012 at 10:25 am

Hi everyone,

We run a JV33 using Rasterlink. Just wondering what people do when printing onto clear, do you use the same print profiles/print set-up as you would when using the same brand of white vinyl? We have to print it very slow to eliminate the banding. Is there a specific print profile for clear vinyl or can adjusting the heat, feed calibration etc help? Or is it just a case of having to print slow onto clear vinyl?

Any advice would be massively appreciated.

Tom

Barry Williams replied 12 years, 2 months ago 7 Members · 11 Replies
11 Replies

Derek Heron

Member
January 16, 2012 at 11:40 am

hi tom i normally run same profiles but with two print passes

derek
John Thomson

Member
January 16, 2012 at 12:39 pm

On my JV3 I print with same profile and one pass.

John
Thomas Pitt

Member
January 16, 2012 at 1:51 pm

Thanks for you comments guys.
David Rowland

Member
January 16, 2012 at 7:22 pm

what you might find is the tempretures are the main difference between profiles with clear.

A profile is useless if it is not backed in white (or a white light source) so I would print it with the same profile
Thomas Pitt

Member
January 17, 2012 at 9:36 am

Thanks Dave.
Stafford Cox

Member
January 17, 2012 at 1:00 pm

I’m not that familiar with your RIP but I think the key words you should look for would be ‘Overprint’ or ‘Double Strike’. As everyone has already mentioned though, I’d use the same profile too.

Stafford
Thomas Pitt

Member
January 17, 2012 at 4:24 pm

Thanks Stafford. Alot of our print onto clear vinyl is backed up onto white so print just once, but if the vinyl is going onto glass then we overprint it.
Chris Wool

Member
January 17, 2012 at 5:09 pm

i have found a few clears that will not print as well as digital whites, mainly because they were not made for printing just over laminating.
Barry Williams

Member
February 26, 2012 at 10:09 pm

Hi y’all,
one thing that I have found to give better results when printing onto clear is to move the dots resolution up from my normal 720 x 720 to 720 x 1440.
I use a troublesome Rockhopper 38 which has a recurring "freeze" problem partway into reasonably large prints—i.e 30" x 30" med size files.
Any guidance there would be welcome.
Regards Barry
Stafford Cox

Member
February 26, 2012 at 10:46 pm

quote Barry Williams:

Hi y’all,
one thing that I have found to give better results when printing onto clear is to move the dots resolution up from my normal 720 x 720 to 720 x 1440.
I use a troublesome Rockhopper 38 which has a recurring “freeze” problem partway into reasonably large prints—i.e 30″ x 30″ med size files.
Any guidance there would be welcome.
Regards Barry

I would guess that to be more PC or RIP related than printer….
Barry Williams

Member
February 27, 2012 at 10:46 am

Hi Rob,
yes, I feel that the problem is computer related, but where to start.
I have been using the same iMac since day one with this printer and the freezing only started a couple of years back. Yes I have struggled with this for a couple of years!!!
Many suggestions over the years from helpful forums and techs but the intermittent prob persists. (That’s why I toss the problem out ever so often).
The Mac "races" when the printer freezes so I wonder if the RAM may be faulty or insufficient. I have 1.25gb but will move that up to 2g in the next week with chips from a similar spare iMac. Flexi 7.7v2 has been reinstalled on a number of occasions and preferences cleared on numerous occasions.Scanvec Amiable offer no support—other than to buy new kit as present version no longer supported!!—(From my knowledge of Latin I understood that "amiable" meant friendly—-adjective certainly does not belong with this software manufacturer’s name.)
Regards,
Barry 🙄 🙄