-
PRINTING ONTO PLASTIC WITH ROLAND
I have a simple question, is it possible to print directly onto a suitable plastic (such as the one used on card printing machines like Eltron (thermal/dye-sub) the thickness needs to be about 650micron using a Roland SC540 or even a Versacamm 54″. Or would it be better to print onto vinyl and then apply the vinyl to the plastic.
Also What is the typical cost in £’s per square meter for ink + vinyl.
As you can tell I am a complete beginner.
🙄 -
4 Replies
-
I saw a Roland SC540 at Prosign 04 modified with rollers front and back to take sheet materials it printed really well but the guy was german and I dont speak german and he didnt want to speak english so I dont know what the conversion would cost but a bit I would think, I dont think you cna put sheet material through a normal Sc540
REgards ADrian
-
You can print directly onto media 1mm thick with a 540 , the versacam wont allow this (the 540 allows more head height adjustment). The inks WILL bond quite well if you can get temperature into the material , which means whacking the temp up very high. The problem with this is that it tends to buckle the material and you can get head strikes. Some material prints “ok” without heat (like styrene and abs) but tends to bleed and thus teeny high detial stuff prints badly.
Problems arise with feeds and calibration as well. You need some sort of support front and back too.
There is a solution for printing on “unprintable” media without the heaters and that is to use artists fixative on the substrate and print – we do 0.9mm anodised aluminium this way , obviously durability is an issue as it depends on how well the fixative adheres to the substrate , but it appears as tho the fixative holds the inks VERY well (or at least in our case it does)
The durability on aluminium is very good however. You need to gouge the stuff to get the print off in abraision tests. solvents will remove it entirely VERY quickly.
Oddly enough , durability on ABS or Styrene (printed with heat or without) is WAY better than printing on uncoated vinyl.
We often also use the cutter to score the material as an aid to breaking it out , you can set the SC540 to do multiple cuts on the same piece of material.
Roland don’t sanction or recommend rigid stuff , but it works fine.
There are mods that make the Roland a flatbed printer , but these are horrendously expensive. We actually have a flatbed printer that does super a3 size (based on an epson 1290) and it works exceptionally well , but size is limited (and it costs 12500 euros) but the print quality is better than the soljet as are the colours. -
Rodney – where can I get some details for the 1290 (flatbed) and does anyone sell it in the UK, also how much would the fixative cost per 1m2.
This is a really good forum website.
-
We pay about gbp 2 quid for a 390 ml aerosol , covers about 4 sq meters
the flatbed is called a Busjet .. a google search for Busjet will get you a few URLS, There is a belgian agent for it
Log in to reply.
