Problems printing pop up panels

[Jason Xuereb]

Have you tried checking your panels for alignment before you apply the magnetic material behind it? So lay it on the floor and put the panels side by side and check the alignment?

[RodHill]

Good idea thanks Jason

we didn’t do that today ans the we had all the hangers and mag strips on it before we realized that the panels weren’t straight.

Do you print crop marks or just cut directly to the edge of the image?

thanks for your advice

Rod

[Jason Xuereb]

Hey Rod, I print crop marks. I just wanted you to check the alignment beforehand to see where the problem lies. If its your printing, trimming or mounting the panels on the frame.

I’ve gone through a lot of these problems and overcome *most* of them 🙂

[RodHill]

i’ll check the ‘re-printed’ 🙁 panels in the morning and get back to you,
cheers

[RodHill]

We’ve measured two of the panels this morning and 1 of them is 11mm less than it should be on the screen and the second is 7mm less than it is on the screen – we’ve got a 4mm discrepancy on the images matching up !?
We are using Shiraz RIP and the panels are sized perfectly in the archive
nightmare – anyones help would appreciated
Rod

[Russell Huffer]

What software are you using to create the panels, i have done a lot of these and the best way i have found of doing them is to create i big graphic say 3275 x 2140 in illistrator.

Then using indesign create a 5 page facing page spread with the correct page size something like 653×2140 then place the large graphic into indesign.

You can now print direct to your rip and i normally use 3/mm of bleed.

To my knowledge you cannot create panels seperatly as they will not be accurate enough.

Regards

Russell.

[Jon Marshall]

Is this something to do with feed correction on the printer? It sounds like when you’re aligning panels on a wrap and they start to run marginally out.

[RodHill]

thanks guys – feedback much appreciated

[Mark Candlin]

Rod,
Are you using a take-up roller on your machine? If so this can have an effect on panel sizes if you leave the machine on a long print run, say over night etc. The take up roller stretches the vinyl over the run and the panels end up out of synch.

[RodHill]

Thanks Mark – I thought this might of been the case – but how on earth are you meant to print 5 pop panels if you can’t leave the machine to get on with it?

I friend suggested opening the whole pop up in the rip and using the panel function to split it up rather than creating separate panels in Illustrator – this helped a lot – but there was still 1 panel that printed 5mm too big??

nightmate !

thanks

Rod

[Russell Huffer]

Rod,

As per my earlier post you can not accurately panel a popup in the RIP or using illustrator, it has nothing to do with printing them all at once or one panel a day for 5 days. RIPs do not allow bleed and illustrator is primarily a single page layout.

Regards

Russell.

[Jason Xuereb]

In Versaworks you can panel and bleed each panel.

Rod how do you fabricate your panels? SAV then onto plastic?

[RodHill]

Hi Russell – i used Shiraz to panel the graphic – it helped but one panel still came out 5mm larger than all the others?!

In answer to Jason – we print onto 300 micron stoplight media and mat laminate

thanks guys – we have another pop up to do this week, will let you know how we get on

Rod

[Russell Huffer]

Most RIPS can tile rather than panel and overlap rather than bleed, these are similar but not the same, hence your problems, your method is also a bit hit and miss with regards to placing text and the like over the joins causing visual problems.

As said create one big graphic then use indesign to Page it and add bleed, i can not upload files here but if you pm me i will send you a blank indesign file that i use for a plex supremacy 3×3 then just print each page to the rip, i used to supply these to a company that had one panel as a flight board with a gloss laminate so that you could write on it with a white board marker, the company regually used non removeable pen and so i had to reprint just that one panel, no problem with indesign.

Regards

Russell.

[Billy Cook]

Hi Rod,
We print on average 2 pop ups a week onto a 300micron stoplight and use a textured laminate. We always use our rips tiling feature to split the panes with no bleed with crop marks and trim flush on a javelin cutting bench. 99% of the time there spot on with the odd 1 panel being 1mm under size in height but width and join wise there spot on. We have had a few issues with the print bananaing but as a rule of thumb we always print the wrap (for the case) or a en-cap first as there normally don’t have to butt up i.e. solid colour with out a image.

Billy

[Andrew Blackett]

quote Russell Huffer:

Most RIPS can tile rather than panel and overlap rather than bleed, these are similar but not the same, hence your problems, your method is also a bit hit and miss with regards to placing text and the like over the joins causing visual problems.

As said create one big graphic then use indesign to Page it and add bleed, i can not upload files here but if you pm me i will send you a blank indesign file that i use for a plex supremacy 3×3 then just print each page to the rip, i used to supply these to a company that had one panel as a flight board with a gloss laminate so that you could write on it with a white board marker, the company regually used non removeable pen and so i had to reprint just that one panel, no problem with indesign.

Regards

Russell.

Hi Russell,

Can you elaborate a little as I’m lost – we use versaworks and corel, the design is created as one big file plus bleed. We then drop this into versaworks and split it into the required 5 panels, allowing 5mm overlap (bleed) and adding crops. We’ve had a couple of minor issues but I dont understand how splitting it before the rip makes any difference. I’m not doubting mate I’d just like to understand a little better.

Andy

[Ian Hatfield]

What printer and media are you using?? We do all sorts of popups, vinyl, wallpaper and SA banner prints on various rips and printers. I always use the rip to tile as it is the quickest and easiest way.

I have a feeling it will be a printer and media compatibility problem as we have had issues in the past with certain types of media, so changed to another, problem solved.

[budone]

quote Russell Huffer:

Most RIPS can tile rather than panel and overlap rather than bleed, these are similar but not the same, hence your problems, your method is also a bit hit and miss with regards to placing text and the like over the joins causing visual problems.

As said create one big graphic then use indesign to Page it and add bleed, i can not upload files here but if you pm me i will send you a blank indesign file that i use for a plex supremacy 3×3 then just print each page to the rip, i used to supply these to a company that had one panel as a flight board with a gloss laminate so that you could write on it with a white board marker, the company regually used non removeable pen and so i had to reprint just that one panel, no problem with indesign.

Regards

Russell.

I Russell I’d be very interested in learning how to do it this way, I currently create in Illustator and then tile in the shiraz rip.. I do get problems lining up but I think at the moment that is more to do with the media moving while printing.. Going to check the level as suggested in another thread.

Edit: for Ian I’m using a JV3-160SP with Metamarks MD PU2 pop up polyester

[Paul Wood]

quote Ian Hatfield:

What printer and media are you using?? We do all sorts of popups, vinyl, wallpaper and SA banner prints on various rips and printers. I always use the rip to tile as it is the quickest and easiest way.

I have a feeling it will be a printer and media compatibility problem as we have had issues in the past with certain types of media, so changed to another, problem solved.

Hi Ian….we have the same problem as Rod. We run a Mimaki JV33 with hydrosol pop-up media. What media do you recommend?

[Ian Hatfield]

We have both solvent and dye based printers, I do all my popups on the dye based printer (HPZ6100). I have not used the Hydrosol or the Metamark products, so could not comment on either, except for the fact that the problems you are having I have had in the past all be it on and old HP5500 and it has been down to the media generating static which caused problems with media feed. I currently use a product from Paper Graphics which comes in both solvent and dye formats. We use far more dye than solvent but have run the solvent product on our JV5 & XC540, with no problem. The other product we have had good results with is one from All Print.

The rips we use now are Onyx Production House and Wasatch, both the apps have goodish explanations of how to tile on their sites.