SOLVENT DURABILITY AGAIN

[Robert Lambie]

what inks are you using and what vinyl?

[MARTY]

Activasol inks and we’ve tried Metamark & Oracle print vinyl,
all the standard profiles etc.

[Rodney Gold]

I’ve found that durability is not only ink related but media related. If we print on X-fil (starrex) premium polymeric , we get stunning prints that will not rub off , in fact you tend to destroy the vinyl before the print if testing.
On cheaper or lesser materials , the print is not that durable , especially light prints (ike a light grey on a cheap white used for a cosmetic bottle where the customer will touch the labels with the product (hand creams etc))
Roland are coming out with new inks in September which they claim to solve a lot of durability problems , remains to be seen if they will?
ALL printers lay down a layer of inks , none of them actually “soak” the ink into the vinyl , some with agressive solvents almost melt the top layer of the vinyl and mix in the inks with this “melt” (to put it simply) however this leads to other problems like lower resolution , dot gian , off colours and the worst – vinyl “thinning” and contraction or edge curling when cutting on a full bleed. A layer of anything will be subject to abraison damage.
The solution: laminate the graphic if its in a harsh environment and is expected to be long lived – applys to all printers

[Robert Lambie]

activasol – i get mixed up with these, but i am sure thats the agressive one and citrosol less…. anyway thats fine and what i use.
metamark – again this is what i am using.

if you are using the md5 (set) profile from troop, allowing upto 24hrs for drying. and basically doing everything expected. i do not see why you are getting poor results. i am guessing that you “may” be expecting too much from the durabilty.

what sort of things happen to it, but more importantly what is causing this to happen exactly.

if you need a sample. contact any supplier of this machine and ask for a sample to be posted. they will normaly do one next day.

[Stephen Morriss]

I’ve printed myself some small stickers for putting on tools etc.
I put one on the back of my mobile and that has started to wear off the print were it bends round edges etc with being in my pocket but that’s as far as it’s gone, and I would think being in a pocket with keys etc is quite a harsh environment.

I’ve got both heaters at 45C and I’m using ActivaSol inks on Uniform (Metamark) 3 year gloss

You are right Rob the ActivaSol is the more aggressive ink and the CitriSol is the “Eco” version, I suspect that the Ink that Rodney is talking about is a development of this.

Steve

P.S. If you want I’ll print a sample and post it to you, just mail an eps to steve@raven-graphics.co.uk and I’ll print you an A4, bet you’ll find it’s just the same as your’s though.

[Chris Wool]

and they put this on there face

quote :

used for a cosmetic bottle where the customer will touch the labels with the product (hand creams etc))

had this problem there stuff destroys resin and wax pc 60 prints and solvent prints them when you say its got to be laminated they say to dear – .
back to topic i think we are expecting to much from the prints in durability terms but materials alter the result so much the grafityp ones work for me with ecosol inks

chris

[Shane Drew]

I use the Roland SC540 with Oracal 3551 material with Techink solvent inks, and I am more than happy with the results I get unlaminated. As has been said tho, laminate and you will have no worries at all.

Shane

[signworkshop]

Yea, our prints from our cadet is crap to. we always have to laminate the prints, unless we use over print, which is slower and obviously uses more ink. doesnt seem to be any better than a versacamm.

We use MD5 and MD3 when set on MD5 setting the print is absolutly usless, the ink is far to heavy and just pools up on the material.

Plus only after a year the quality is so poor that we can only get good results on 8 pass printing, the machine has been very well looked after. But we have lots of deflections in the nozzels, so the ink doesnt go where it is surpose to go. I wonder how the heads are on a year old versacamm

[James kelly]

quote signworkshop:

I wonder how the heads are on a year old versacamm

Well over a year and my Versacamm prints as good as the day I got it.
No maintenance other than the quick head cleans the machine does itself.

[Phill Fenton]

That’s a very good point I’d like to know the answer to. Can someone confirm or deny if the Cadet heads wear any quicker than the versacamm due to the more agressive ink used in the cadet?

[Robert Lambie]

i am over a year with our machine and it prints as good as the day we got it.
i am not doubting anyones word, there will always be cases with any machine. however, if my machine was printing IFY and progressively getting worse i would have demanded a new head, part or even machine IF i was definately not to blame.
look at it this way… would you buy a brand new car and from day one not be happy with it, 6 months down the line it shudders, one year on its back firing… of course not!… we would walk into show room and fling the keys on the table and demand a new one.

[Rodney Gold]

The heads are normally guaranteed for so many billion dots , I think 6 billion , when we had a problem with one of our heads , we got it replaced at a huge discount as it had not fired anywhere near that. (I think the problem was not the head , but the tech guy was one of those “lets replace it till we find the problem” types so one of the items was the head (It was actually a pump mounting bracket )
the solvents shouldnt really affect the heads to any degree , they are pretty hardy (epson Dx3/Dx4) , we even run mild solvent inks thru an Epson 1280 PAPER printer and the heads survive. The big problems are the solvents drying and blocking the heads or tubes or using parts that are not compatible with the solvents in the inks (like tubing or dampers) and those solvents disolving this stuff and carrying it to the heads. Other hassles are quality of inks and size of particles and how well they are filtered etc.
The Eco Solvent machines salesppl like to say that solvent will reduce head life but I think thats scare tactics. you HAVE to budget on a full head set replacement every 2 years as a safety measure or in your cost to run the machine.

[Chris Wool]

2 and half years and just started to have a head issue soljet sc540 ex – just found the price of new heads and that alone will create a lot more issues so a few things to do first before i change one head out of 6 .

chris