TR2 Inks breaking our hearts – Drying cabinet needed

[Graham Scanlan]

I pulled this straight from the Roland website, saying the prints are ready to apply in 6 hours, I’d be putting a complaint into Roland m8 as it sounds like something isn’t right.

TR2 Ink Featuring Orange Ink Printing

• Super-accurate colour matching for logo and corporate branding projects and bold, vivid graphics with the winning combination of TR2 inks, VF2 printers and VG2 printers/cutters. Certified by industry-leading media manufacturers. Prints are ready to apply in just 6 hours for true same-day installation.
• TR2 Ink Featuring Orange Ink Printing Super-accurate colour matching for logo and corporate branding projects and bold, vivid graphics with the winning combination of TR2 inks, VF2 printers and VG2 printers/cutters.

[David Hammond]

I agree 100%, there is something not right with TR2 inks. 6 hours is a marketing gimmick.

We can print a job, leave it 24 hours in our drying unit, laminate it then when we come to cut it, the ‘standard’ colours cut fine, yet the green appears softer and thinner so the cutting pressure is inconsistent.

I don’t need 6hr drying, 24 is sufficient for most of our work, but even that’s not sufficient.

With hindsight, perhaps we should have gone with a latex.

[Kevin Mahoney]

Almost bought the new Roland before I opted for the Epson, must be gutting when new kit fails to live up to the marketing blurb. But this drying cabinet thing makes me nervous to be honest. I always hang wrap material like curtains from the steel roof girders in our unit, always leave it for 48 hours or 24 for polymeric & have never had a problem with drying, have you always left it coiled?

[David Hammond]

To be honest, before we went back to Roland, we used to leave most print on the roll on the take up unit, and never had any issues.

The TR2 inks seem be problematic, and only seems to affect the green in our case, so built a cabinet.

It’s annoying, we print, outgas, laminate, and then when it’s cutting it become apparent something isn’t right!

[David Stevenson]

Hi Kevin, we’ve always left it loosely coiled sitting on a rack raised from the floor with mesh on the bottom. This problem has definitely only started since the TR2 inks appeared. We’ve just started to attempt to make our own profiles for Onyx which is a definite learning curve. Seems there’s no Onyx profiles available for the VF2-640 🙁

[David Hammond]

@David-Stevenson how you getting on with the VF2?

Any improvement with the TR2 and outgassing issues?

[David Stevenson]

@DavidHammond In all honesty the drying cabinet hasn’t seemed to have made a great difference. I’ve had material in for a week that’s still super tacky when been applied.

We’ve even went as far as adding an RF640 to our line up to get away from the TR2 inks for wrapping. Even with it we’re seeing very unsatisfactory results. Prints with light coverage aren’t so much of an issue but anything will heavy coverage are a nightmare. I’m starting to feel the lack of profiles for both machines may be the issue and that so much ink is been laid down that it’s damaging the adhesives properties to the point that no amount of drying will fix it.

We recently bought Onyx to run our printers and new summa cutter in the hope that would help. Problem is there’s no profiles available for any of our printers!!! After a very serious conversation with our supplier and Roland we finally managed to get them to make a custom profile for us. What’s the point of spending thousands to fix a problem only to find there’s no support for the hardware / materials we’ve been sold. We’re currently in the process of swapping from Versaworks to Onyx which is a huge learning curve to see if this finally sorts the problem.

As soon as we get up and running and get a decent test done I’ll let you know the results.

[David Hammond]

I’ve got Roland coming out Monday to see our machine and issues we’ve had that sound similar to yours, print quality of the green atrocious the past few weeks.

Like you I’m getting a bit tired of compromising, or working around it, and even then still having snags.

[RobertLambie]

@David-Stevenson that’s a really good attempt at creating a drying unit, well done mate.

I have had various full solvent and eco-solvent Roland machines over a 12-15 year period and they are bulletproof with regard to ink performance over the likes of latex when it comes to “wrapping”. but like all inks, there is strict outgassing prior to the lamination processes required. Clearly, you know this, David. Hence, building your drying unit. 👍
Solvent is heavier than air, so it naturally falls with gravity, so I’ve always been of the opinion that a fan at the top blowing down as well as the bottom, if not only the top, would work best. However, I think the fan blowing down on a coiled roll may blow it over.
In the past, and due to doing high numbers of truck wraps, we would elevate the prints and let them hang dry. the reason was that rolled-up vinyl does not give a clear 360-degree space to air. it bunches and touches in areas, preventing 100% material outgassing. in some cases trapping falling solvent between lower bunched areas.
I say this through my own errors. By that I mean, I would print a truck wrap and coil the prints on their side and let them dry. then I would go and fit the prints. Up to twenty-six, 94inch x 52inch vinyl panels per truck.
I noticed that one side of the prints was often tackier than the opposite down the length of the drop. so as a test, I would mark what side stood on its end, then keep note when it came to fitting them. and the tacky side was always the side nearest the ground!
Hanging by its side is better than hanging by its length because of the distance the solvent has to fall to clear the bottom of the sheet.

Obviously, all of what I have said above does not answer your question/problem. But thought I would add these comments because it is a good relevant topic being discussed by real users and a great example of a drying unit.

I think Roland stating prints can be laminated within 6 hours is stupid and I have no doubt at most this has been decided by laboratory testing rather than real-world testing. No disrespect to them, but big companies like this deserve to get their fingers burnt with this type of statement because it is wishful thinking on their part and done to generate sales. So we, the sign makers, printers, wrappers take the hit for their innacuarte claims! I dont single out Roland, even vinyl manufacturers do it all the time with wrapping vinyl claims!

I realise i am rambling on here, so i will shut up. 🤣

[Chris Wilson]

Don’t want to jinx myself. But we are all good with the SLX.

Printed last Wednesday. Laminated Monday. Fitted Tuesday.

Running orange and green inks. Had to switch to American website to get the profiles. But no issue. Don’t know when there not on UK profile centre.

[David Hammond]

What printer are you using?

[Chris Wilson]

Got the VG2-640.

Am guessing your still having trouble.

Send me a file if you want that’s been trouble and I will run it off and see what like. Info@creativesignandprint.co.uk

[David Stevenson]

@chriswilson have you printed anything yet that’s heavily saturated with ink, eg big solid blacks or reds? We’ve found light coverage is workable but the heavy solids are a heart breaker 🙁

[Chris Wilson]

Yea most weeks.
I’ve tried to attach things that all have what I would class as problem colours. All perfect.

We do have banner bunching issues and first aid green can be a pain some days. But I would buy another one right now.

[Chris Wilson]

Ok do I printed some David’s files today and had the same results. No idea why. Plenty files of similar colour we have done before. Not to brag but hour machine is running 10ths a day, at least a couple of weeks a night over night. So it is a head puzzler. Only thing is we use Corel mainly. Not adobe.

[David Hammond]

Thanks for doing those test prints.

I’m surprised too, as Signmasters test print ruled out the artwork, pointing at the machine.

Roland pointed at some minor nozzle deflections, but as your machine has replicated the issue almost identically, I think that’s unlikely.

This was two different shades of green, two artworks one created in house, one customer supplied. A real puzzler. Roland are visiting Monday so we’ll see if they have any pointers.

[Kevin Mahoney]

Just a thought, would these be pantone colours or cmyk?

[David Hammond]

Both CMYK, nothing particularly special.

They are brighter due to the green inks, but they’re straight cmyk, and the sample from a cmyk is perfectly acceptable and issue free.

[David Hammond]

So Roland came out yesterday the cause of the banding/scratching in the green was some nozzle deflections in the green head.

IMHO, nothing major, the engineer tended to agree, and from my experience I’ve seen far worse nozzle prints, produce better prints.

I was sceptical, but a replacement head proved me wrong. Still left with some dark banding, but that may be profile issue.

I’m going to experimenting with ink limits – Will see how we get on.🧐

[David Hammond]

I’ve been playing with ink limits until my spectrometer arrived today.

I’ve managed to reduce some individual colour limits to around ~80% with no visible effect on colours, and reduced the overall ink limits ~180% again with no noticeable difference.

Spectrometer arrived late today (EFI ES200 which is an X1 Pro thats rebadged, so can’t use the Xrite software but VW seems it as an X1) so I’ve done another chart print and scanned the linearisation of the inks, and again no noticeable change in colour, but using less ink. Less ink = Less solvent.

Spoke with Roland, who seem to agree with my logic, and we may be heading in the right direction.

[David Hammond]

All credit to Roland, they’re doing everything they can to help.

Firstly the machine does what is should do, it prints, and we’ve no complaints about the vibrancy of the colours, and the print quality. The issues we’ve experienced only appear to show their heads during cutting, post laminating. From day one, I’ve suspected outgassing.

I’m equally aware that our workshop isn’t laboratory conditions, and environment does play a factor – However we’ve successfully worked around those for 11+ years.

To date all the solutions we’ve tried have helped, but not irradicated the root cause, and it woud suggest that the profiles are putting down more ink, and the combination of our environment, media, the media profile, etc, the solvent/inks isn’t evaporating as quickly or evenly as it should.

I’ll be playing around with ink limits, and total ink limits, linerising the machine, and hopefully get some help with profiling the machine, so we can finally put this to bed.

Had it not been for the two fleets of vans we did, and the fact the issues we had could be replicated time and time again, we could have dismissed it as operator error.

This kind of puts Roland between a rock and hard place, the machine does what it should, and when shipped for Japan they can’t account for each and every environment the machines end up in. It’s not really Rolands place to profile medias and machines, and it’s then down to how well/accurately the media manufacturers profile their media for the machine.

I’m genuinely interested to see how this works!