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Vinyl not flat in printer – help required please?
Hi, this is my first post so first things first: Hi!
I don’t use my printer every day for print jobs so I’ve bought some "budget" digital print vinyl from Hexis ( V3000WM ) for just running through the printer every day to prevent head clogging etc.
The problem I’ve got (and the best description I can think of) is the vinyl is waving as it feeds through the printer. so much so I’ve had a few head strikes from it, ink dragging and media jams as the print head assembly catches the edge of the vinyl where it’s raised up. And TBH it’s scaring the living daylights out of me every time it happens as I really don’t want to replace a head yet!
The print looks very wet compared to when I used other hexis vinyl (V201WG) and photo papers and even the clear plastic I got the printer to print onto.
Printer: Tiara Opal II (Rockhopper II)
Ink: Nazdar LSW1300 solvent
Rip: Colorgate productionserverHeater settings
A/B/C/D 40/40/50/50degI’ve spoken to hexis previously and they haven’t got a profile for my rip.
Any ideas or help would be greatly appreciated.
Chris -
12 Replies
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Try turning the temperature down. A bit of trial and error, to find what works for you.
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quote David Hammond:Try turning the temperature down. A bit of trial and error, to find what works for you.Agreed. But also try and keep some heat in the room your media’s stored in. It’s the sudden change from near freezing to 40 odd degrees that makes the media cockle.
Stafford
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Turn down the pre-heat & print heat.
You can keep the fixer & post heater up around 45-50 if you want but knock the others down to 30-35.
Also – make sure the media is stored in a fairly temperature & moisture stable place as very cold vinyl or very, very slightly damp ripples like crazy.
(Running same machine)
Also – check ALL the screws in the vacuum (& heating) plates are actually tight…they tend to slacken off with the constant heat / cool cycles so you loose vacuum.
Wet print – down to choice of vinyl & the settings in colorgate…reduce dot size and do more passes to slow the process down.
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Thanks for the quick replies and advice,
I’ve turned the preheat & head down to 30 and that’s made it a lot better, I never thought about the screws on the heater/vac bed, just tried them and virtually every one of them was loose! It’s still lifting so is there a way of testing / increasing the vacuum? – Would covering most of the other holes help or does the printer control this when it measures the media width?
The workshop is only partially heated so it sounds like that may be part of the issue too, I’ll move the stored media into my office as I didn’t realise damp and low temps had so much effect. I seem to remember the tech mentioning about using a fan heater aimed under the media before it gets to the printer – would this be part of trying to prevent the ripples?
Would the cold also be the cause of mottling i.e. if I print 100% yellow it looks orangepeely / textured – or would this be too much ink/dotsize – or/another?
David, with colorgate, is it as simple as going into the MIM advanced settings and just selecting small dotsize? It’s set as standard as 720×720 4 pass and bi-directional is on.
Thanks again.
Chris -
I would guess this would probably be an overall environmental issue
We have the same issue in our new unit…We have around 60-100 rolls on stand at any one time and we realised in our new building these start to flop over on the edges and don’t sit flat. I knew straight away this was a temperature issue.
The problem we have is we are in a old type building which is great in the summer as it has around 60 windows on the roof area but in the winter it gets cold.
We have just ordered a oil heater that will keep our 10,000 sqft production space at a constant temperature. We have no gas in our area so oil it will be. I guess for atleast 3-4 months of the year the heater will be on and working.
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I would agree with James.
One of the factors of "budget" vinyl is the low quality of its liner paper, which is often very susceptible to curling under less than ideal environmental conditions. -
Simon spot on, I was having trouble with print and cut of decals on a budget vinyl for a client. The media would move all over the place, so i changed over and tried on the MD3 to see if it would make a difference and it was perfect. Keeping a unit warm is difficult when you have shutters. We use gas heaters around the workshop now 8).
Tas
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Just a quick update on this, thanks again everyone.
I’ve changed the heat profile to 30/30/40/50 and added a fan heater below to preheat a little more. I’ve also changed the dotsize to small. Fingers crossed it seems to have worked for now 🙂
The grainyness in the yellow seems to have reduced significantly so I’m guessing it was pooling on the surface and fisheyeing due to surface tension or something like that. Although the cyan seems to have gone a little bandy and fuzzy now! I’ve not tried it on paper yet so I’m not sure if it’s just the vinyl
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Good to see you up and running, thanks for the update.
Stafford
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All of the above but a good idea it to add a post fan Heater and pointing it at the print slightly down angle to the floor has made big difference for me when I reduce the printer Heaters down. Also it will do this on thicker materials in contrast cold environment is what I notice but now have it Sorted to perfection. Also keep rolls like that in box for some warmth. Vinyl racks are nice but not for budget media.
One more thing is make sure your print head is in low position as that will solve over spray which gives a wave effect. I’m not hugely far from you feel free to pop down in worcester buddy -
Michael, I’ll take you up on that. I nip over to Worcester fairly regularly, where are you?
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quote Chris Ranner:Michael, I’ll take you up on that. I nip over to Worcester fairly regularly, where are you?
In Malvern but outskirts worcester in two months time just making changes to a new house for disability access for my son. Welcome anytime mate 07772 118 007
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