Waves on loaded medium on VersaCamm SP540V

[David Rogers]

Try FEWER media clamps, and don’t leave the vinyl sitting on the heaters when it’s idle / reduce the heat.

I’ve seen it occasionally on my cadet, but ONLY when I’ve left the media loaded, clamped & still being heated.

Dave

[Chris Wool]

as dave says really use 2 clamps for printing vinyl but all 4 for cutting when laminated.
high humidity plays a big part some makes are better than outers, some times i precondition the vinyl by feeding out over the heaters and back again around 4 ft.

chris

[Shane Drew]

I find this when the ambient temp is very cold. As chris says, some material is more prone than others. Should improve when the heaters do its work.

[pilot]

Thanks Dave,
this works brilliant. I was wondering about fewer clamps – the supplier highlighted to use every clamp – but it really works.

quote David Rogers:

Try FEWER media clamps, and don’t leave the vinyl sitting on the heaters when it’s idle / reduce the heat.

I’ve seen it occasionally on my cadet, but ONLY when I’ve left the media loaded, clamped & still being heated.

Dave

[pilot]

Chris and Shane, thanks for the fast help.

[Mark Elvidge]

you could also increase the vacuum power in the media settingd to hold the media to the bed.

[Shane Drew]

quote mark optimise:

you could also increase the vacuum power in the media settingd to hold the media to the bed.

Hi Mark, I’ve got mine set to maximum, makes little difference 😕

[Gavin MacMillan]

I find the vacuum makes a huge difference, printing banner without it on max is not really possible, maybe just the media I use, don’t really notice much difference with vinyl though.

G

[Terry Furlong]

We used to have this problem especially on long prints. Our 540 actually pulls the vinyl through slightly off line so on a long print it tends to run out slightly. If the clamps holding the roll in place don’t let the roll move from side to side then you get waves. I also found that if you move the roll about 4 inches away from the far right position you get less problems. Sometimes it runs off and gets jammed on the media clamp. We’ve also took the media clamps off.

I also read somewhere to roll out the vinyl when cutting to save wear. If i roll out about 4ft of 600m vinyl then it will run out over an inch and snag up. If i leave it on the roll its fine.

[Chris Wool]

terry you have a problem with either the way you load the vinyl or the rollers on the vinyl holder, what you described is not normal behavior.

chris

[Shane Drew]

quote Chris Wool:

terry you have a problem with either the way you load the vinyl or the rollers on the vinyl holder, what you described is not normal behavior.

chris

hhmm agree with that.

Perhaps your rollers are dirty.

[David Rogers]

quote Shane Drew:

quote Chris Wool:

terry you have a problem with either the way you load the vinyl or the rollers on the vinyl holder, what you described is not normal behavior.

chris

hhmm agree with that.

Perhaps your rollers are dirty.

Yeah, something seriously up there. I’ll easily print 3m or so without so much as a waver in tracking. Maybe the back media rollers are misaligned so it pulls in squint.

[pilot]

Yes, the rollers are important. We bought a set of new rollers, that are now provided in Versacamm VP. The rollers can be fixed to the medium and it works pretty good.

[Peter Shaw]

You should be able to get perfect tracking for long distances.

It is essential that the feed roll is exactly in line with the path through the machine, if it is not it will cause drag on one side.

I also never use those plastic insert roller things and only ever have 2 pinch rollers for printing.

Check that the metal guides are clean underneath. They can get glue which then causes drag.

Also ensure you have enough material out at the front, particularly with heavy materials such as banner. The initial push is sometimes reluctant until the material lays over the curve of the bed.

Peter

[David Crocker]

I have this problem from time to time and found that a few factors were involved.

They were…
1. print room temperature. Doing some prints first thing on a cold day would buckle the media, especially vinyl (i primarily print canvas)
2. the clamps were too close to the edge of the media for the print job, so i would bring them a lot closer and set my Base points accordingly.
3. the media wasnt coming off the roll properly.

Since these problems were addressed I havent had many ripples but a little trick i found was to either do a pre-feed or to unroll a lot of the media which would give some weight to the pre-feed and this did the trick also, especially with canvas.

Ive also used the long clamps on some media and this worked as well, I agree that having some extra media hanging out of the front of the machine can help too, i found that it gives extra weight. Ok you might waste a little but better that than to have a nasty misprint half way through a job 🙁

Cheers
dave.

[David Rowland]

well i would have said it was the sudden change from cold to hot… but i dont have this machine.
Also if you overcooking the material.